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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is now a pretty unequivocal hit, more or less proving that it wasn’t a fluke and Marvel is Jim Henson levels of good at making us empathize with incredibly goofy cartoons like Groot and Rocket. With a sequel already announced by Marvel, it’s already time for sites like mine to start wildly speculating about what we might see.
Even though the film hasn’t been written yet there were some pretty much hints towards future storylines in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and James Gunn has said that he already has a sketched out idea for the third film and how it will allegedly set-up the new mega-story for Marvel Phase 4. Additionally, the Guardians of the Galaxy may not have been major Marvel heroes throughout their career but they do have a fairly notable and bizarre history all their own worth digging into to figure out where things might be going next.
THE ORIGINAL GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Given it’s been 3 years since the first film came out there’s a good chance you’ve probably already heard that the version of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the movies isn’t the original version of the team. The first Guardians popped up in the ‘70s as part of something called the Korvac Quest, which I’ll explain a little later on.
They were freedom fighters from the distant future in an age where alien overlords had enslaved mankind and most of the galaxy. The team was made up of mostly artificial life forms created by humanity for space colonization like Charlie-27, a giant designed to survive under Jupiter’s gravity, or Martinex, a crystal dude built to channel thermal energy on Pluto.
The most notable member of the original team was…Yondu, because in making the first movie they decided to include him in the new roster. Now in the second film, it’s established Yondu used to run with a crew similar to Peter Quill and his friends, a crew we see in the film’s final moments.
That crew IS the original Guardians of the Galaxy and they even get a brief post-credits scene where they agree to reunite after Yondu’s death. I don’t know how this original version of the team will shake out in the sequel or if they’ll even have a big role to play but seeing the Guardians go up against essentially the original versions of themselves would be really cool and something not even the comics have given us.
ADAM WARLOCK, HER, MAGUS
Adam Warlock has been lurking around the edges of the cosmic corner of the MCU since Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 so it feels a bit overdue to see him pop up already. Frankly, given how large a role he played in the original Infinity Gauntlet AND Infinity War comics I’m a little shocked he hasn’t appeared already. In any case, Adam Warlock is this bizarre orange looking dude who emerged from a cocoon as the ideal genetic being. Honestly, his background is pretty muddled and unrewarding, he’s more or less like a cosmic organic version of the vision: grown in a cocoon, very powerful, the future of an idea, and usually carrying an Infinity Stone, in his case the Soul Stone.
Adam’s cocoon, or at least we thought it was his cocoon, first appeared in the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 in the background of the Collector’s vault. However, now Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 seems to have introduced a second cocoon created by the sovereign with Adam’s name specifically attached to it. That actually fits Adam’s character, as he exists a sort of a neutral midpoint in the “ideal beings” department.
Aside from Adam Warlock he has two basically evil clones: the Magus and Her. The Magus is a purple version of Adam who’s dedicated to evil and was the main villain of the Infinity War comics. 'Her' was a “lawful evil” type character dedicated to trying to blow up the universe and served as the main villain of Infinity Crusade. Honestly, I could believe any one of these three characters would show up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 or even all three of them. The fact we’ve got two cocoons floating around makes me think we’ll probably see an Adam Warlock vs. Magus type story as it would definitely fit the family drama style of the MCU as a whole.
THE BADOON
So remember how earlier I mentioned that the original Guardians of the Galaxy were freedom fighters in a future where alien overlords enslaved humanity? Well, time to meet those overlords: the Badoon. They’re basically alien lizard men, though in continuity they’re the off-shoots of a shape-shifter race called the Skrull. The Skrull were actually going to be the original bad guys in Avengers before Joss Whedon nixed it and are now rumored to be antagonists in the upcoming Captain Marvel film so fitting their cousins the Badoon into continuity is a lateral move that makes sense.
The big question with the Badoon as cinematic villains is that they’d be a whole race of bad guys, which would be a tougher fit for the Guardians as loveable rogues. Even in Vol. 2 where the Sovereign’s forces were chasing them across the galaxy, they weren’t the MAIN bad guy- that was Ego. In that regard, I don’t think the Badoon will appear as the central antagonists but they could definitely be a deadly force helping push the adventure along.
There’d be an easy space for them to slide into the universe given that Thanos is going to need to destroy the Nova Corp to get the Power Stone and the Badoon could exploit the power vacuum. What’s more, it’d be nice to the original Guardians team go head-to-head with one of their initial antagonists.
THE INHUMANS
So this will depend a lot on how that Inhumans TV show Marvel is still making shakes out but depending on that I feel like the Guardians might actually be the perfect place to slot these characters. If you don’t know, the Inhumans are a race of genetically altered beings created by the Kree, the alien race that Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 belonged to.
The Inhumans usually stay on Earth but in the mid-2000s someone made the brilliant realization that the Inhumans were made by aliens to be living weapons so you might as well have them BE living weapons for said aliens. It was a pretty cool story where the Kree captured the Inhumans to use as commandos only for the Inhumans to turn the tables and actually end up the emperors of the entire Kree space nation.
Look, cards on the table, I really don’t think the Inhumans TV show is going to take off with people but that will end up leaving Marvel with a whole lot of money and time poured into a group of characters no one cares about with nothing to do with them. Now that’s actually not a huge problem for a shared universe because the whole point of this experiment is that you can just throw characters together willy-nilly and see what you get, like putting Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok. So having the Inhumans pop up as Guardians of the Galaxy supporting cast playing a similar role to Ronan or the Sovereign or even the Nova Corp, basically cool sci-fi set dressing, might be the best way to go with these guys.
IRON MAN
This is probably one of the least likely entries on this list given the state of Iron Man in the MCU but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least bring it up. As part of the Marvel Now comic book adventures of the Guardians of the Galaxy Iron Man actually joined the team in a space armor costume.
It was a weird idea and it didn’t really end up sticking but that was more due to how quickly Marvel was relaunching comics at the time. It was such a big set-up moment at a time when the comics were coming more and more to reflect the films that people actually thought the Iron Man 3 post-credits scene was going to be Tony going to space to help out the Guardians.
Now, as I said, Iron Man’s position in the MCU is pretty precarious at this point. Robert Downey Jr. seems fairly done with the role that brought his career back from oblivion and I can’t say I super blame him after 10 years as Tony Stark. However, there are plenty of post-Tony Stark options for the Iron Man mantel like Rhodey, Pepper Pots was an armored hero for a time, Riri Williams enjoyed her own big comic book push, and there’s even Tony’s brother Arno Stark who was canonically the Iron Man of 2020.
So it’s still incredibly possible that Marvel might launch some new version of Iron Man into outer space to team-up with the Guardians, especially given that by the time the 2020s roll around the Guardians will be the old hand heroes and this new Iron Man will be the new kid on the block.
THE CANCER-VERSE
This is a weird one and would honestly be pretty hard to do but if they did pull it off I think people would get a real kick out of it. Back before the Guardians of the Galaxy had a movie deal in the works but after that dystopian space future version one, I told you about earlier there was a middle version of the team.
This version sprung out of the event Annihilation: Conquest and basically served as the rough draft of what the team would become, bringing together folks like Rocket and Groot and Drax and Gamora. The was the version of the team involved with the Inhumans when they took over the Kree empire in an event called War of Kings. The follow-up to that event involved a giant rift in space and time they connected to a parallel reality called the Cancer-verse.
The Cancer-Verse was a reality where, in an effort to save the life of a fallen comrade, the Marvel heroes had sold their souls to the many-angled ones from beyond our space. It’s a whole world of strange and nightmarish monster version of the MCU heroes. It was a really cool comic and featured the brilliant idea of teaming up the Guardians with Thanos himself to defeat this alternate reality invasion because Thanos is a servant of death and the Cancer-verse is a world without death in any form.
Again, this is kind of a much bigger universal threat than the Guardians normally handle it but it’s honestly one of the best stories they’ve ever been a part of so I’d love to see it get the movie treatment.
KORVAC
Here’s the other original Guardians of the Galaxy concept I mentioned earlier- Korvac. Korvac was a Guardians villain in the future, a human slave who was fused with his workstation after being dubbed lazy by his Badoon overlords. This proved unwise as it allowed Korvac to analyze and synthesize the energy of Galactus, devourer of worlds. Basically, this turned Korvac from a random slave into one of the most powerful entities in the universe, so powerful in fact he tried to back in time and conquer the galaxy pre-Badoon takeover. It was a big story called the Korvac Quest that actually teamed up the original Guardians with the Avengers.
Now obviously the Guardians and Avengers are already going to be teaming up in Infinity War but I still think Korvac could make for a useful antagonist. He’s about of the same threat level as Ronan and Ego- an extremely powerful singular dude who could threaten everything the Guardians hold dear, so he’s a bit more in their wheelhouse than trying to face an entire universe or even a space empire. What’s more, his origin as a slave could tie into Yondu’s past and touches on some of the same beats of dehumanization that have informed the entire Guardians aesthetic so far.
Obviously, the biggest obstacle with him would be factoring his origin as a future human into things, especially as his power flows from Galactus. I’d like it if they kept the future human side of things, as it could be a nice way to yoke previous elements like the original Guardians team and the Badoon together around some kind of impending future the team needs to avert. Overall it’d be nice to see the Guardians films draw on some of the more foundational comic book stories for the team, though the thoroughly original stuff they’ve put out so far has been equally good.
GALACTUS
Okay, yes, I just made a point about how it’d be difficult to do a character because of his relation to Galactus but this is a prediction I stand by. Rumors have been flying since forever about Marvel’s desire to get their hands on the Galactus/Silver Surfer rights and the fact they finally greenlit some X-Men TV shows for Fox after 2015’s failed Fant4stic film seems to imply they might’ve gotten them. Whatever the case “what if Galactus” is still a pretty fun hypothetical and honestly, given how thoroughly Marvel has annihilated all the competition, it feels kind of inevitable that they’ll end up with Galactus sooner or later anyway.
What would be so interesting about doing Galactus as an antagonist for the Guardians of the Galaxy is that he’s not something they could realistically fight. He’s a force of nature more than anything else, albeit one that looks like a big dude in a weird helmet, but it’d basically make the movie more of a space opera disaster flick, which would definitely be new territory for these characters.
Seeing the Guardians try to just evacuate one single planet would be a pretty cool exploration of their concept and I think it’d be a nice fit for the tighter, more intimate and character-driven scenes that actually make up a lot of why this franchise is so enjoyable.
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