Captain America: Brave New World has a lot going for it. In addition to the relatively new Captain America Sam Wilson, we get a new Falcon, a new Hulk, a new Black Widow, and a bunch of super spies and ex-SHIELD agents making their MCU debuts. The fourth Captain America film could also give us closure to a major event in Marvel’s Eternals who dropped an entire Celestial into the Indian Ocean in 2021.
The fact that that Celestial, Tiamut the Communicator, emerged from the depths of the ocean and was turned to stone by Gemma Chan’s Sersi has barely been acknowledged in subsequent Marvel films and TV shows. Disney Plus series only She-Hulk: Lawyer has made the enormous marble hand and head protruding from the ocean seem like something people on Earth care about.
Image: Marvel Studios
The Heavenly Corpse seems to be central to one of the conflicts in Captain America: Brave New World, although. In the first teaser trailer for the 2025 film, we briefly see what appear to be Japanese and American warships in combat near the giant hand. Captain America, sporting a nifty new supersonic flight suit, takes on fighter jets alongside new Falcon Joaquín Torres in what appears to be a battle for the remains of the Celestial.
But the US and Japan appear to be allies in their concerns about Tiamut’s hand. In the trailer, Sam Wilson, Joaquín Torres and Isaiah Bradley (the erased Captain America introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) are shown attending a global unity summit at the White House, along with representatives from the US and Japan. The logo for that summit features a stylized version of Tiamut’s hand, suggesting some sort of battle around it.
Image: Marvel Studios
So what is the conflict about? Tiamut’s body is arguably a new landmass, so nearby countries might claim it as part of their nation. Or maybe Tiamut’s corpse isn’t just composed of marble and stone. Maybe his alien body is full of valuable alien elements. We’ve seen another celestial corpse in the MCU, the mining colony known as Knowhere (see Guardians of the Universe), which is essentially a severed Celestial head that has been harvested for its bone, brain tissue, and spinal fluid. Perhaps there’s a lot of vibranium in Tiamut, or some other magical element crucial to the next phase of the MCU.
Either way, it’s nice to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe address the giant alien leg sticking out of the ocean. How graceful will this plot element involving a giant alien corpse be in Captain America: Brave New World’s filled story remains to be seen. But it looks like we’re getting a big reminder about one of Eternals‘lots of unresolved plot points next year when Brave New World is showing in theaters.