Captain America: Brave New World may finally give us some Eternals closure — and another step toward X-Men

Captain America: Brave New World has a lot going on. In addition to relatively new Captain America Sam Wilson, we’re going to get a new Falcon, a new Hulk, a new Black Widow, and all manner of super spies and ex-SHIELD agents making their MCU debut. The fourth Captain America movie may also give us some closure to a major event from Marvel’s Eternals, which, back in 2021, plopped a whole dang Celestial into the Indian Ocean.

The fact that that Celestial, Tiamut the Communicator, emerged from the depths of the ocean and was turned to stone by Gemma Chan’s Sersi has barely been acknowledged in subsequent Marvel films and TV shows. Only Disney Plus series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has made the massive marble hand and head jutting out of the ocean seem like something the people of Earth care about.

Image: Marvel Studios

The Celestial corpse appears to be central to one of the conflicts in Captain America: Brave New World, though. In the first teaser trailer for the 2025 movie, we briefly see what appear to be Japanese and U.S. warships in battle near the giant hand. Captain America, using a nifty new supersonic flight suit, takes on fighter jets alongside new Falcon Joaquín Torres in what appears to be a fight over the remains of the Celestial.

But the U.S. and Japan appear to be allied in their concerns regarding Tiamut’s hand. In the trailer, Sam Wilson, Joaquín Torres, and Isaiah Bradley (the erased-from-history Captain America introduced in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier) are shown attending a global unity summit at the White House alongside representatives for the U.S. and Japan. The logo for that summit includes a stylized version of Tiamut’s hand, indicating some sort of strife over it.

Image: Marvel Studios

So what’s the conflict about? Tiamut’s body is arguably a new landmass, so nearby countries may be claiming it as part of their nationhood. Or perhaps Tiamut’s corpse isn’t simply composed of marble and stone. Maybe as an alien creature, its body is full of valuable extraterrestrial elements. We’ve seen another Celestial corpse in the MCU, the mining colony known as Knowhere (see Guardians of the Galaxy), which is really a severed Celestial head that’s been harvested for its bone, brain tissue, and spinal fluid. Maybe there’s a ton of vibranium in Tiamut, or some other magical element that’s key to the next phase of the MCU.

Whatever the case, it’s nice to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe address the massive alien paw jutting out of the ocean. How gracefully this plot element about a giant alien corpse will thread into Captain America: Brave New World’s stuffed story remains to be seen. But it looks like we’ll get a big reminder about one of Eternals’ many unresolved plot points next year, when Brave New World hits theaters.

Update (July 27): At San Diego Comic-Con 2024, in footage shown at its Hall H panel, Marvel Studios confirmed that the remains of the Celestial Tiamut in Captain America: Brave New World does indeed house a highly valuable new element: adamantium. That magical metal is, of course, the nearly indestructible element that encases Wolverine’s skeleton and makes up his claws. And that means the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that much closer to welcoming the X-Men to its Earth-616 setting.

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