The Celestials are returning to pass judgment on Earth with Marvel's Judgment Day, right?

Marvel is beginning to beat the marketing drum for the upcoming summer event Judgment Day pitting the Eternals versus the X-Men, with the Avengers attempting to act as referees to quell the potential war, but we can't help but see something else on the horizon - something beyond heroes fighting other heroes.

Pardon us for skipping ahead to the eventual end, but the upcoming three-way fight between the Eternals, the Avengers, and the X-Men in Marvel Comics' marque 2022 comics event Judgment Day seems to be building towards the three heroic forces eventually setting aside their differences for a larger threat.

A threat that's teased in the name of the event, Judgment Day.

Earth is about to be judged, once again, by the Celestials.

Who are the Celestials?

Everyone's got to work for a living, even seemingly all-powerful beings like the Celestials. According to Marvel Comics lore, the Celestials nurture and cultivate the growth of civilizations on various planets through occasional visits every few eons called 'hosts.' Like in-laws visiting over the holidays, they're also prone to judging how things are going - and offer recommendations for how things should proceed. But if they feel the host planet is going down a bad road, they could judge against the planet continuing and... well, destroy it completely.

There have been five known 'hosts' visits to Earth by the Celestials, and during these visits the pseudo-space gods have managed to create the Eternals and Deviants, sink Atlantis, and tell Earth gods to stop interfering with Earth's evolution. Their last known visit was in 2018, but wasn't pre-planned, and ended up with both the Celestials and the Eternals all dying but being immediately resurrected. We also learned during that last visit that mutants and pretty much every superhuman on Earth that aren't just regular people with later enhancements like Captain America and Spider-Man are a byproduct of "Celestial vomit". 

Why would the Celestials come back now for Judgment Day?

That bit of information went largely untouched for three years, however. It's recently getting new attention during the build-up to Judgment Day just as the Eternals are attempting to reach out to the Celestials through the dead Celestial-turned-headquarters of the Avengers to help them figure out how to stop Thanos, who has usurped the throne of the Eternals on Earth.

This puts the Eternals and X-Men on a collision course of sorts with the Avengers seemingly caught in the middle, but that doesn't seem like the kind of judgment referred to in a title like 'Judgment Day.' 

With everything that's going on though, perhaps the Eternals will be able to place that call to the Celestials and they'll come a callin'. It would be dramatic for the Celestials to show up just as this hero vs. hero struggle begins to get brutal, and decide to hit the 'delete' button on Earth due to all these heroes fighting heroes struggles over the centuries. That's when the heroes - the Avengers, the X-Men, and Eternals - could put aside their differences for common cause, in classic superhero tradition.

Judgment Day begins May 7 with the Avengers/X_Men one-shot on Free Comic Book Day.

The 'hero vs. hero' struggle has been a staple of Marvel Comics even before there was a Marvel Comics.