(This article may contain spoilers for Marvel’s Eternals)
After a long drought from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2021 has blessed us with a ton of content from our favorite superhero franchise. P
hase Four is in full swing with some of the greatest content Marvel has given us (my personal favorites so far are WandaVision and Shang-Chi), and it seems that the latest film to hit theaters, Marvel’s Eternals, is no different.
Makkari: Why does she stand out?
I had the opportunity to watch Eternals during its opening weekend, I was enamored with one of the ten main characters: Makkari, the Eternal with super speed. What makes Makkari stand out from the other Eternals isn’t just her powers (which I’ll come back to later on), it’s the fact that she has no lines.
Makkari is the first deaf superhero to be seen on the big screen
She doesn’t speak at all throughout the movie and instead uses ASL to communicate with the rest of the Eternals. What makes this so great, however, is that Makkari’s deafness isn’t treated as a weakness or a major plot point. She’s just deaf, and everyone rolls with it.
Makkari speed powers work so well, she often breaks the sound barrier when she runs. While a sonic boom would affect anyone with hearing, Makkari’s deafness works to her advantage and doesn’t hurt her.
This is such a useful and unique play on the speedster trope and makes quite a lot of sense, but I wanted to touch on how happy I was to see Makkari on screen.
It’s realistic!
Being a student at RIT, which has one of the first and largest chapters of NTID in the United States, I’m surrounded by deaf and hard-of-hearing students. I’m also hoping to take an ASL class during my time here. This is why I enjoyed seeing Makkari on screen so much (because it mirrors what I see around me, despite not being deaf or HOH myself).
Along with Makkari being deaf, Lauren Ridloff, the actress who portrays Makkari on screen, is deaf as well! She taught the rest of the Eternals cast ASL and is just a wonderful actress.
Unfortunately, we could have seen a deaf superhero on-screen much earlier than 2021
In the comics, Hawkeye, a skilled archer, is canonically deaf and uses hearing aids and sign language to communicate. This is not seen in the MCU though, as Hawkeye doesn’t display any signs of being deaf. Hopefully, they will play into this part of his character in his Disney+ show, but as of now, the Marvel movies have disappointed me with the total lack of deaf representation until Eternals.
That being said, watching Makkari use her powers to the full extent and smacking Ikaris (another Eternal) so hard he couldn’t see it coming gave me such a sense of satisfaction! We finally have a speedster that can live up to the speedster’s name.
Eternals is out now in theaters everywhere, and I am so excited to see Makkari in future MCU projects.