How Can Ego Be a Celestial?

The following post contains spoilers for Eternals.

Although they’ve been alluded to in previous Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, the Celestials take center stage in Eternals. For the first time, we learn about their full history, and their true purpose. Their seeding of life throughout the universe isn’t necessarily an act of cosmic benevolence, it’s actually a matter of self-interest. The Celestials can only create more Celestials by impregnating planets with their eggs, and then protecting the mortal life forms that live on those planets until the newborn alien god hatches.

That concept squares very closely with the version of the Celestials from Marvel’s famous Earth X miniseries. But it raises a very big question. Because the only other Celestial we’ve actually heard from in a previous MCU movie was Ego, played by Kurt Russell. And Ego claimed he a Celestial, and able to impregnate an Earth woman and father a child. (The child grew up to be Star-Lord.) So if Celestials can’t make more Celestials, how did Ego give birth to Star-Lord? Was he lying about being a Celestial?

In our latest Eternals video, we take a look at this potential plot hole in the MCU and try to square the fact that Ego is clearly fertile when Celestials are apparently incapable of having children (besides, y’know, blowing up planets with their babies). Watch it below:

If you liked that video about how to square the version of Celestials in Eternals with Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, check out more of our videos below, including Thanos’ possible origin as an Eternal, and our breakdowns of the mid- and post-credits scenes from Eternals. Plus, there’s tons more videos over at ScreenCrush’s YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe to catch all our future episodes. Eternals is in theaters now.