John Ridley's Scrapped Eternals Series For Marvel Was 'A Really Weird Story'
This may be a controversial opinion, but Chloé Zhao's 2021 film "Eternals" is perhaps one of the best in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While several other chapters in the long-running media franchise may have featured more action and captured a certain kind of zippy character archetype that appeals to kids and adolescents, "Eternals" told a broad, philosophically dense sci-fi story that reached far outside superhero norms. The Eternals were a team of unfathomably ancient beings, constructed by ineffable space deities — Celestials — tasked with overseeing multiple billion-year cycles of God reproduction. The Celestials required the Eternals specifically because they did not evolve. Their previous creation, Deviants, evolved far too quickly. "Eternals" deals with a time frame so vast, evolution is considered "quick."
The Eternals also regularly aided humanity in their societal development, and are said to have been present in Mesopotamia, Babylon, and other ancient kingdoms. That's when they're not chilling out on their nearby flying saucer. "Eternals" taps directly into exciting "ancient aliens" theories enjoyed by scholars of ufology. The Eternals are above humanity, far outstripping them in intelligence and age, but are fascinated by the species they've been tasked with protecting. Naturally, it will come as a shock to them when the Eternals learn that humanity only serves as an energy source for the god zygote growing in the middle of the Earth.
"Eternals" was based on some of Marvel's most psychedelic comic books, first authored by Jack Kirby back in 1972. Zhao's movie, while ambitious, was one of the worst-received MCU movies, sadly, so any intended follow-ups to the story have been scrapped. Indeed, on the Comic Book Club Podcast, Oscar-winning writer John Ridley revealed that he once developed an "Eternals" TV series that, by his description, was to be "the good version."
Eternals: The Series
Ridley was working on an "Eternals" TV series as long ago as 2019, back when Marvel TV was still a more clearly separate entity from Marvel Studios. Marvel TV, one might recall, was behind shows like "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," "Agent Carter," and the Netflix shows "Daredevil," "Jessica Jones," "Luke Cage," and "Iron Fist." In 2019, Marvel TV was shut down and its shows were incorporated into Marvel Studios. It wasn't until after the merger that the MCU-connected Disney+ shows "WandaVision" and "Hawkeye" came into being. Ridley, it seems, was working on an "Eternals" spinoff for Marvel TV prior to the merger, and the project was scrapped in the shift. He said clearly on Comic Book Club that his long-hidden scrapped project "was a television version of 'The Eternals' ... But good."
Perhaps his "but good" referred to Zhao's underwhelming action; when it comes to heady sci-fi concepts, the "Eternals" movie is first-rate. When it comes to fighting and traditional superhero mayhem, however, it is lacking. Ridley certainly didn't think much of Zhao's film, saying:
"My version was the good version. [...] It was so f***ing weird. There was my version, a good version, which is good to me, which ... That doesn't mean anything. There was the version that [Marvel] ended up doing, which I don't think that version was particularly good. I'll be honest."
Ridley revealed that he wanted to tap into the weirdness of the "Eternals" concept and that his series would have begun with a string of off-putting and surreal images to establish who the Eternals were. He doesn't go so far as to describe specific characters, stories, or even the premise, but he did note that one of his early ideas was to begin his show with someone drilling into their brain.
Brain drill
Ridley's description was thus:
"My version started with, the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 18 years old. [...] And he's sitting there. He's sitting there for a moment. And then he lifts his hands. He has a drill in it. And he turns the drill on. And he puts the drill to his ear. And he starts pushing it in. And then it goes from there. That's the start, right? That's how it starts. And then I think you see another kid. He sleeps in the bathtub, covers himself with foil. It's just a really weird story about these people who are, I mean, it's just weird."
There have been strange and ambitious superhero TV shows before, of course, notably the 2017 X-Men-adjacent series "Legion." "WandaVision" also strayed into the abstract for brief, glimmering moments. It seems Ridley wanted his "Eternals" to skew into that sort of territory. Ultimately, however, "Eternals" may simply be too strange a concept to lock into the already-established populist whizzbang of the MCU. "Eternals," Ridley said, was a:
"[R]eally hard property to develop. [...] [T]he best thing to happen for everybody was that it didn't happen with me, because I don't know that it would have been entertaining. [...] And I do mean what's entertaining to me is often not entertaining. Populist, which is great for a lot of the work I do. But this needed to be a little bit more popular."
It was admirable that the makers of the MCU even tried to incorporate the Eternals into their energy-blast-forward, alien-fightin' series. At the end of the day, though, it seems that it was too weird in general for even a prolific and talented writer like Ridley to handle.