Marvel Star Elizabeth Olsen Breaks Free of Grief Roles After WandaVision With Hopeful Afterlife Rom-Com Eternity
Exclusive: Elizabeth Olsen says Eternity, her afterlife rom-com, breaks from WandaVision and her grief-driven projects — a sharp left turn into life after death.
Elizabeth Olsen is back in the grief-meets-fantasy lane, but this time it is wrapped in a rom-com. If you are keeping score, that makes two in the last few years: WandaVision (and her return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) and now Eternity. Same theme, very different vibe.
The setup
Eternity imagines an afterlife with rules. When you die, you get one week to pick where to spend forever. No takebacks. No do-overs. Joan (Olsen) lands there and quickly realizes she is not just meeting one great love again, but two. Larry (Miles Teller) is the husband she spent six decades with. Luke (Callum Turner) is the first husband who died in the Korean War just as their marriage began. Both want to spend eternity with her. That choice is as messy as it sounds, stirring up old heartbreak and the life that might have been.
Olsen on why she keeps finding these stories
Talking in London while promoting the film, Olsen said she did not go into this thinking about Wanda or trying to repeat anything. She is not out there hunting grief dramas either. Each job had its own draw. For His Three Daughters, her 2024 Netflix drama about three estranged sisters caring for their dying father, she signed on because writer-director Azazel Jacobs is a friend and was working through his own fears about losing his aging parents. She loved getting to make it with Natasha Lyonne and Carrie Coon. With Eternity, she said the appeal was the opposite of wallowing: it is about what keeps going, not what ends.
"There is such an emphasis on where you want to go, which eternity you want to choose. And at the end, really, it is about who you want to spend it with. And I think that is beautiful."
- Elizabeth Olsen plays Joan, weighing forever between Larry (Miles Teller), her husband of 60 years, and Luke (Callum Turner), the first husband she lost in the Korean War.
Release
Eternity is in US theaters now and opens in UK cinemas on December 5.