Though we've known about this for a while and pretty much every review has made a point of mentioning it, mild spoilers for Eternals follow.
Marvel's latest Phase 4 adventure hits theaters this week, and the movie features a first for the MCU: A full-on - if not particularly passionate - sex scene between Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden). Truth be told, it's a pretty tame affair (even for a PG-13 film), but for the notoriously chaste Disney-owned Marvel Studios, it is still a fairly big deal.
While speaking to /Film, director Chloé Zhao explained why she felt the scene was so essential to the story while revealing whether she had any pushback from Disney higher-ups.
"Well, as you know in the filmmaking process from the day you write something on the page to showing it to an audience, people come in with ideas and accidents, good and bad. I think for this specific idea it was in the treatment, it was in the script, we planned on shooting it and then once we shot it, we edited it, we showed it to Disney, we showed it to Marvel and everyone said, 'Oh, this is beautiful,' and that's the end of the conversation."
"So it's actually a very smooth process," she continued. "Also, if you have seen the film you know the love between these two in a way defines the fate of humanity, of our planet. So I like to show them not just loving each other intellectually, emotionally, but also physically. And to show a sexual encounter in a compassionate, loving way, I think it's a very positive thing to do."
Along with the first ever same-sex kiss, the scene does mark a significant step forward for this franchise, and could be a sign of things to come as Marvel Studios begins to add slightly more mature content to its film and TV output.
Eternals hits theaters on November 5. Do you plan on seeing the movie opening night?