Character Highlight: Ajak (Eternals)

*Spoilers.*

It’s impressive that, more than fourth months since Eternals came out, I still haven’t gotten through the full ensemble. Granted, I haven’t posted about an Eternal every Marvelous Wednesday, and that’s been intentional, but it’s still a little wild to think about. Even though some of these characters get more dimension/screentime than others, they’re still distinct enough that I can write about all ten major characters in this two-and-a-half-hour movie. I watched all three Hobbit movies, and by the end, I couldn’t have matched the names of all thirteen dwarves to save my life.

Today, we’re looking at Ajak. She’s the leader of the Eternals, although you wouldn’t necessarily guess that from her relative screentime. A large part of that is the pure fact that she’s not really in any of the modern-day scenes. When the Deviants reappear, the first move Sersi, Sprite, and Ikaris take is to go to Ajak in her remote home in rural South Dakota, where they discover she’s already been killed by Deviants. The ensuing mission to reunite the Eternals is fueled partly by her death.

So she ultimately becomes more of a plot device, but who is Ajak before all of that? Like her fellow Eternals, she doesn’t age, and in their early millennia together, her healing powers restore the others from any injuries they suffer fighting the Deviants. The others follow her orders, but she’s not just a commanding officer. In a way, she’s like the mother of the group, and nearly all of the flashbacks with Ajak show her caring for her fellow Eternals in one way or another. Whether it’s checking in on Phastos during a devastating moment in history or nudging Sprite to visit Sersi so the two of them will have each other to lean on, she offers maternal love, understanding, and guidance.

Ajak’s other chief role is to liaise with the Celestials, who impart their instructions to her on a need-to-know basis, which she in turn gives to her fellow Eternals—again, need-to-know. This means that, as the others fight Deviants and steer human progress in ways that aren’t too interfering, Ajak knows the true purpose of their mission. Earth, like countless planets before it, is an incubator for a new Celestial, and once humanity reaches a sufficient population to sustain him, the planet will be ripped apart in his “birth.”

Naturally, when we learn this information, it doesn’t jive with what we know of Ajak. She certainly doesn’t seem like someone capable of rearing up humanity as lambs for slaughter, and she wrestles deeply with this knowledge. She tries to keep humans at a distance, instead lavishing her devotion on her fellow Eternals, and repeatedly reminds herself of her unwavering loyalty to the Celestials. But when the bonds between the Eternals start to break once they no longer have Deviants to fight, they go their separate ways, and Ajak finally gets to know humanity. For centuries, they tug at her heart as she travels among them, and when she sees how the Avengers rally against Thanos, she decides that humanity can’t be as disposable as the Celestials think.

So even though Ajak has spent nearly whole of her time on Earth preparing to sacrifice humanity, she recognizes the monstrosity of their mission in her final days and aims to stop it, to make things right. It’s a change of heart that gets her killed, but true to her compassionate nature, she expresses pity, not condemnation, toward her killer. In the end, realizing she won’t be able to lead her family down the right path, she uses her final moments to choose her successor well, knowing that Sersi’s gentleness and empathy will carry them through.