Kingo was so much more than I expected.
I thought he was gonna be one-note comic relief– the vain, self-obsessed one. Good for a couple laughs, if that, and maybe one or two cool fight scenes.
But Kingo was great and had so much heart. He had a good relationship with Makkari, he bantered nicely with Gilgamesh, and in general seemed to have the most solid connections within the team. And he was perceptive because of it– he was the one who had Sprite figured out in a way that it didn’t seem like anybody else did. Like he really saw her and paid attention.
And you can see his relationship with the other Eternals come through in his movies. First of all because he said he loved movies because of Sprite. It was her storytelling that inspired him. But secondly, when he was making a movie about the Eternals, he didn’t make himself the big hero (which is what your typical “vain movie star” character would do)– the movie he’s making is about Ikaris. And Kingo’s love and respect for the others is shown in Karun too– Karun only has what Kingo has told him to go on and his takeaway is intense admiration for all the Eternals. Kingo hasn’t been sitting around talking himself up at the expense of the others, he’s been bragging about his family to anyone who will listen.
Going back for a second that he picked Ikaris to be the main character of his movie trilogy, that’s also a really interesting relationship. It wasn’t totally clear from the movie itself but based on interviews it seems like Ikaris was the battlefield leader, since Ajak herself wasn’t a fighter. And so Kingo has this sort of loyalty to his captain, and an intense respect for him. It’s Ikaris who Kingo wants to follow when Ajak dies, Ikaris who he takes his cues from. And even though it’s not the right choice, I love what it shows about Kingo when he follows Ikaris out and goes “if you lead, I will follow you like I always have”. That loyalty forged on the battlefield between brothers (and the sheer tragedy of Ikaris betraying all that trust and loyalty).
There’s also the way that Kingo relates to humans. It seems like, out of all of them, he’s the one who’s been the most stable. Some of them (Gil, Thena, Ajak, Makkari) have been in one place but isolated; Sersi and Sprite were among people but must have been moving around frequently; Druig has an interesting relationship with his little cult but that’s a subject for a different post; who knows what Ikaris was up to. But Kingo has been in roughly the same place for a century. He must have disappeared and reappeared some to keep his cover but in at least some instances he seems to have been around people for a long time. I think they said that Karun had worked for him since he was a young man. From this, Kingo seems to genuinely care, especially about Karun who he actually trusts with a lot. But I think in being more stable and seeing these generations pass he has more of an acceptance of humans dying– not because he doesn’t care about them but because it’s part of the natural cycle of things.
Which in part contributes to his position at the end where he’s against stopping the Emergence. He’s loyal, he’s a soldier, he’s caring but he’s also used to watching that cycle of life and death and accepting that. But it’s that loyalty that seems to win out in him, though it’s a loyalty that won’t choose. He wants to be loyal to Arishem and to Ikaris and to the other Eternals and ultimately he can’t be loyal to everyone. But fundamentally Kingo will not make that choice and so he just leaves. And I can’t really say that that’s the right choice but it certainly makes it an interesting one.
And after all is said and done he’s right back there– supporting Sersi, looking out for Sprite– trying to pick up the pieces of his family.
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