In Marvel’s Eternals Final Minutes, half the Eternals blasts off to find other Eternals on other planets and the other half is now with Eros. But this ending was actually one of many originally shot for the Eternals final act. So today I am going to break down this Eternal alternate ending including a Thanos flashback that might have given viewers a way deeper understanding of this film.

Eternal theatrical ending features Cersei, Phastos and Kingo being summoned by Arishem for stopping the emergence of Tiamut, the Eternal Eros greets Thena, Makarri and Druig on the  Domo and says that he knows where to find Cersei. But instead of ending on the perfectly pleasant hairy Styles Grin, they actually shot an extended version of this final scene, according to Makarri actor Lauren Ridloff in a round table interview with Entertainment Weekly. Eros actually then sits down with these Eternals and they all communicate with the celestial Arishem with their eyes closed.

So in the way Ajax and Cersei closed their eyes to commune with Arishem. Now Eros is doing the same using presumably a uni-mind type function to link Makarri, Thena, Druig on that conference call. This is a major confirmation of what exactly Eros’ relationship with the Celestials is before it wasn’t entirely clear which celestial Eros was in communication with Arishem or a different celestial who might be in conflict with Arishem, either a philosophical dispute or a more violent conflict. But now we know that Eros was going to communicate with Arishem using its celestial Bluetooth sphere, meaning it was Arishem who installed Eros and potentially Thanos and their father, Alars on the planet Titan.

And this alternate ending also tells us that Eros does not fear Arishem like these new qualms about linking with the airship to track Arishem’s location or to try to talk them out of prosecuting Cersei. It means that Eros enjoys a kind of privileged status among Eternals. Arishem did tell Cersei that some of his creations evolved beyond his control and Eros and Thanos might be such rogue beings.

Eternal movie’s cowriter Ryan Ferppo, revealed that there were actually nine versions of this post-credit scene that they came up with the post-credit sequences. Check out his interview clip in the video below:

And this alternate ending would have given us a clear context of how Eros and Thanos fit into the overall hierarchy of cosmic entities like Celestials. The brothers were essentially on different paths based on their specific history with Arishem.

In fact, we have learned of another deleted scene that the writers revealed to Screenrant that would have a flashback to a younger Thanos on Titan. According to them, the flashback would have explored the past version of Titan revealed in Thanos’ reality Stone vision in Infinity War and shown its destruction by, quote, radical growth in the universe, and that would have been what sent Thanos on his war path to erase half of all life.

This was probably the Eternal scene that Thanos creator Jim Starlin was referring to when he said that young Thanos would appear in the Eternal film in an interview back in 2020. So this could mean that the planet Titan was seeded with its own sleeping Celestial one that is still buried underneath its surface because the planet has not exploded. But that despite Thanos and Eros best efforts, the environmental collapse caused the planet’s intelligent life to die out before the light force could reach a critical mass to trigger its emergence.

Eros and Thanos could be Eternals who failed their mission or allowed it to fail and broke free of Arishem ‘s protocol in the comics before gathering the Infinity Stones, Thanos augmented his strength and powers through a mix of science, mysticism, and cybernetic enhancements. And it sounds like this deleted flashback would have shown Thanos and Eros’s attempts to save Titan from extinction and then failing that, going on to augment their own powers separate from what the Celestials designed them to do.

Remember earlier in the Eternal film, Phastos has an interesting line about the reason Ajax didn’t want them to intervene in human conflict was that wars have historically led to advancements in tech and medicine and food production that ultimately in a roundabout way end up prolonging human life.

So maybe on Titan, Thanos and Eros did initially try to intervene in certain ways in their wars. Like that Titan vs. Kree war that was teased in Loki episode One. We actually saw the same ships in the background as the ones that we now see crashed on the surface of Titan, and that intervention in the wars caused Titan’s population growth to outpace the technological evolution that would be needed to sustain such a society.

Let us know what you think about Eternals Alternate ending.