Remember when Inhumans was originally supposed to a Marvel movie, and then morphed into a TV show? Well, count that as one of the comic book media company’s misses, as the eight-episode ABC series was critically panned and cancelled after its one season aired in late 2017. Weirdly enough though, it turns out that Inhumans’ failure ended up affecting Phase 4 release Eternals in a weird way.
In an excerpt from the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios (by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards) shared by TV Line, when Eternals, a Marvel Studios production, was being put together, there was a specific, location-centric directive implemented to reduce the chances of that group of superpowered characters being confused with the ones from Inhumans, which had been put together by the now-defunct Marvel Television. As specifically stated:
How determined was Marvel Studios to minimize any connection with Marvel Television? When it developed a movie starring another obscure superteam, the Eternals, the creators were instructed that none of it could take place in Hawaii. The studio didn’t want any risk that audiences might be reminded of the Inhumans.
So because Inhumans failed to hit with the masses, director Chloé Zhao and the rest of the Eternals team were instructed not to set their Marvel movie in Hawaii so as not to confuse one group with the other. On the one hand, I can understand an average moviegoer getting the Inhumans and Eternals mixed up, and even among comic book fans, both groups certainly don’t have the large following that teams like the X-Men and Avengers do. Still, to outright rule out any Eternals scenes taking place in Hawaii is such a weird demand, as I doubt the inclusion of that state would have done much to reduce any potential confusion.
For those unfamiliar with the Inhumans and Eternals, the former group are the descendants of early humans who were experimented on by the Kree, and gain powers and/or transform after being exposed to the Terrigen Mists. The latter group hail from experimentation done on proto-humans by the Celestials, which produced both the Eternals and the Deviants. Both groups have much longer lifespans than humans, although Eternals have the Inhumans beat by tens of thousands of years. The tradeoff is that the Eternals’ population isn’t anywhere near as big as the Inhumans’, particularly ever since that Terrigen Bomb was detonated in the main Marvel Comics universe in the 2010s.
Although Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did feature Anton Mount reprising Black Bolt, albeit the more faithfully dressed Earth-838 version, Marvel Studios doesn’t appear to have any plans to utilize the Inhumans property as a whole for the foreseeable future. As for the Eternals, their first film outing was met with mixed reviews and only grossed $402.1 million worldwide, making it one of the lowest-grossing MCU movies. The Eternals ending certainly laid the groundwork for another adventure starring these characters (and the post-credits scene also teased the Blade reboot), but when Chloé Zhao was asked about Eternals 2 in March 2022, she responded with, “No comment.”
Should you wish to watch Inhumans and/or Eternals, both can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription alongside nearly every other piece of MCU content. Otherwise, consult our upcoming Marvel movies and upcoming Marvel TV shows guides to learn what this superhero franchise has on the way.