Comic-Con Experience 2022 graced us with an official taste of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 yesterday, and it looks like James Gunn will be treating us to a galaxy-sized tearjerker come springtime next year.
The eponymous mercenaries will have quite a bit to juggle; the film is set to introduce Rocket Raccoon’s home planet of Halfworld, where he appears to reunite with his anthropomorphic sea otter soulmate Lady Lylla, as well as the appearances of Will Poulter’s Adam Warlock and Chukwudi Iwuji’s High Evolutionary, who will likely be the two halves of the group’s biggest threat this time around. With a Gamora variant also still lurking somewhere in the cosmos, Vol. 3 just might be the most packed swansong we’ve gotten out of Marvel Studios thus far.
With this being our final farewell to the group, it takes a hefty amount of denial to think that everyone’s going to make it out alive, especially considering all the sobbing and emotional gut-punches that Gunn has sprinkled throughout the trailer. Early consensus declared that Rocket would be meeting his end in Vol. 3, and while he’s not completely off the table, the masses of r/marvelstudios are all but confident that a new front-runner for that fateful bucket kick has emerged.
Said front-runner is Drax, the de facto boneheaded muscle of the group. Dave Bautista, has also declared that he won’t be doing any more Marvel movies after Vol. 3. It may not be the grounds for a sendoff we want, but Drax’s death remains a high possibility nonetheless.
The near-certainty of Drax aside, others are wise to the possibility that this variant of Gamora will also be biting the dust. Otherwise, the MCU could fall victim to an incursion, and even though such an event could very well become a plot device, writing around a nigh-unstoppable universe-ending collision might be a bit too strenuous for the rest of Marvel’s scribes.
Others think that Rocket will actually be a survivor, and that Gunn’s trailer shenanigans are intended to throw us off the scent, and subsequently the rest of the team’s fate.
Who would’ve thought that one of the most tongue-in-cheek franchises in the MCU would end on such a sob-worthy finale? Whoever we end up crying for, we can take solace in the fact that the newest Guardians member, Cosmo the Spacedog, will still be safe and sound, because every film studio knows by now that the dog must be left alone.