What’s the official expiry date on spoilers, these days? Going by Marvel’s latest poster for Eternals, that would be something in the region of two and a half weeks for a cinematic release – because Marvel Studios has just officially announced something that has (or, theoretically should have been) secret for weeks. A piece of major casting news which – for a, er, variety of reasons – made its way into the world far sooner than it should have is now in the ‘official marketing material’ stage. By which we mean, we can finally now talk about the fact that Harry Styles has joined the MCU.
In case you haven’t seen Eternals yet, and plan to catch it while it’s still in cinemas – here’s your SPOILER WARNING before we dig into the how and why below.
Still here? Then we can discuss Eternals’ mid-credits sequence, which sees pop superstar Styles rock up as Eros – the “brother of Thanos” and “Royal Prince of Titan”, aka Starfox – on the Eternals’ ship, the Domo, with a mission in mind. We won’t divulge exactly what that is here, but if it’s seemingly hinting at something for an Eternals sequel, the tone of the scene suggests he might be equally at home with the Guardians Of The Galaxy…
The poster marks the official confirmation of Styles’ entrance into the MCU – but the social posts’ prodding that you can “see Harry Styles in Marvel Studios’ Eternals” should probably come with a caveat that he’s on screen for all of 30 seconds, after the main film itself has ended. Even so, the brief cameo marks Styles’ second screen role after making his cinematic debut in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk – though he has a much bigger part coming up in Olivia Wilde’s next movie, Don’t Worry Darling, due in 2022.
Either way, it feels good to finally say it out loud: Harry Styles is officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thank goodness nobody splurged that information before audiences had a chance to actually see the film!