Marvel Acknowledges Eternals' Sexism (& Has the Best Solution)
Warning: contains spoilers for Eternals: The Heretic #1!
In the new one-shot comic Eternals: The Heretic, Marvel introduces a new detail which addresses the franchise's former sexism in the ideal way. The Eternals are immortal beings created by the space gods known as Celestials, with the purpose to watch over humanity and ensure its continued survival and evolution. The Celestials created only one hundred Eternals on Earth, and they are unable to reproduce, placed into 'families' according to useful social structures rather than actual relation. The current Eternals ongoing series has established the idea that the Eternals are gender fluid (just on an immortal timeline, explaining why gender appeared fixed in prior stories.)
However, since their appearance in the mid-70s, Eternals stories have commonly revolved around male heroes, especially in regards to the ultra-powerful elders of the species, who rule over the rest. While Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribic's ongoing Eternals addressed this by having multiple characters resurrect with new gender presentations, the lore of Eternals' power structure remained solely focused on its mighty Patriarchs, the 'grandfathers' of the other Eternals. Marvel's Eternals: The Heretic addresses this in a creative and intriguing way.
The first issue of the series explains the importance of the Three Patriarchs, incredibly powerful Eternals who preside over a "dynasty" of their descendants: Uranos, Kronos, and Oceanus. It is revealed that their greatest power is that, when they enter the Uni-Mind (the godlike construct the Eternals use to come to take collective decisions), the Patriarchs control the votes of their whole lines. However, the same page also acknowledges the existence of previously unknown Matriarchs, saying: "For details on the Matriarchs' influence in this period and the Eternal concept of gender in dynasties, see [ERROR: SECTION DELETED]."
This one sentence retcons in the idea that the story of the Matriarchs has been covered up - likely by the Patriarchs - admitting that female Eternals have been underrepresented so far and creating an in-story reason for this that opens new avenues to be explored in future comics. This sets up the potential to correct the bias seen in the Eternals' original stories (and in most other comic books of the time), not by pretending it was never the case, but by openly acknowledging the sexism and addressing it on a meta level as an injustice carried out with an agenda in Eternal society.
It's a way of addressing Eternals' prior issues that is seemingly not just motivated by the desire to avoid criticism and charges of sexism, and allows the creators to pace out the changes they want to see believably, rather than trying to absolve Eternals all in one moment by suddenly having the Matriarchs show up and pretending they were always around. In this new framework, the Matriarchs can return, and even be woven into Eternals' history, as a distinctly compelling part of the narrative.
This careful mention of the Matriarchs is a thoughtful, compelling way of addressing the fact that the Eternals' most important members were almost entirely male by default, while the implied conspiracy and missing characters gets fans hyped to meet these new, likely powerful Eternals.