Exploring Marvel's Eternals' Meteor Dust Spaceship

For the Eternals, the MCU’s next super team, a SHIELD helicarrier is just a bit… pedestrian. Inelegant. Too mortal. Instead, this group of undying demigods has a spaceship made of stardust for a home base. And, as part of a visit to the Eternals set at Pinewood Studios in January 2020, IGN got to step aboard and explore its haunting, ethereal corridors.

The Domo - named after a character from the original Eternals comics - is a huge, triangular vessel. The routes between its circular rooms are gloomy; the lights have already been stripped away due to us arriving on the final day of filming, but it’s clear that even with illumination this is not a bright, utopian craft akin to the USS Enterprise. The walls are almost obsidian in colour, and rough like rock. It’s practically organic.

This room is lit by unusual glass lamps that feature spheres with extending tendrils. “I worked really hard to find something that hadn't been seen before, and I found an amazing sculptor, he makes lights which are based on viruses,” Stewart reveals.

Hook a left as you exit this room and travel to the end of the corridor and you arrive in the Domo’s final and most imposing chamber. A huge, domed room, it’s surrounded by a panoramic view of outer space (or, more accurately, greenscreen until the VFX team works its magic). But that’s not the room's defining feature. That honour belongs to the towering statue of Arishem the Judge that stands stoically in the centre.

Arishem, sometimes known as the ‘Killer of Planets’ in the comics, is one of the Celestials’ leaders, and acts as the commander of the Eternals’ mission to cleanse Earth of the Deviants. While a static statue on set, Stewart promises that in the final film he’ll be animated through visual effects.

It’s in this room that the Eternals communicate with Arishem and the Celestials, which dictates the course of their centuries-long mission on Earth. The almost spiritual nature of their god-given purpose makes for a unique approach to this chamber of the Domo.

“We call it the Bridge, but it became a slightly spiritual place where the Eternals come together," explains Stewart. The towering Arishem and the Cathedral-like echo generated by the sloping walls certainly generate an ethereal atmosphere unlike anything seen in the MCU before.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has no reverence for Norse mythology; the trips to Thor’s realm paints Asgard as a theatrical, grandiose place that’s more humorous than godly. That’s explained away by the Asgardians being aliens rather than true deities, but this allows for a true sense of the ethereal to be ushered in when the MCU finally puts the spotlight on its genuine star gods. That’s where Eternals comes in, and if the Domo is anything to go by, this universe’s approach to the Celestials and their creations is something very different to the classic whizz-bang of The Avengers. We'll find out exactly how different when Marvel's Eternals releases in theatres on November 5. Tickets are available to buy now.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.