Eternals was something of a mixed bag, but it delivered quite the gut punch by revealing that Ikaris both killed Ajax and had secretly been manipulating events in order to ensure Arishem would emerge from inside the Earth.
When his team turned their backs on him in order to save humanity, Ikaris decided he would not intervene and instead chose to fly into the sun, seemingly ending his life and Richard Madden's time as part of the MCU. There's been no official word on an Eternals sequel, but the movie ended with a major cliffhanger, and many fans remain hopeful that Ikaris could have somehow survived or simply faked his death.
It's not outside the realm of possibility (we are talking about superheroes here), especially as Arishem may be able to resurrect the synthetic immortal through a replica body. After all, if you're at all familiar with the comic books, you'll know that death and resurrection are a big part of what makes an Eternal, well, eternal.
During a recent interview with ComicBook.com to discuss Prime Video's Citadel, Madden appeared to dash any remaining hopes we have for an MCU return.
"Well, he flew into the sun. That's kind of hard to come back from," the actor said. "Isn't it?"
We don't think he's necessarily teasing anything there and, if anything, would guess he probably isn't champing at the bit to rejoin a franchise that made headlines for delivering Marvel Studios' first "Rotten" movie (at least it now has some company with Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania).
Aside from his role in Citadel, Madden remains a fan-favourite choice to play the next James Bond and is often imagined as all manner of DC characters. Batman is somewhere near the top of that list, so perhaps he'll find a place in the new DCU.
We'll see, but let us know how you think Madden could return as Ikaris down in the comments section.