Kumail Nanjiani Reveals His ‘Eternals’ Future That Might’ve Been

It’s no secret the MCU entered the 2020s with some growing pains. A pandemic will try this to you, ditto a spottier output, and one of many extra divisive initiatives was Eternals. On the time, it appeared Marvel had some plans for the immortal beings, and due to Kumail Nanjiani, we now know what that will’ve appeared like.

In a current episode of Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast, the one-time Kingo revealed he signed on considering he’d be a longterm MCU participant and alternate between that and non-blockbuster work. In line with him, Marvel Studios had him enroll “for all these things. I signed on for six motion pictures, a online game, [and] a theme park journey. I used to be like, ‘That is gonna be my job for the subsequent 10 years.’” These plans, which possible additionally utilized to costars like Angelina Jolie and Brian Tyree Henry (and might be customary throughout all MCU actors), seem to have fallen by, for the reason that Eternals have been MIA for practically 4 years and Marvel’s not stated a lot about them since. And the one different time they’ve been introduced up was a season three episode of What If…? that noticed Nanjiani voice an alternate model of Kingo.

Breaking down the completely different elements of Nanjiani’s assertion, his point out of six movies possible applies to not less than two Eternals sequels and three visitor appearances in different characters’ motion pictures. The theme park journey in all probability pertains to his likeness, and the online game is just a little trickier to find out. Nanjiani’s finished voice work for video video games earlier than, so it might be he would’ve performed Kingo throughout considered one of Marvel’s cell titles like Strike Force, and even Fortnite, since each have seen Ryan Reynolds reprise his function as Deadpool. (Hell, when you wanna actually get on the market, perhaps they thought he’d be such a fan-favorite to land a spot in Marvel Rivals.)

Regardless, Nanjiani nonetheless has satisfaction in Eternals, even whereas acknowledging its “actually unhealthy critiques” affected him a lot he went to remedy, the place he realized “an excessive amount of of my vanity was tied up in different folks’s response to my work.” Given Marvel’s current strikes up to now yr, although, perhaps the studio will deliver Kingo and his fellow Eternals again for one thing within the subsequent few years.

Need extra io9 information? Try when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the pieces you could learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.