During Eternals' final act, we learn that Ikaris knows all about the emergence of the Celestial Tiamut and has simply been trying to distract his fellow immortals with the Deviants so this event can happen as planned. This would result in Earth being destroyed, though the loss of life on that planet would lead to the creation of billions more on those Tiamut would be responsible for bringing into existence.
This left the Eternals with quite a moral quandary: If they stop the Celestial's birth and save Earth, then billions of beings will never live. However, if Tiamut is born, everyone on Earth would die.
It's no great surprise that the heroes found themselves divided, though one very interesting creative decision saw Kingo decide to remove himself from the battle completely. While he agreed with Ikaris that the Celestial should be born, he wouldn't fight his friends in order to stop them from saving their home. Talking to Uproxx, director Chloé Zhao explained that key decision for the Eternal.
"That is one of my, personally, most important moments in the film. Because we would like to, through this film, the idea to challenge some of the foundations of this genre. We really do feel like we’re entering the revisionist stage of superhero genre – I think at the edge of it," she explains. "And the idea of black and white morality, the ideas of humans are automatically worth saving. What does strength look like? And also, the idea that you have to always punch your way through everything. You have to be violent physically to be heroic, as long as you’re on the right side."
"[Kingo] loves Earth, but he has strong beliefs, just like Ikaris," Zhao continues. "He’s no different than Ikaris in terms of his faith for the Celestials and believing in the greater good: The fact that human beings and Earth doesn’t have the right to break out of the natural order. He believes that. However, the big difference between him and Ikaris is that he might believe something personally, but he does not believe that he should hurt other people for his beliefs."
It's certainly insighful to get the filmmaker's take on this conflict between the Eternals, though if the critical response is anything to go by, some weren't ready for such heavy themes. As for Kingo, he was taken by Arishem alongside Sersi and Phastos to answer for their role in Tiamut's demise, so it will be interesting to see the way their different beliefs are addressed moving forward.
Eternals is now playing in theaters.