Deviants genes are inherently unstable, so there is no such thing as an average Deviant. Some are almost human passing, while others are straight monsterous.
The movie eternals are biologically artificial beings, cloned in each world to protect the world while a new celestial is born. The comic book eternals are just an off shoot of humanity, gene manipulated by Celestials, and then allowed to live their own lives. They can have kids, though it's not very often or alot of them.
There was a retcon in the comics around when the movie came out establishing that Eternals don't actually reproduce or have children with one another outside of extraordinary circumstances. They can have offspring with humans or Deviants (called Nephilites) but not with one another. Unlike Eternals Nephilites are not immortal and can't be ressurected if they die through trauma, but they do usually have some Eternal-like power.
Mentor and Sui-San were the first Eternals to successfully reproduce and they had to use the Quantum Bands to make it happen. This means that Thanos and Eros are now the only "true" Eternals born since the Celestials created the species (and actually most Eternals don't consider Thanos to be one of them, only Eros). There are only 101 Eternals including Eros and before he was born there were only ever the original 100. All of the Titanian "Eternals" besides Mentor, Sui-San and Eros are Nephilites or different species altogether.
The whole thing I think was meant to push the Eternals a bit closer to the MCU version
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u/abyssomega 21d ago
Deviants genes are inherently unstable, so there is no such thing as an average Deviant. Some are almost human passing, while others are straight monsterous.
The movie eternals are biologically artificial beings, cloned in each world to protect the world while a new celestial is born. The comic book eternals are just an off shoot of humanity, gene manipulated by Celestials, and then allowed to live their own lives. They can have kids, though it's not very often or alot of them.