Marvel Studios has a unique approach to making movies, with additional photography (reshoots) factored into the creative process from day one. This allows them to go back and make the changes they believe are required, whether it's switching up a character's story arc, altering the tone of the movie, or even redoing the ending in order to set up future stories.
This is in contrast to many studios - where reshoots are usually used to make panicked changes after negative test screenings - and Eternals was no exception.
Talking to us ahead of the movie's release on DVD and Blu-ray on February 15, Sprite actress Lia McHugh explained an Instagram post that saw her pictured alongside Richard Madden's Ikaris and Harry Styles' Eros in the same outfits the heroes wore before they arrived on Earth. It turns out this was an alternate ending, with the original plan seemingly to have the Eternals lose their memories and leave the planet to start all over again somewhere else in the cosmos.
"It actually worked out really well for me," McHugh tells us of working with Styles in the video above. "I didn’t end up having a scene with him at all, but in the first version of the script, we filmed a different ending and it was sort of parallel to the first scene in the movie. We shot it on the same day basically and were kind of switching out actors and stuff as it was all the same camera shots, so it was easier to just do it all in one day."
"We were all on the same sound stage, all ten of us and Harry, and we were going back and forth switching out our characters," she continued. "Oh my gosh, I was such a fangirl. I was freaking out. I couldn’t tell anyone for the longest time; I wanted to tell all my friends. He actually invited us to a private concert in London and that was the coolest experience ever. He’s really such a sweetheart. It was really fun to get to know him."
It's interesting to think about what might have been had Eternals ended the same way it began. The characters could have regained their memories of Earth, but it feels like they were only supposed to appear once before Marvel Studios decided there were still more stories to tell with them (and that leaving their memories intact was arguably the more interesting approach than this reset).
However, the ending we got is so wildly different, we can't help but wonder what this previous iteration of the screenplay looked like and what else was changed as filming on the movie continued.
Eternals is now available on Digital and will be available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD February 15.