2021 saw the release of four very different Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that seemingly weren’t very connected to one another. WhileBlack Widowprovides the audience with a flashback to an earlier chapter of the MCU,Spider-Man: No Way Homebegins an exploration of the multiverse,Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Ringsintroduces a new hero to the MCU, andEternalsrewrites some of the history of the universe. It’s the latter two that might actually be more connected than the audience thinks.
Some fans have wondered if the Ten Rings, which are ancient and powerful, might have the same origins as the Eternals themselves. The Ten Rings, after all, are circular in design, like much of the technology utilized by the Eternals. They also appear to be energy-based in their use, much like the tools and weapons used by the Eternals are fueled by cosmic energy. The question is whether the two could be connected at all.
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The Origin Of The Ten Rings
In the MCU, the audience is given very littleinformation about the Ten Rings themselves. They inspire Wenwu’s secret organization, even providing him with a logo in the modern day, but he uses them to accumulate power and wealth for centuries after finding them.
In the comics,the Mandarin finds themin an abandoned spaceship as their origins,as the scenes in theShang-Chicredits suggest, are extraterrestrial. The Ten Rings are originally created by a race of beings called the Makluan. The Makluans evolve as a reptilian species, so they resemble Earth’s idea of dragons. Of course, the comic book rings are also rings worn on fingers, not rings that resemble bracelets.
Each ring in the comics has a different power concentration, not unlike the Infinity Stones in the MCU. While the fight between Shang-Chi and his father certainly indicates that the different rings can be used together or separately, it’s not clear if the MCU version of the rings each have different abilities or not.
The Origin Of The Eternals
TheEternals originally believe themselves to be from a planet called Olympiain the MCU, but they discover that’s not the case. They are created by the Celestials to do their bidding, assisting new Celestials as they emerge on dying planets. They’re memories are erased, and they begin again on another new planet.
While that’s not exactly the same as their comic book origin story, the Eternals do worship the Celestials in the comics, and their resurrections in the comics do come at the cost of human life. Like so many of the superpowered species in the comics, they are the result of the Celestials experimenting with life and cosmic energy.
More than that isn’t really known in the MCU, much like the Ten Rings, since both have only just emerged in the movies. What is clear is that their advanced technology is the result of the Eternals being able to manipulate the same cosmic energy that births Celestials and provides them with their powers.
The Links In The MCU
Some fans will dismiss a connection between the Ten Rings and the Eternals, saying that spherical pieces of gold isn’t enough to draw a line between the two. That may be true. There’s no denying, however, that it would be a very big coincidence for two MCU installments to use spherical pieces of alien technology to release in the same year and not be connected to one another in some way,
The symbols that appear across the Eternals’ technology and the Rings don’t appear to match up, but an illustrationin theEternalscredit sequencemight make fans look twice. The credits feature several rings as they lock around an arm. It’s clearly meant to be an illustration of one of Phastos’ experiments, but which one? He does say he had been working on the idea of connecting them all through bracelets for a long time.
Is it simply a representation of the bracelets used to create the uni-mind? That’s possible as each of the five united Eternals have a bracelet that locks around them, created by Phastos, to bond them. The group is able to bond without using the bracelets though, and there are a lot more of them in the illustration. In fact, it looks like it might be pieces that make up ten of them. There were, however, originally ten of them in the team.
The bracelets themselves appear to lock around the wearer in much the same way the Ten Rings travel to the person wearing them. Phastos uses precise hand motions to control and manipulate technology in much the same way Wenwu learns to control the rings. Perhaps that is just another coincidence?
Will The MCU Ever Tell The Ten Rings Origin Story
Of course, the real question is whether the design choices for the Ten Rings and the technology employed by the Eternals is just a coincidence or if there’s a larger story at play. It’s entirely possible that the design choice is purely because the production teams and filmmakers wanted a particular aesthetic, and not because there is a larger connection.
If that’s the case, the movies likely won’t even give the audience the origin story of the Ten Rings unless it ties into a larger narrative. Given that the Rings themselves appear to act as a beacon of sorts in aShang-Chicredit scene,it’s clear a later MCU installmentwill, at the very least, address their connection to an extraterrestrial being.
That could very well be the Eternals, the Celestials, or the Makluans of the comics. It all depends on just which extraterrestrial beings have a larger story to tell in the future phases of the MCU.Gemma Chan has said that her Sersi will be back, Harry Styles is expected to return as Starfox, and the Eternals and Celestials did leave the audience on something of a cliffhanger.
It’s only a matter of time before the audience has answers.
