Phastos has his ‘a-ha!’ moment in exclusive Eternals deleted scene

Eternals director Chloé Zhao writes her movies, shoots her movies, then discovers her movies. In a recent interview with Empire, he Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Nomadland explained how even on a giant Marvel movie, uncertainty is still part of the process.

“I have never made a film where the ending is what I wrote!” Zhao said. “You find it in the edit. Editing is a third of the filmmaking process, and when you show it to people, that’s when you find the ending. I don’t think I’ve made a single film where the opening and ending stay the same as the script, just because the scenes are fluid as we shoot.”

So it’s not surprising that some quirky, almost pivotal Eternals scenes were left on Zhao’s cutting room floor. In the exclusive deleted scene above, part of the upcoming Blu-ray and digital releases of the film, fans get a moment featuring Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos that is both a bit of human comedy and an integral eureka moment in the larger plot. That’s the other thing with Zhao: nearly every scene brings together the macro and the micro.

When Eternals arrives on Disney Plus this month, the home video release will sport some major bonus features, including an audio commentary by Zhao and visual effects leads Stephane Ceretti and Mårten Larsson; the behind-the-scenes documentary Immortalized; new interviews with the cast from the globe-spanning set; and a cheeky gag reel.

Watch Polygon’s exclusive clip from the release above. Eternals arrives to digital platforms on Jan. 12, with the 4K and Blu-ray arriving Feb. 15.