Favorite Characters: Phastos (Eternals)

*A few Phastos-related spoilers.*

I’m not sure when I’m going to hit the Favorite-Characters-to-Character-Highlight threshold with this one. There are a ton of Eternals, and while some of them don’t hit quite as hard for me as others, I do like many of them an awful lot. I was excited to see Phastos in the movie for a number of reasons (not the least of which being the fact that he’s played by the always-great Brian Tyree Henry!), and he didn’t disappoint.

The Eternals are pretty evenly split between the so-called “fighters” and “thinkers,” based on their individual power sets. Phastos is certainly the one who falls most heavily into the thinker type. He’s the craftsman and inventer of the Eternals, and he uses both his powers and his sizable intellect with the aim of steering human advancement. Unfortunately for him, his mind races far beyond where humans are at any given point: thousands of years in the past, he’s eager to give humans the gift of the engine, but when Ajak points out that such technology would accelerate their progress much too fast, he’s brudgrudgingly forced to content himself with the plow instead.

A lot of Phastos’s characterization comes down to this dynamic, his unbridled enthusiasm for invention and the letdown when the real world is transposed onto his revolutionary ideas. When he tries to give humanity an engine, it’s equal parts his brilliant mind doing what it does best and his earnest desire to make humans’ lives easier/more efficient. Having to hold himself back is tiresome to him, but in time, he begins to understand the cost at play here. During World War II, he’s horrified to walk through the remains of Hiroshima, wondering if humans could have created an atomic bomb were it not for his technological nudging and guidance over the millennia. A common theme of the film is the idea that the Eternals are largely prohibited from protecting humanity from itself, and Phastos’s fear that he might have in any way influenced humans toward using the bomb is an especially powerful one.

It resonates on that level, a godlike being wondering if he’s interfered too far, but it resonates very personally too. Phastos loves thinking and tinkering and creating. There’s something so pure about his excitement over his inventions, and he only wants to be able to use them to help. His lust for innovation is wholly guileless, and it’s wrenching to see that earnest love poisoned for him.

But while some of the other Eternals think this experience made Phastos give up on humanity, the truth is just the opposite. Instead, he’s largely given up the godlike parts of himself, instead immersing himself in the humanity of his husband Ben and, later, their son Jack. The life he comes to cherish is the ordinary one he’s built with his young human family, and that makes him reluctant to join in the fray when the other Eternals come calling. Some might view this as a selfish move on his part, but Phastos is motivated by a desire not to abandon the ones he loves, as well as his lingering fear over the damage his intellect may cause. However, Phastos is a hero at heart, and Ben gives him the push he needs, not to hunker down with his family, but to stand and fight on their behalf.

By my reckoning, Phastos is the first much-touted LGBTQ character in a major blockbuster that’s more than just lipservice in execution. He’s a cool character anyway, brilliant and entertaining and compelling, and his queerness is fully canon. While movies like Star Trek Beyond, The Rise of Skywalker, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast feature blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “gay moments” that can easily be censored for resistant audiences, Ben and Jack have small but important roles in the film, vital in helping to contextualize Phastos and rootable characters in their own right. You don’t have to be eagle-eyed to catch the fleeting confirmation that Phastos is gay. It’s there, plainly onscreen, an integral part of who he is. I love that.

(Also, bonus points, Phastos is one of the few Eternals who sometimes signs to Makkari—not as often as Druig or Kingo, but I appreciate that he thinks of her at least sometimes.)