What Those Eternal End Credit Scenes Mean for the MCU

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the mid-credits and end-credit scenes of Eternals. Read at your own risk!]

Every comic book movie fan knows to stay seated for a mid-credit sequence and an end credit scene at the end of a Marvel, and Eternals delivered two huge developments. The first is the appearance of Starfox aka Eros, Thanos' mischievous brother and an Eternal. If you've been on Twitter or Starfox's Wikipedia page then you already know that the character is being played by none other than Harry Styles. He appears to the Eternals after Sersi (Gemma Chan), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), and Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) are scooped up by their overlord to await judgment for interrupting Earth's apocalypse to help the rest of the team get their friends back. 

He's given a long introduction by his sidekick Pip (Patton Oswalt), and yes, he is canonically Thanos' (Josh Brolin) brother. He also has the power to manipulate emotions, which has gotten the character in some very deep trouble throughout his comic book history. Obviously, Styles' appearance sets up a potential Eternals 2 (perhaps one of those untitled Nov. 2023 or Feb. 2024 Marvel titles?), but Starfox also has a complicated relationship with She-Hulk in the Marvel comics. It's remains to be seen whether Starfox will remain hanging out with the Eternals crew or if we could see the pop star show up in the upcoming Disney+ series about the green heroine. 

Find Out Where to Stream Anything with TV Guide's Search Engine for Streaming Shows

As for the additional scene at the very end of the credits, that's where things get a bit murkier. That scene revealed Kit Harington's Dane Whitman unwrapping the Ebony Blade, which was name-dropped by Sprite (Lia McHugh) earlier in the film when Thena (Angelina Jolie) was training with Excalibur. The mystic blade is a family heirloom and the central part of Dane's "complicated family history" that he was trying to explain to Sersi before she was kidnapped. It is also the primary weapon of Black Knight, the Marvel hero Harington will be playing in potential future MCU films or Disney+ shows. 

While the Ebony Blade is super powerful and has the ability to cut through any substance, including Vibranium, the drawback is that it makes anyone who uses it too much go mad. That's why a mysterious voice warned Dane about picking up the Blade in the scene's final seconds. IGN confirms that the mystery voice belongs to Mahershala Ali, who will be playing Blade in the MCU. The intersection of these two characters makes it look like Marvel could be building an MI:13 team – a top-secret British superhero group that includes Black Knight, Blade, Union Jack, and Captain Britain. Whether that team-up will happen in Ali's Blade film, which reportedly begins production in July 2022, or if that could be a team being built for its own Disney+ series is a question we still need to be answered. 

Every Upcoming Marvel Movie and Disney+ TV Series Release Date Through 2023

But how does all of this tie into the films and movies we already know are in the pipeline? It's clear that both of these scenes set up big next chapters within the MCU, but it's difficult to tell how much these chapters will remain in the film universe vs. carrying over to a Disney+ series. It's extra confusing at the moment because it's hard to place where Eternals takes place in comparison to Loki, which set up the creation of the multiverse that will be explored in Spider-Man: No Way Home this Christmas and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in spring of 2022. We know that Eternals is post-Endgame on the MCU timeline, but it's hard to tell if Loki's timeline splitting comes before or after the Eternals' apocalypse interference, and thus how the multiverse will affect these cosmic beings and the characters they are close to. 

As with everything Marvel, we must wait and see, but we know it's all connected somehow.