Ceasefire (Phastos)

With a new, extended trailer for Eternals, we got a good look at the remaining Eternals, and the first one we see while building something by manipulating energy into matter is Phastos, portrayed by Brian Tyree Henry. The blacksmith of the Eternals and their master of technology, Phastos underwent some changes from the comics as well, despite his look being among the closest ones to the original counterpart, as we know he is a gay man in the movie, with a (human?) husband and a child. In the comics, his sexuality is of secondary importance, mainly because, even if he has a wife at some point, it’s quite clear that he cares much more for things than for people: let’s see together.

Among the most mysterious Eternals of all, Phastos was born in the hidden city of Olympia, millennia ago, a prominent member of the third generation of Eternals. Unlike his peers, he cared little for the war against the Deviants, and dedicated his time to building and creating, looking in his work for something that could give meaning to an existence that he saw as pointless and destined to tragedy. Despite his incurable melancholy, Phastos was always ready to help his fellow Eternals with his arts, and not only them: he built for Icarus, the human son of his fellow Eternal Ikaris, a mechanical set of wings that could make him fly like his father did; he forged an unbreakable sword for the Japanese Eternal Kingo Sunen; he took pity in the Evolutionaries, helpless creatures decimated by natural predators, and built for them high-tech armors that could allow their survival and even increase their intelligence with nanotechnology, transforming them into the guardians of new species that emerged on the evolutionary track, protecting them from those who would annihilate them as “aberrations”; he helped the Polarian Eternal Valkin build the Pyramid of the Winds, an impenetrable temple to store a weapon powerful enough to harm even a Celestial; he devised for himself a special hammer he used to manipulate matter far beyond the levels and possibilities of an Eternal’s natural power to do so. He did these and many other impressive deeds, to the point that his talent rivaled that of the Greek god Hephaestus, and the two were often confused by humans and believed to be one and the same. If he cared for his creations, though, Phastos didn’t do as much for living people, and even if he was the mentor of the Eternal scientist Sygmar and of others, he never formed true bonds with anyone, not even with Ikaris, who he accompanied in many of his early adventures in the human world.

Always present but somehow distant, Phastos never took an active role in the neverending war between Eternals and Deviants, and in the other Eternals’ matters in general, except when he was forced to do so: in modern times, as Zuras called all Eternals to form a massive Uni-Mind to confront Arishem the Judge from the Celestial Third Host, he participated, losing himself in the gestalt creature, but returning to his usual tasks as soon as the emergency was solved. When most of the Eternals chose to abandon Earth to explore the galaxies, Phastos was among the few ones who chose instead to stay behind, possibly still looking for the one thing that could make him understand the meaning he had been looking for for eons. With Olympia deserted, he moved to the Ruhr Valley, in Germany, where he continued to work unseen and undisturbed, with only his fellow Eternals knowing where he was, so that they could contact him for emergencies… and so they did, several times, distracting him from his work. Invited by both Ikaris and Thor, he built a special chamber to revive Virako, Ikaris’ father and Thor’s friend, and also the most powerful Eternal from Polaria. He was called once again when the mutant Apocalypse manipulated factions and events to ignite a new war against the Deviants, a move that prompted the few remaining Eternals to go public and reinvent themselves as superheroes: under the alias Ceasefire, he followed Sovereign in the New Breed, foiling the mutant warlord’s plans. Phastos was also among the Eternals brainwashed by Sprite into losing memory of his true nature and his past, and he lived for a while as a regular human being, Phillip Stoss. In Germany, in his human life, he had a wife, and his deepest nature led him to be an engineer… until Ikaris and Sersi awakened him, and forced him to abandon a life he had grown fond of, returning to his former self. After that, he joined Thor in his battle against Deviants, but eventually chose to side with his long-time enemies, wanting to help them solve the problem of their loss of fertility, wishing to save them from extinction. For one who claimed not to care for people, he surely was always ready to help anyone needing his talents…

Phastos is a melancholic and dour man, a brooding philosopher who questions the meaning of existence itself and looks for an answer into his own artisan work. Being an Eternal, he is virtually immortal, gifted with superior strength, speed, durability, reflexes, senses and stamina, with the ability to fly, to teleport, to use telepathy and to imbue and manipulate cosmic energy; a genius inventor, he disposes of many weapons of his own creation, most notably his hammer, that allows him to manipulate energy and matter far beyond the possibilities of other Eternals. Always seeing something new and unexplored where other people see nothing, Phastos creates, assembles, transforms, he bends matter to his will trying to find in his creative effort the answers to his existential questions… an impossible task, fit to a relentless worker.