James Gunn loves both teasing and trolling his fans in equal measure, revealing that Disney Plus’ The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special will feature the debut of who he believes will be one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s best-ever characters, before gently ribbing his followers during the Facebook outage by claiming he’d just posted the legendary Easter Egg from the first Guardians people have been trying to uncover for over seven years.
The franchise’s band of intergalactic misfits are an irreverent bunch at the best of times, so the thought of them headlining their own festive spectacular is certainly intriguing, especially when Gunn confirmed that it’ll be official MCU canon. We’ve got no idea what the filmmaker has in store, other than likely being suitably weird and wonderful, but a new report from Geekosity wonders if Richard Rider’s Nova could make a surprise appearance.
We’ve been hearing talk that the fan favorite superhero has been on his way to the MCU for years, with the Nova Corps strongly and directly tied to the Guardians of the Galaxy mythology, but you’d imagine Gunn would be saving any potential introduction for Vol. 3 rather than a one-off TV event.
Little-known Micronauts favorite Bug is also mentioned, which would make sense when Gunn clearly has an affinity for the character having included him in an early draft of Guardians of the Galaxy before being incorrectly informed by Disney that they didn’t have the rights. It could even be Santa Claus given that he’s made numerous comic book appearances over the years, but we won’t find out until The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special comes to streaming next year.