When Judgment Day finally arrives, Thanos may no longer be sitting on the throne of the Eternals.
Speaking with CBR, writer Kieron Gillen spoke about how the upcoming Marvel event will change the status quo of his currently established story from Eternals. In Eternals #7, Thanos, with the help of Druig, challenged Zuras and won the vote to become the Prime Eternal. But Gillen promised that Judgment Day may upend things and introduce a new leader for the ancient race.
"I don't want to say who's the Prime Eternal when Judgment Day begins," Gillen said. "The status quo at the end of issue #12 [coming May 18] is significant. There are three big changes in terms of Eternals society. So, things are cooked up in a different way, but they're definitely in a place where they're aggressive and want to establish their dominance for a variety of reasons. The first is that on a bad day the Eternals might go after the X-Men anyway, but here they have a much bigger reason for doing it. Then, of course, the X-Men have all these secrets and they're going to come out. They've also been making a lot of enemies and some of those enemies know other secrets too. There's a great push and pull there."
As Gillen explained, the big event, which will see the Eternals attempt to eradicate the X-Men as part of the group's crusade against the Deviants, will have readers not versed in some of the separate events leading up to things. But while the limited series will draw in new audiences, it will also reward those who have been diligently following along.
"This event story is fallout from what starts as a war between the Eternals and the X-Men and becomes something significantly bigger," Gillen continued. "The problem with that though is it's built on the X-Men and Eternals material and this is for everyone who reads Marvel Universe comics (and anyone who wants to start reading Marvel comics). They don't know half this stuff! So, we need to make it meaningful to everyone, and the Avengers, at least at the start, are like the readers. They're trying to figure out what the hell has been going on [laughs]. It's like, 'Thanos was here?' They certainly know some secrets and are suspicious, but they're the viewpoint characters in our first issue. You follow them and you realize what's going on."
Of course, it won't just be the X-Men and Eternals clashing. The Avengers will also get drawn into the fight, something Gillen said was unavoidable considering the team's current headquarters sits inside a fallen Celestial. Given that the Celestials created the Eternals and Deviants, the three groups will find themselves deeply entwined in the conflict.
"It's drama for the people who know what has been going on because it's secrets coming out and you're seeing people's responses to them," Gillen said. "It's really getting people on board for the journey on the way in. The Avengers also have some significant stakes in the story based on how lied to they've been by everybody from the start and the fact that they're literally sitting inside a Celestial. You should not have made your headquarters a Celestial if you did not want to be involved in this [Laughs]."
A.X.E.: Eve of Justice #1 by Kieron Gillen and Pasqual Ferry arrives June 29 from Marvel Comics. A.X.E.: Judgment Day #1 comes by Gillen and Valerio Schiti releases in July.