The Eternals first appeared in The Eternals #1, published by Marvel Comics in July 1976. They were created by the legendary writer and artist Jack “The King” Kirby upon his return to Marvel after a stint at DC Comics, where he had been developing his “Fourth World” saga. The Eternals bear many thematic and conceptual similarities to DC's New Gods, reflecting Kirby's fascination with epic mythologies, ancient astronauts, and the cosmic scale of gods and men.
Kirby's initial series was heavily influenced by Erich von Däniken's popular 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods?, which posited that ancient human civilizations were visited and influenced by extraterrestrial beings. The Eternals were Kirby's comic book realization of this concept: powerful, god-like aliens who were the basis for humanity's myths and legends. Initially, the series was intended to exist in its own separate continuity. However, after its cancellation, writers Roy Thomas and Mark Gruenwald later integrated the Eternals, Deviants, and Celestials into the mainstream Marvel Universe in the pages of Thor, establishing them as a crucial part of Earth's secret history. This integration has been solidified over decades, most notably in Neil Gaiman's 2006 miniseries and Kieron Gillen's paradigm-shifting 2021 run.
The origin of the Eternals is one of the most significant points of divergence between the primary comic universe and the cinematic adaptation. Understanding both is key to grasping their place in their respective canons.
Approximately one million years ago, the First Host of the omnipotent Celestials arrived on Earth. These “space gods” discovered a nascent humanity and saw potential. They selected a tribe of early hominids (Homo erectus) and began a series of profound genetic experiments. This Celestial tampering resulted in the creation of three distinct evolutionary offshoots from the baseline human stock:
The early Eternals established a magnificent civilization in the city of Titanos in northern Asia. However, a philosophical schism led to a devastating civil war. One faction, led by the peaceful Kronos, wished to live in contemplation, while the other, led by his warlike brother Uranos, believed the Eternals should conquer the world. Kronos's faction was victorious, and Uranos and his followers were exiled into space. A later experiment by Kronos to tap into the cosmic energies of the universe went horribly wrong, resulting in an explosion that destroyed Titanos and atomized his body, but elevated his consciousness to a cosmic entity. The blast also activated latent cosmic energy within the surviving Eternals, granting them their full powerset and true immortality. Kronos's sons, Zuras and A'lars, then led their people. Zuras led one group to found the city of Olympia in the mountains of Greece, while A'lars, unwilling to rule alongside his brother, journeyed into space, eventually reaching Saturn's moon Titan. There, he took a surviving Uranian Eternal as his wife and founded a new civilization of Titanian Eternals. A'lars, later known as Mentor, would father two sons: Eros (Starfox) and the infamous Mad Titan, Thanos. Thanos himself was born with “Deviant Syndrome,” a genetic throwback that gave him a Deviant-like appearance and a nihilistic obsession with death. The Earth-based Eternals of Olympia, guided by Zuras, became the basis for the Greek and Roman pantheons of gods in human mythology, while other splinter groups influenced other world cultures. They have largely remained hidden from humanity, defending it from the shadows against Deviant threats and awaiting the periodic return of their Celestial creators for judgment. The 2021 series by Kieron Gillen revealed a dark secret to their immortality: their resurrection via “The Machine” (Earth itself) comes at the cost of a random human life, a fact that has shattered their society and self-perception.
The MCU drastically re-imagined the Eternals' origin for its 2021 film, Eternals. In this continuity, the Eternals are not an offshoot of humanity. They are entirely artificial beings—highly advanced, immortal androids created by the Prime Celestial, Arishem the Judge, in the World Forge, a cosmic foundry.
Arishem's grand design involves the “Emergence.” He seeds promising worlds with the life-giving energy of a Celestial “egg” at the planet's core. For this new Celestial to grow and emerge, it requires a massive amount of sentient energy, which can only be generated by a large, intelligent population. However, the apex predators known as Deviants would often evolve on these worlds and consume the intelligent life, preventing the Emergence.
To solve this problem, Arishem created the Eternals. These synthetic beings are programmed with a single mission: travel to a seeded planet, eliminate all Deviants, and allow the sentient population to flourish and grow, all while being forbidden from interfering in any of their internal conflicts (wars, famines, etc.). Once the population reaches the required threshold, the Emergence occurs, a new Celestial is born, and the planet is destroyed in the process. The Eternals, their memories of the previous cycle wiped clean, are then sent to a new world to begin the process anew.
The team of Eternals sent to Earth arrived in Mesopotamia in 5,000 BC. They believed their home world was Olympia and that they were serving a noble cause of galactic cultivation. For 7,000 years, they protected humanity from the Deviants. They became figures of myth and legend, just as in the comics. However, after believing they had killed the last Deviant in the 1500s, the team disbanded and integrated into human society, waiting for Arishem to call them home.
The central conflict of the film is their discovery of the true nature of their mission: that their entire existence is a lie, and their purpose is to nurture humanity for its eventual sacrifice. This revelation forces them to choose between their duty to their creator and their newfound love for the planet and people they were sworn to protect, leading to a schism that pits Eternal against Eternal.
The abilities and societal structure of the Eternals reflect their different origins in the comics and the MCU, with the former emphasizing shared potential and the latter focusing on specialized roles.
All Eternals possess the ability to psionically channel and manipulate cosmic energy, granting them a shared set of fundamental powers, though most choose to specialize in a few specific disciplines.
Eternal society is hierarchical and steeped in ancient tradition.
In the MCU, the Eternals' powers are portrayed as more distinct and specialized, with each member designed by Arishem to fulfill a specific role within their ten-member unit. While all possess superhuman strength, durability, and immortality (as they do not age and can heal from most wounds), their primary cosmic power is unique.
The MCU's Uni-Mind is also re-imagined. It is not a physical being but a powerful energy circuit created when the Eternals link their powers. Druig initiates it to amplify his own mental powers, and Sersi later uses it to channel the combined energy of the group (and the dormant Celestial Tiamut) to transform the emerging Celestial into marble, saving the Earth. Their technology is primarily seen in their starship, the Domo, and the advanced devices created by Phastos.
The Eternals' primary affiliation is to their own race and their sworn duty to the Celestials. They are a self-contained society that rarely interacts with the outside world. However, individual members have broken from this isolation. Sersi's tenure with the Avengers is the most notable example. Starfox (Eros of Titan), another Titanian Eternal and brother of Thanos, also served as an Avenger. For the most part, however, they see themselves as above the day-to-day squabbles of humanity and its heroes, intervening only when a threat is of a planetary or cosmic scale.
This is the foundational text. Kirby's original 12-issue series introduced the core concepts: the god-like Celestials arriving on Earth for their “Fourth Host” to pass judgment, the hidden war between the heroic Eternals and the monstrous Deviants, and the human archaeologists who stumble upon this cosmic secret. The series is pure, undiluted Kirby, filled with grand ideas, dynamic artwork, and mythological archetypes. It established characters like Ikaris, the stoic warrior; Ajak, the Speaker to Celestials; Sersi, the free-spirited transmuter; and Thena, the warrior-princess. While it was left unfinished, its ideas were so powerful they became an essential part of Marvel's cosmic architecture.
This landmark miniseries served to reintroduce the Eternals to a modern audience. The story begins with the entire race having been mind-wiped and living mundane human lives, with no memory of their powers or history. A medical student named Mark Curry (secretly Makkari) begins to have strange visions, while Ikaris slowly pieces together the truth: one of their own, the eternally young Sprite, grew tired of never being able to age and used the power of a sleeping Celestial to rewrite reality and make them all mortal. The series is a brilliant mystery that methodically reawakens the Eternals and re-establishes their mythology, making them accessible and compelling for the 21st century. It was highly influential on the MCU film's plot, particularly the idea of the Eternals being “asleep” within humanity.
This recent series represents the most significant evolution of the Eternals' lore since their creation. Gillen introduces a set of guiding principles for Eternal society (“Protect Celestials. Protect the Machine. Correct excess deviation.”) and then systematically deconstructs them. The central, earth-shattering revelation is that their resurrection process via The Machine (Earth) is not without cost: every time an Eternal is reborn, a human life is consumed. This truth reframes their role as humanity's protectors as a horrific, parasitic lie. This revelation sparks a new civil war, with Ikaris and others horrified by the truth, while Druig and his faction see it as an acceptable price. This run also saw the Eternals make contact with their cousins, the mutants of Krakoa, and played a central role in the 2022 crossover event, A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
While the MCU is the most prominent alternate version, the Eternals have appeared in other realities.
Ultimate Extinction event, where they were depicted as a race of planetary “antibodies” created by the Gah Lak Tus entity to facilitate its consumption of worlds. This is a much darker and more alien interpretation.