Dull, Dour, And Depressing
Yesterday on Bluesky, I saw this image:
This is – despite the initial misspelling – the world’s introduction to Sersi of the Eternals back in Eternals vol. 1 #3.
Like a panel featuring another Jack Kirby creation, this quick introduction tells us a lot about Sersi’s character. She’s fun and flirtatious and likes to surround herself with beauty and luxury.
One can also conclude from the reference to turning Ikaris into a pig that she is the basis for the stories of the witch Circe, which was part of the whole deal with the Eternals, and is among the many reasons the characters have never really fit in the Marvel Universe, but that’s not really the point of this post.
I first met Sersi in an issue of Thor that I got in a mystery pack, and her flirtatiousness was on full display with the Odinson. I next encountered her in an issue of Avengers in which, in the mortal identity she had assumed, she was throwing a lavish party.
As I got to know – and like – Sersi, my perception of her was that she loved life and all the pleasures it had to offer, and as an Eternal, she had plenty of it to love, and she did not take things as seriously as many of the others of her kind did.
She also loved humanity and being caught up in the whirl of the all-too brief lives around her.
But Sersi wasn’t just a party girl. When circumstances called for it, she would step up and do what needed to be done to protect what she loves, though even – or especially – in those circumstances she would do so with style and flair.
Which is why, along with so many other aspects of it, the version of Sersi that made it to the big screen was the biggest disappointment for me with 2021’s Eternals.
While Gemma Chan’s Sersi did at least share her comic counterpart’s love for humanity – albeit largely from a distance – and some of her abilities, that’s pretty much where the similarities ended.
This Sersi was, as the title of this post indicates, dull, dour, and depressed. She lacked Sersi’s style, her flirtatiousness, her fun.
The entire film was rather drab and dreary in general, but Sersi is my favorite Eternal, so her blandification was the biggest sticking point for me.
It was made worse by the fact that she was the film’s central character. An Eternals movie centered around my favorite Eternal should have felt like a gift, not a burden to be borne.
(It didn’t help that it was my first time going back to a theater since early 2020)
None of this is a knock against Chan herself. She could have played a fine Sersi if she’d been given a fine Sersi to play.
Movie Sersi was a character wracked with self-doubt, uncertain of who she was and what role she played being forced to take on a responsibility that she did not want and was not prepared for and ultimately finding that it was the right fit.
Which, fine. That can make for a great story.
With a character other than Sersi.
I, personally, think that it would have been more interesting to take a character who feels no such doubts about who and what she is, who lives in the spotlight, taking on responsibility for the first time in her very long life and finding that while it lacks the glitz and glamor she’s accustomed to, it actually fits her like a glove.
At the very least it would have brought some color and light into the otherwise dim and gray movie.
Now, in fairness, it’s not as if Sersi hasn’t been mishandled in the comics. I’ve read very little of the bomber jacket era of Avengers, but from what I have read, Sersi’s tenure as one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was one of extreme character assassination. [leo_pointing.jpg]
Also, Herc, bubby, bring back the beard, skirt, and thigh-high sandals.
As Comrade Bulkski put it in on Bluesky:
The more recent Eternals series did bring Sersi back a bit closer to her original personality, though to me she felt more like Temu Emma Frost than Sersi, but it was at least something of an improvement.
That run of Eternals seemed to be an attempt at creating a concordance between the comics that had preceded it and the movie. There were some interesting ideas, but much like the movie, it felt like something other than the Eternals.
I didn’t follow it through to the big conflict with the X-Men and Avengers, and these days my Marvel reading is mostly limited to The Mortal Thor, so I have no idea what happened with any of that, or even what the status of Seris is these days.
I’m sure she’s probably dead, waiting for someone to revive her and either return her to her party girl roots or completely mishandle her in some new and annoying way.
“Flighty, superficial party girl who is actually extremely competent and can be depended on when the chips are down” is a common trope – indeed, it was a discussion elsewhere about one such character that prompted the creation of this feature – and it is one that is often mishandled.
The approach is often either leaning too far into superficiality and turning a complex, nuanced character into a bimbo, or making the fun-loving persona a facade that gets stripped away to reveal the misery that was being masked.
Either can be fine, if done well, but they both happen too often, and I almost always find that a character who achieves a balance is more interesting.
I like miserable bastards just fine. Many of my favorite characters are miserable bastards. I happen to be one myself.
But I also like people who genuinely enjoy their lives and aren’t afraid to let other people know it and who are in no way diminished by it.
Sersi works best as the latter, and I wish more people understood that.
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
