Character Highlight: Thena (Eternals)

*Eternals spoilers.*

I wavered over whether to give Thena a Favorite Characters or Character Highlight post, but in the end I went with the latter. Even though I do like her quite a bit, she’s definitely one of the Eternals with less screentime, and for me, she doesn’t make as big an impression as some of her fellow supporting Eternals, like Makkari or Phastos. So it’s a Character Highlight for her, but that shouldn’t take away from her coolness or badassery in the slightest.

Her Earth-mythology equivalent is Athena, and as the goddess of wisdom was named after her, one might assume that Thena fits in more with the “thinkers” of the group. But of course, Athena is classically depicted in armor, and that’s the side Thena aligns more closely with. She’s a warrior through and through, and her powers of cosmic manipulation allow her to conjure weapons out of pure energy. Throughout the millennia, she fights Deviants like nobody’s business.

Thena is a bit of a strong and silent type, slightly aloof. This gives her a calm self-assurance on the battlefield, but as her fellow Eternals get to know humanity, she’s more likely to observe than participate. She hangs back, quiet and watchful, taking in everything around her.

For such a self-possessed warrior, then, it’s a hard blow when Thena begins to experience Mahd Wy’ry, a degenerative condition that affects her memory. Without warning, she turns on her friends in battle as she fights opponents that aren’t really there. Being affected by Mahd Wy’ry is devastating for Thena. It’s so hard for her to lose control of her own mind, and it’s dismaying to realize she’s just attacked her friends, who have to band together to match her fighting prowess and keep her from hurting them (without, in turn, hurting her.)

Thena serves as our window into Mahd Wy’ry, a condition whose source is gradually drawn out over the course of the film. When Thena first starts showing symptoms, Ajak explains that it’s due to an Eternal’s extremely long life, that the mind becomes unable to cope with the accumulation of millennia of memories. However, as the film continues, the Eternals learn the truth: rather than being nigh-immortal aliens, they’re highly advanced AIs developed by the Celestials to do their bidding. Thena and the others have lived thousands of years on Earth, but this isn’t their first life. They’ve done all of this numerous times before on countless worlds, each time getting their memories wiped and their consciousness upload into a new, identical body. In the throes of Mahd Wy’ry, Thena isn’t growing confused at the memories of the last 7,000 years at all. Rather, buried memories of the lives she lived before Earth are reasserting themselves.

Even though developing Mahd Wy’ry takes Thena out of the action to an extent, both physically and narratively, it also helps to expand her character. Again, it connects her condition to the larger reveal of the Eternals’ real existence, which lends more emotional weight to Sersi learning the truth. And it gives us a chance to see a more vulnerable side of Thena, struggling to make sense of her own mind and placing herself in the care of Gilgamesh. As the two of them create a secluded life together in the desert where Thena can’t hurt anyone, it’s lovely to see Gilgamesh look after her, but it’s also kind of beautiful to see how Thena puts her trust in him. She knows that he’ll help her when she doesn’t know what’s real, and during her episodes, he won’t let her hurt anyone but him. There’s a lot of surrender in that, which must be hard for someone who’s spent so much of her very long life very secure in who she is and what she’s doing. I think Thena believes her condition makes her weak, but it takes strength to trust another person like that.

Other Doctor Lives: DuckTales: Season 1, Episode 1 – “Woo-oo!” (2017)

Granted, I already have dozens of Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker reviews on file, thanks to Capaldi Fall and Countdown to Thirteen, but I’m finding that of the modern Doctors, David Tennant definitely has the most easily-accessible work out there. We’re settling in for another long project here, as Tennant starred as a certain miserly duck on all three seasons of this rebooted animated series.

In dire babysitting straits, Donald Duck turns to his estranged Uncle Scrooge to watch his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The boys are enamored with the idea of the adventurous, globe-trotting billionaire, but when they’re actually dropped off at Scrooge’s mansion, they’re not impressed with the cranky old miser before them. However, the boys are nothing if not tenacious, and they’re bound and determined to get an adventure out of this one way or another.

I remember watching the old DuckTales series as a kid, though I’d forgotten the angle of Scrooge McDuck being an explorer/adventurer. Makes sense—you’d need a way to bring in some action and excitement—but my lasting childhood memories of Scrooge are more from the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol version. The pilot episode is amusing if flimsy, full of fast-talking clips and slapdash action.

My take on the double-length premiere episode is “fine but unremarkable,” but I’m definitely prepared to see more. For one, my brother and sister-in-law have been recommending it to me for a while, and they’ve mentioned that the show improves a lot as it goes on. And second, the voice cast is made up of a fine group of actors.

Starting with our trio, we’ve got Danny Pudi as Huey, Ben Schwartz as Dewey, and Bobby Moynihan as Louie. I can tell that the show is laying groundwork to establish each of their separate personalities (Dewey, for example, appears to be the ringleader,) but the casting immediately helps to distinguish between them, as all three actors have very distinct voices. I couldn’t place the actress voicing Webby, the spunky granddaughter of Scrooge’s housekeeper, at first, but I knew I recognized her voice. She’s played by Kate Micucci, who I’ve seen all over the place but who I remember best as “the Gooch” on Scrubs. Additionally, the always-welcome Beck Bennett voices Launchpad McQuack, and I’ve talked enough with my brother and sister-in-law to know about some of the many guest stars who will be appearing in future episodes.

Then, of course, there’s David Tennant as Scrooge McDuck. Again, my memories of Scrooge from my childhood are spotty at best, but he’s enjoyable in the role. I know Tennat’s done quite a bit of voiceover work, which certainly tracks—I’ve always loved the Doctor Who audiobooks he’s read. Here, he’s well-suited as a curmudgeonly homebody who’s far from his swashbuckling glory days, with enough of a glint in his vocal performance that you can see the explorer he used to be and could become again. Tennant brings a casual feel to the comedy that comes off well—I enjoy his matter-of-fact delivery on lines like, “Maybe I could just hire some family. Then they’d have to listen to me.”

Accent Watch

Absolutely Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – So far, a “sure, why not?” for kids, but I wouldn’t go that far for adults yet. We’ll see how it progresses.

David Tennant – A maybe for now. Tennant’s performance is fun, but there’s not a whole lot to it yet.

Warnings

A little violence, maybe a few scares for kids, and some “don’t try this at home.”

Songs 5-7: Encanto

*Spoilers.*

The music is so great in Disney films that it often feels like any given film has more songs than it actually does. For Encanto, it’s just seven, so we’re already coming to the end. But these are great numbers as well, and I love listening to them, singing them, and geeking out over them.

“What Else Can I Do?” – Isabela has always made Mirabel feel inadequate, but in this song, she learns how constrained Isabela feels to stay in the persona of the perfect little princess growing beautiful flowers. The “you can’t believe how hard it is to be pretty and popular” theme can feel like a trope, but I appreciate that this song isn’t about Isabela wallowing in how hard it is to be the perfect one. Instead, it’s about seeing a sudden moment of imperfection, recognizing the beauty of it, and imagining what all she can be capable of if she lets herself go.

Best lyric: “I wanna feel the shiver of something new. / I’m so sick of pretty, I want something true, don’t you?”

“Dos Oruguitas” – A non-diegetic song, playing over a montage of Abuela’s past—meeting and falling in love with Pedro, the birth of the triplets, having to flee their home, and the creation of the miracle. It’s a beautiful, simple melody that complements the images onscreen wonderfully, wistful and searing. Even better, the soundtrack includes the English version of the song, and now that I know what the lyrics mean, I predict the scene will make me cry even more.

Best lyric: “Ay, mariposas, no se aguanten más. / Hay que crecer a parte y volve, hacia Adelante seguirás. / Ya son Milagros, rompiendo crisálidas. / Hay que volar, hay que encontrar su propio futuro.”

And again in English: “Ay, mariposas, don’t you hold on too tight. / Both of you know it’s your time to go, to fly apart, to reunite. / Wonders surround you, just let the walls come down. / Don’t look behind you, fly ‘til you find your way toward tomorrow.”

“All of You” – And the finale! While it weaves in bits and pieces of other musical and thematic elements from the movie, it introduces its own lovely melody as well. This is Mirabel’s story, but as she says at the start of the film, it’s about her entire family too, so the song wraps up a few plot points and offers up a little resolution to a handful of the characters while maintaining the central throughline of bringing Mirabel’s journey to a close. It’s a beautiful song that comes at my heart in multiple moments.

Best lyric: “And I’m sorry I held on too tight. / Just so afraid I’d lose you too. / The miracle is not some magic that you’ve got— / The miracle is you. / Not some gift, just you, the miracle is you.”