New MCU Theory Claims Something Major About Captain Marvel And The Eternals

Nobody can say that Disney and Marvel Studios aren't thinking ahead when they're planning out their cinematic universe. Phase 4 of the MCU is about to kick off, and we're set to meet all sorts of new heroes, ranging from the martial arts master Shang-Chi to the cosmic Eternals. Until we see these newcomers in action, we have no way to know what their true impact to the big-screen Marvel universe will be, but maybe we've already seen a little bit of things to come. After all, the MCU is fond of teasing upcoming events years and years ahead. The first time we saw the Infinity Stones and the gauntlet Thanos (Josh Brolin) used to wield them was in 2011's Thor, though Thor: Ragnarok eventually revealed those particular stones were fake. Heck, Thanos himself made his MCU debut in The Avengers, and quite literally hovered in the background for six years before featuring more prominently in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War and the next year's Avengers: Endgame. 

Some suspect that this tendency to tease upcoming events means that the MCU movies we've seen may very well contain hints of things to come. In fact, a new MCU theory claims that 2019's Captain Marvel movie and the upcoming Eternals might just be connected in a pretty huge way. Let's find out how!

The Eternals will likely introduce us to the titular heroes' enemies, the twisted Deviants. The two races were both created by the cosmic Celestials, and have been waging war with each other for pretty much all of their history. Here's the thing, though: According to Nicholas Raymond of Screen Rant, we might have met creatures like the Deviants already. We just call them Skrulls.

The shapeshifing race is traditionally villainous in the Marvel comics, and Captain Marvel's biggest twist was that the Skrulls led by Ben Mendelsohn's Talos were actually perfectly nice folks on the run from the vicious Kree. According to this theory, however, The Eternals could draw from the comics, in which the Skrulls are another unstable product of Celestial experimentation, making them essentially just a different flavor of Deviants. In fact, their planet used to have a version of Eternals, too — used to. 

If The Eternals chooses to acknowledge the Skrulls' comic book backstory, it would help the movie root the unknown Eternals and Deviants in the greater MCU. It would also open the door for the Skrulls to possibly show their nasty side in the future, seeing as Spider-Man: Far From Home showed us they weren't just one-and-done characters. What's more, this theory would basically mean that pretty much any MCU planet could have its own, Celestial-produced versions of the Eternals and the Deviants, so virtually any new superpowered alien could be easily introduced with a, "Yeah, they're an Eternal/Deviant." 

There's obviously no way to know if The Eternals will actually take this route until the movie arrives in 2021, but it's hard not to appreciate this particular theory. After all, think of how many hours of origin stories it could potentially eliminate.