Marvel’s Eternals Has A Game Of Thrones Reference That Feels Like A Horny Bizarro Fanfic

eternals game of thrones reference

If you’re itching for more Game of Thrones content, Marvel’s Eternals flick has a surprising bunch of unintentional Westeros references.

Directed by Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao, Eternals follows the multi-century-long saga of a group of superpowered god-like figures on a secret mission on Earth. PEDESTRIAN.TV was invited to a preview event of the film this week and spotted a number of extremely random parallels between it and the hit HBO fantasy drama.

Okay, first of all, it feels kind of obvious but slight spoilers here, mates. I’m about to talk about some minor plot points in the film and reference the first 30 minutes of a two-and-a-half-hour film. Anyway, let’s get into it.

In Eternals, Richard Madden plays Ikaris, the Superman-like leader of the group, while Kit Harrington plays Dane Whitman, a seemingly everyday guy from London dating another Eternal, played by Gemma Chan. As if seeing these two once on-screen brothers reunite wasn’t enough of an unintentional Game of Thrones crossover, Chan’s character is named Sersi. Yep, pronounced just like Lena Headley’s infamously calculative and evil Lannister queen.

As we learn early in the film, there’s a bit of a love triangle between the three of them. Well, it’s more of a love square but I’m ignoring [REDACTED] for spoilers. Ikaris and Sersi dated for centuries before they broke up. Then, Sersi met Dane and is in a committed relationship in the present day.

Coincidence? Mayhaps! But for anyone who has seen Game of Thrones, these weird connections add a deeper, more bizarro aspect to Eternals. Anytime Madden’s and Harrington’s characters mention Sersi’s name, it felt weird. Hearing both of them say, “I love you, Sersi”, took me and my pals TF out because just imagine Jon and Robb saying “I love you Cersei.” While unintentional, it was vom-worthy stuff.

Case in point: when Ikaris comes to Sersi’s and fellow Eternal Sprite’s aid in London to help fight off a deviant, he meets Dane for the first time and gives him a bit of a dismissive look. Sure, that could be reflective of how Ikaris sees humans and Dane as not romantic competition, but it’s also eerily similar to the way Robb Stark treated Jon Snow in the first season of Game of Thrones as the odd one out of the family.

In an interview with Variety, Harrington joked that while he barely shared any screentime with Madden on the Game of Thrones set, their scenes in Eternals felt like a bit of a reunion.

“If you add up all the scenes that me and Richard have shot in anything, [Game of] Thrones and this, I think it comes in at about four scenes. Isn’t that weird?

“We had a big hug. We’ve been close friends for a long time. We had a shared experience of Thrones in the first three seasons — the three seasons that Richard was in — where it sort of blew up and became this Goliath of a show.

“And, you know, we were both 23. We’d kind of came up together and that creates quite a special bond. So actually, we have a very close friendship, but screen time doesn’t reflect that.”

Huge ending and post-credit scene spoilers for the rest of this yarn, folks. You have been warned.

To make things even more profound, we also learn that Dane (Harrington) appears to share more similarities to his Jon Snow character and the world of Westeros than believed. In a post-credits scene, Dane opens a chest with his family sigil and finds an ancient sword wrapped in cloth. Before he has the chance to touch it, a mysterious voice beckons to him, asking if he’s ready.

In the comics, Dane Whitman is the descendant of the Black Knight, a warrior from Arthurian legend and part of Marvel’s British mythos who basically wields a cursed sword made of a space metal stronger than vibranium – read: like Valyrian steel. IDK about you, but the whole “this everyday dude is actually something more” trope here reminds me of when Jon Snow learned that he was a secret Targaryen child, too.

Anyway, those are just my silly little thoughts. You can catch these Game of Thrones similarities and more in Marvel’s Eternals in theatres now.

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