#The Truth About Celestials Emerges

After Ajak’s death, Sersi is surprised to find that she was chosen as the next Prime Eternal — the leader of the mission, and the only Eternal capable of communicating directly with Arishem. As the Prime Eternal, Sersi finds herself burdened with a horrible truth: She and the other Eternals weren’t put on Earth to protect humans for their own benefit, but to protect them like cattle, help their technologies to advance, and exponentially grow the population of the planet and its associated cosmic energy.

Why? The answer lies in how new Celestials are born. These are the most powerful known entities in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The sheer scale of them was first hinted at in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” when the ragtag team of space misfits visited the mining colony of Knowhere — built in the empty skull of a dead Celestial. The brain, bone, and other matter from the Celestial’s head generates enough wealth to support a small economy on Knowhere, and in a flashback courtesy of the Collector, a Celestial was shown wielding the Power Stone to wipe out an entire planet.

The only way that such a being can be created, Arishem tells Sersi, is by planting the seed for a Celestial at the core of a planet. As intelligent life evolves and grows on the planet, like humans did, the fetal Celestial draws on the energy being created by the surface-dwelling inhabitants and uses it to grow … and grow … and grow. Then one day the Celestial is “born,” and that does not go well for the planet it was growing in.

Arishem planted the seeds for new Celestials across the universe, and then created the Deviants to wipe out existing predators on the planet so that softer, weaker, species with larger brains could become the apex predator, advancing civilization and unknowingly feeding the Celestial beneath their feet. However, the Deviants were flawed and broke free from Arishem’s control, attacking intelligent life and stymieing the population growth of sentient beings. 

The Eternals, like the Deviants, are effectively very fancy robots; they were created and programmed by Arishem to go to planets and clear out the Deviants so that the “pregnancy” can continue unimpeded. The planet they were programmed to believe they came from, Olympia, doesn’t actually exist. Though the Eternals think that Earth is their first assignment, they’re actually millions of years old and have already carried out many other missions on thousands of other planets.