Favorite Characters: Sprite (Eternals)

*Sprite-related spoilers.*

The Celestials give all of the Eternals a raw deal, but on a personal level, Sprite has more to contend with than any other. While she has just as much power, knowledge, and experience than her fellow Eternals, the rest have opportunities that remain out of her grasp.

In sending the Eternals to Earth to fight the Deviants and shepherd humanity, the Celestials want their champions to cover a wide swathe of human identity and potential. They’re alike in that they all have incredible abilities and all of them are built to withstand the turn of millennia, but the group is made up of men and women of various races and includes both LGBTQ and Deaf members. This diversity gives them a greater collective understanding of the human experience. And Sprite’s “human experience”? That of a child.

Like the others, Sprite has been on Earth for thousands of years without the appearance of having aged a day. In the early millennia, she worked alongside her fellow Eternals to protect humans from the Deviants and help give their cultural developments a nudge here and there. Her ability to create illusions and projections make her an ideal storyteller, and her influence helped to shape humanity’s oral tradition.

But the Eternals have been in relative retirement for centuries now, waiting to receive word from the Celestials that their mission is over and they can return home. While they wait, they blend into human society, moving and creating new lives every so often to prevent humans from noticing that they never age. And the rest of Sprite’s family can do that fairly well. They can acquire homes, get jobs, and have romantic relationships. Sprite is just as capable as the rest of them, but her appearance constrains her within modern society. She can’t do any of that because, despite her power and experience, she still looks like a kid.

This makes her dependent on the others to look after her, but her youthful appearance is a liability to them. An Eternal who looks like an adult might be able to get away with staying in the same place for 20 years or more before anyone notices that they haven’t aged. Sprite’s youth, though, is conspicuous. When the Eternals first disband, Sprite goes off with Kingo, but he realizes he can’t deal with having to pack up and relocate every five years, and so he ditches her. Prevented from being able to make her own way in the world, she’s then taken in by Sersi.

Because of her illusion abilities, Sprite can change her appearance if she wants to, make herself look older, and she does on occasion. When she wants to enjoy a night out, when she wants an adult to take her seriously, when she wants someone to look at her with desire. But it isn’t sustainable—it would be a trial to use her powers every minute of every day, and besides, the fact that she can only get the things she wants by disguising who she is leaves her cold.

For Sprite, the hardest part of her existence is dealing with her feelings for Ikaris and knowing that he’ll never see her as more than a kid sister. It burns her to see his relationship with Sersi, well aware that their situations would likely be reversed if Sersi had been the one with the misfortune to be created with the appearance of a child. That longing, that jealousy, is poisonous, and though she does care about the rest of her family, she can’t get past her feelings for Ikaris. And so, when he breaks with the group, so does she, following his leadership because she knows it’s the closest she’ll ever get to him.

That’s a major head trip, even for someone who’s 7,000 years old. It’s one of numerous examples of how the Celestials have messed with the Eternals, but it’s probably one of the most significant.