The Fantastic Four: First Steps Final Trailer Reveals How Galactus Devours Earth

Marvel Studios just dropped the final trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Among other things, that trailer includes speaking lines for Julia Garner's Silver Surfer and a closer glimpse of Ralph Ineson's Galactus. The trailer stops short of showing Galactus' face (despite the fact that the movie's merch has already revealed it), but we do get a real sense of the massive scope and imposing menace of this hungry villain.

In fact, the trailer even seems to reveal exactly how Galactus plans to carry out his plan of devouring Earth in the movie. It's all thanks to one brief but important shot. Read on to learn how Galactus will eat the Fantastic Four's home planet.

How Will Galactus Actually Consume the Earth?

One of the more mysterious shots in the final trailer shows a massive device in Paris. This machine, composed of strange, arcing metal, seems to be beaming energy into the sky. Is this one of Reed Richards’ inventions? Probably not. We’d guess this device is key to how Galactus is actually going to eat the planet.

In the comics, Galactus normally relies on a device called an Elemental Converter to help him consume planets. As massive as he is, Galactus isn’t actually big enough to just swallow planets in one gulp. His Elemental Converter helps him break down the matter and organic material of a planet and convert it into sustenance to satiate his endless hunger. That’s not to say the Devourer isn’t above just literally chomping down on a planet if he’s feeling impatient, but that’s not how he normally prefers to prepare his meals.

We’re probably seeing the Elemental Converter in action in the trailer. We assume Galactus and Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer deploy these arc-like devices at various spots across the globe to begin the process of converting Earth into food. So it stands to reason that if Reed and his family have any hope of stopping Galactus, they need to strike at these machines and cut off Galactus’ food supply.

Will they actually succeed? That’s really the big question leading into First Steps (well, that and whether we’re going to see any of Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom). Something needs to give the FF a reason to jump ship from their home universe and cross over into the MCU. We already see them fleeing to a new world in the post-credits scene of The New Avengers. Could they be escaping the destruction of their Earth at Galactus’ hands? That’s a sobering thought, and it would be an unexpected, though very interesting, way to cap off the Fantastic Four’s first MCU movie.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters on July 25, 2025. For more on the new film, find out why it's such a big deal that Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm is pregnant and brush up on every Marvel movie and series in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.