Favorite Characters: Kingo (Eternals)

*Kingo-related spoilers.*

Still riding the Eternals train. Kingo is another character that I really love in this film. I’d say he’s more prominent than Makkari or Phastos, so there’s more characterization to explore here.

We meet all the Eternals when they first awaken, orbiting Earth in their ship, and we follow them to their first battle against the Deviants, so we’re introduced to Kingo from the start. But an important aspect of the film, which has a 7,000-year timeline in which to play, is catching up with each in the present day and seeing what sort of life they made for themselves after the group went their separate ways.

The reveal of Kingo’s present-day life is the hardest left turn in the movie. While many of the others are laying low and blending unobtrusively into human society, Kingo is making noise. He’s garnered fame and riches as a Bollywood star, and not just once—since the Eternals don’t age, he began his film “dynasty” in the early days of cinema and is currently purporting to be the identical grandson to the “father” and “grandfather” whose illustrious careers preceded his.

This is both a much more visible civilian life than the Eternals really had in mind when they split up and a much more self-serving one than their mission to defend/shepherd humanity would really suggest. Kingo’s face is plastered on billboards, he doesn’t go anywhere without his loyal valet Karun, and his private jet is decorated with posters from his own films. To his friends’ horror, the first thing he wants to do when he joins back up with them is make a documentary about the Eternals, introducing them all to the world.

So this is really the picture we’re given of Kingo, which is more defined than his earlier flashback depictions. He’s a vain and somewhat frivolous man, more concerned with attention and accolades than really pulling his weight on the mission to reform the group and investigate the re-emergence of Deviants on Earth. While some of his friends are immediately committed to resuming their mission and others are hesitant mainly due to traumas that have occurred in the interim, Kingo is just more concerned with himself than anything.

And yet. When the group is attacked by Deviants, he instantly springs back into action, not just as a fighter but as a protector. He places himself between the Deviants and Sersi and Sprite, whose powers are less combat-focused than his, urging them to get to safety. In the middle of the battle, when Karun yells out a comment about the documentary shoot, Kingo exasperatedly tells him to hide. (He does ask if Karun got the shoot, though. Kingo’s still gonna Kingo.) I really love this scene. Nearly a century of celebrity hasn’t made Kingo soft in a fight, and at the moments where it matters most, he puts others before himself.

We also see, in little ways, how the rest of the Eternals always have been and remain his family. He’s the one intuitive enough to recognize that Sprite is struggling with her feelings for Ikaris. And like Phastos, he’s one of the few Eternals who’s shown signing to Makkari. Coupled with the less self-serving Kingo who emerges when shit hits the fan, it all adds up to him being much more complex than the initial image of the self-obsessed Bollywood star would suggest, which makes him both an entertaining and an interesting character to watch.