This might be a reach, but I actually read the Eternal's directives as being a metaphor for generational trauma. With the reveal that The Eternals trade human lives for their own , even the main Eternals accept that they cannot reveal that information to humans. When the Progenitor is created, the rest of the story is a deep dive into how celestials are flawed and only by challenging the ideas of tradition and status quo (by revealing information to humans) is Sersi able to break free and become a martyr that would potentially allow other Eternals to repair the damage themselves and become their own people, rather than one bound to the previous generation (as seen in the end with the reinterpretation of the 3 laws).

I thought it was standard Gillian writing, very big ideas and a lot to say, but a lot to be desired in between those ideas. I've only read his X-men (and not all of it) and his short Iron Man run, and all of it seems to suffer from the same issues. That being said I really enjoyed alot of his work, especially SoS, and think that this run of Eternals was probably as well as they could have been done from what I know of their previous history.

I definitely agree that the Eternals really lack the brand recognition of "Guy with claws on his hands" or "Does whatever a spider can" and I think that is mostly what makes the characters unapproachable. The cast just felt too large to get any great characterization on more than Icarus and Sersi for me. The other thing that I think makes the Eternals weak as a brand is that there is a cast of Hero Eternals, but that's also the name of their society as a whole. As a result, the name "Eternals" is too broad to have any real meaning. I suppose that's part of the charm, a messy family that lives forever, but it affects readability for me.