AN: Warning, spoilers for Eternals (2021)
In the vastness of space, crosses many a shooting star. Great clouds of dust, gathered from various collision courses between them, billow throughout space into the beyond like a blanket of calm covering all of creation. From afar, light travels from their original destination, days old across light-years, to reach the common sight. They arrange in chaos, color and radiance. Among them, planets scatter like large pebbles among grains of sand, their marbled surfaces patterned with esoteric artistry hiding their violent atmospheres. Despite their beauty, life has yet to find a way within them.
Within the din of light and dust, a starship moves through the eternal night. The Domo. Its passengers seek their own kind in the vastness of space, bringing with them a warning.
Of the births of Celestials and the destruction of its vessel, and all sentient beings living on it.
Within the mess of the Domo's collected artifacts (which would all amount to just junk to humans), the mind-controlling rogue known as Druig munches on a bag of pretzels. Having no true necessity for hunger or thirst, he simply gorges himself on a whim to pass the time, be it hours and decades at a time. Next to him, a lithe young woman whose beauty Druig hails every time she enters her sight, sits with her legs propped up reading a withered, ancient book. Her name is Makkari, the fastest being alive. An older blonde woman, her beautiful face marred by grief, sits at the nearest window, staring out into the void. She is Thena, the Eternals' strongest warrior.
"It's been weeks." Makkari signs with her hands, before picking up the tome again.
"Arishem." One word, cryptic to the casual listener, causes Druig to stop chewing and for Makkari to stop reading the same page for the 40th time. They both look up and see Thena, her worried eyes meeting their own surprise.
"We have to go back."
"May I ask, go back where?" Druig speaks with his mouth full, only to get a smack on the arm by Makkari. He swallows and continues, "If Arishem has taken them, the first - and only - place he'll go is the World Forge. Think he'll probably go to work on them, then he'll come for us next."
"If that is where they are, we should go there immediately. Rescue them."
"Directions. We have no idea where the World Forge is. Not even Ajak, who communes with Arishem on the regular, knows where it is," Makkari joins the fray, signing frantically.
Before their discussion could go anywhere near productive, the ship's automatic control panel sounded a mental alert to the trio. They have detected lifeforms - three of them, floating by the hull of the Domo. Hurried footsteps and the opening of the frontal hull allow for quick retrieval.
It was their friends, once delivered by Arishem to be Judged at the World Forge, their birthplace.
But something was clearly wrong.
Though unaffected by the vacuums of space as per their Eternal physiology, their haunted expressions speak volumes of the possible judgement inflicted. The normally ever jubilant Kingo was clouded in nothing less than gloom. Phastos was holding both hands to his eyes, barely holding back a sob. Worse yet was Sersi, simply staring forward, through her friends, through the Domo, into the formless void of space beyond while a single tear runs down her cheek.
"Sersi, what happened? What did Arishem do?" Druig pats his new leader on the shoulder, urging her to answer.
"We're exiled, Druig," came the Eternal Prime's broken voice. "Exiled from Earth, for perpetuity."
MOMENTS EARLIER…
The World Forge shown to Sersi by Arishem, vast and towering on its own, pales in comparison to the true Forge. As she, Kingo and Phastos slowly land to its surface and restrained, Sersi could not help but make the fullest use of her neck to truly behold its unfathomable majesty. Her awe satisfied, she turns to see Arishem, his impassive red eyes boring into her soul like blast furnaces. Besides her, Kingo and Phastos, freeze in stricken terror at their maker. The air seemed to rumble with dread as the cosmic creator began to speak.
"Sersi. Kingo. Phastos. You have been selected for Judgement. You have been entrusted with powers beyond comprehension, yet not only did you refuse to use them to complete the purpose for which you were created, you directly upended the Emergence to save the planet it is borne from and its people."
Arishem's words are absolute and final. The Eternals feel their chances of survival plummet with every word uttered.
"A Celestial, slain by those tasked with his protection and inception. Such outrageous news has spread far and wide, sparking outrage even among my own Host. Yet, I am intrigued."
Curiosity? Why? Why when their guilt and complicity had been so clear?
"I have spared Earth, for had I Judged it and its people to doom, Tiamut's sacrifice would have been for nothing. I never err, and within the Eternals' grand design I did not impart blind short-sighted compulsiveness. Perhaps your memories will reveal the truth."
Streams of gold thread, memories extracted, began to flow from the defendants' glowing eyes into his own. Arishem began to see. To watch. To learn.
To form his judgement.
He sees Sersi gifting the boy the ornate spear, turned to gold.
He sees, through Sersi's eyes, young Babylonian village girls trying to braid her hair.
He sees Kingo visiting a cancer-stricken fan in the hospital.
He sees, through Kingo's eyes, legions of his fans, their love for him true and pure.
He sees Phastos fixing his child's bicycle without his powers, the boy next to him bright with joy.
He sees through Phastos' eyes the man whom he has chosen to love.
He sees Sersi agonizing over the death of her mother figure and mentor.
He sees Kingo alone, trying desperately to stay strong in times of great divide, as he refuses to go with Ikaris, refusing to even join the final battle.
He sees Phastos, agonizing over the destruction wrought in Hiroshima by the atomic bomb.
He sees the Eternals mingle among the humans in their nightly celebrations in Babylon, their liveliness not stemming from pointless frivolity, but in itself an expression of their vibrant culture. They dance and party from dusk to dawn, basking in each other's company, sharing their sense of newfound camaraderie. They revel in their collective joy, it reverberating across the air like birds in migration.
He sees through their eyes the relief of the humans after surviving a Deviant attack, their worried minds gather to their wounded and their dead, their care ready and available to all those who need it, without separation or discrimination.
He sees through the eyes of the Eternals, the desolation left by the calamity known as the Snap, robbing the world of half its population, with the fallout felt in its terrible magnitude for the next five years.
He sees again through their eyes, as they watch from a high vantage point, disguised by Sprite, as the Earth Avengers perform the second Snap, reversing the destruction wrought by the first. As the Mad Titan Thanos and his minions join the fray, they witness the humans and their allies fight. Fight for the love of their home, for the right to survive, to live. They stare, wide-eyed in wonder as the man clad in iron speaks his name, one last time, as he Snaps for the third time, condemning the tyrant and his armies to the fate he had sentenced so many to.
He closes his mind.
"I shall now render Judgement."
Sersi lets out a breath she has been holding. It's over. She closes her eyes and darkly wonders how quickly or slowly Arishem will rend her and her friends into space dust.
"I Judge this planet, Earth, and its humans, worthy of life."
What?
Did she hear herself wrong?
Did Arishem truly spare Earth?
"This civilization, these people, through its trials and tribulations, are capable of both miracles and atrocities. At my instruction, you have led them throughout their history without fail, that even at the height of their savagery, it has not come with the destruction of their species. That alone deserves commendation. With the tide of evolution, anomalies are formed, from which birth extraordinary individuals whose actions have reversed irrecoverable loss of intelligent life across the known cosmos, saving my Design from incompletion. With lengthy discussion, we of the First Host have considered Earth and its 'superheroes' beneficial to the defense of our Designs from further malignancies moving forward."
Sersi looks down, troubled. Earth and its people were only spared not because Arishem found them worthy because of their lives and deeds, but because it was simply convenient to keep its superpowered population as deterrents against threats on intelligent life at large, to be later used to incubate more Celestials.
The violent cycle continues.
"Earth has been Judged rightly. Now, I shall Judge my wayward Eternals."
Eyes widen in horror. He's not done with us.
"For the crime of slaying an Emerging Celestial, I Judge you, Sersi, Kingo, Phastos, Thena, Druig, Makkari guilty and sentence you all to endless exile. You are free to roam the vast entirety of the known universe. On the pain of death shall you not return to Earth or communicate with it. If you fail to adhere to this Judgement, my wrath will be terrible and swift."
Sersi could not properly react as a reddish rift soon forms around her and her friends, swallowing them whole. Arishem's red eyes seem to glow brighter as Sersi watches her god disappear before her eyes.
"Return to your fellows. Do not disobey my orders."
PRESENT TIME
The remaining Eternals can only sit on the deck of their starship, despondent. A small part of them had expected swift and immediate retribution from their gods after their ultimate act of treason.
But what they did not expect was mercy. Bittersweet mercy.
"This is all my fault," Sersi broke the silence first, more tears running down her face. "I did this. To us." She turns to the still despondent Phastos. "Phastos, I'm so sorry…"
"SERSI! Don't you dare." The bereaved scientist holds up a pointing hand. "I'd rather have Ben and Jack be alive even knowing I can't return to them rather than be reduced to space dust."
Sersi sighs. The thought of Phastos not blaming her for separating him from his family somehow simultaneously makes her feel better and worse.
"Sprite… She doesn't know…" Makkari signs, her normally chipper attitude gone.
"She's fine, for the most part," Phastos, having calmed down somewhat, joins in. "I told Ben to adopt her if anything happens to us. He'll follow through with it. I trust him with my life."
"At least you made arrangements," Kingo grumbles beside them. "I never got the chance to tell Karun to make my own. Now there's a big Bollywood shaped hole on Earth with an unfinished movie I'll never get back to ever again."
"Are you for real right now?" Druig chimes in. "I think you have much more pressing matters to care about now other than your Bollywood career."
"I know, I know," Kingo raises both hands, trying to placate him. "It's just… I missed the people of Earth. For a while, no matter how manufactured it can get… they really loved me."
"Yet you stayed out in the end, perfectly fine with the possibility of Ikaris killing us all. You really think those billions who'll be born from Tiamut would've liked your movies more?"
"Why you…"
Both men are about to lunge at each other before Sersi slips between them, with both hands up.
"Guys, stop this!" Sersi pleads. "Please stop."
"Arishem took me from Dane. Tore me away to judgement right in front of him," she chokes out. "I never got to tell him how much I loved him. That's my story. Say whatever you want. I miss him. I miss him so much it hurts."
She weeps into her sleeves. Thena, feeling a motherly instinct take over her, crawls over to the younger woman and holds her close, rubbing circles on her back. They stay like that for a while.
Thena, looking up from her despondent leader, decides to speak.
"Druig, is it selfish of Sersi to miss Dane Whitman? Of Phastos to miss his family? Of all of us, to miss Sprite? Why is it then that Kingo is selfish for missing the people he entertains?"
Druig merely nods as he slinks back into his corner. Makkari immediately embraced him as he sat back down.
She turns to Kingo.
"Kingo, I know you think it is unfair that you are judged along with us. But Druig is right in that you chose to do nothing. You berated Ikaris for fighting against family yet chose to stand aside as Ikaris was trying to kill us during the Emergence. Now as we enter uncharted territories, are we going to have to worry about you not having our back?"
Kingo, choosing wisely not to engage, simply shakes his head.
Sersi, remaining quiet through the verbal exchange, watches on. Even after all this time, she was still as utterly useless as she was before, now saddled with the responsibility as leader.
"I've failed you all."
Thena lifts her leader's chin up. "Sersi, look at me."
"Do I need to say it again? Wasn't what I said to you before the Emergence good enough? In that moment, I have once told you that there is no one better to lead us than you. That still remains true today. Only you have the compassion and heart possible to decide to stop Tiamut from Emerging at all costs, to protect Earth and its people, even if the price paid was his life." Thena grips Sersi more firmly. "You have loved these people since the day we arrived and you continued to love them, for good and ill, for the next 7000 years. That is why Ajak rightly chose you. You are the leader we need right now. So as I have told you before, get up. Lead us."
Sersi, feeling her self-esteem slowly rise, gradually gets to her feet. She looks at her friends, the ones she has left. She allows herself to hope.
"I thank you all for your trust in me. I am honored to lead you all - in the turbulent times ahead of us."
"What will be our path moving forward, Eternal Prime?" Makkari, finally joining in, signs with hope.
"We continue on our mission." Sersi's normally soft eyes are filled with determination. "We find a planet with sentient life and inform its Eternals of the Emergence."
AN: Nope is such a good film guys. The writing is so top-notch it actually lit a fire under me to finish this quickly. Watch it, still out in cinemas today!
