The MCU has struggled to find its footing and larger purpose since Avengers: Endgame. And although Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 doesn't solve that problem--it's almost entirely self-contained, narratively speaking--it is unabashedly fun and varied, reminding us why we loved these movies so much in the first place.
There's the signature comedic wit and superhero action, but there's also space for genuine sentiment and unsettling, creepy body horror. The story springs from the characters rather than the plot. And it relies on the past movies to build its emotional stakes, instead of setting up tangential narratives that might pay off years from now.
The Guardians are also some of the final members of the MCU old guard—the original team-up of superheroes that beat Thanos and saved the universe. And now that their arc is complete, Marvel must rely on its Phase 4 characters to carry things forward.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 debuted with a domestic weekend gross of $118.4 million, more than Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but not as much as these movies used to earn in the MCU's heyday before the pandemic. It's going to take something really special to match those prior heights.
Here are 20 Easter Eggs and trivia facts in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 that you might have missed.
1. Marvel Studios Intro
The movie does not have the standard Marvel intro. Instead of the flybys of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, we get a montage of clips and quotes from the prior Guardians movies (plus the Holiday Special). It drives home that this is Gunn's final Guardians movie before he heads over to DC.
2. I'm A Weirdo
The song that Rocket is singing to himself during the opening credits is an acoustic version of Radiohead's "Creep," which was originally released in 1993.
3. The Good Ship Bowie
The new Guardians ship is called The Bowie, after rock musician David Bowie. It is their third ship; Quill's first ship was The Milano, after Quill's childhood crush Alyssa Milano. After The Milano was destroyed in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2., the Guardians got a new ship named The Benatar, after rock singer Pat Benatar.
4. Magus?
We get the debut of Marvel character Adam Warlock in this movie. In the comics, Adam is one of the most powerful beings in existence, and was engineered by the High Evolutionary to be perfect. In the movie, he has the same basic origin, but he's a bit childlike and immature; his mother says he was removed from his cocoon too early. He starts the movie as a villain who's hunting down Rocket, though he eventually becomes a hero and a member of the new Guardians team under Rocket's leadership.
In the comics, Adam has an evil counterpart version of himself named Magus, who could be a high-level MCU villain sometime in the near future.
5. "Hurts"
Rocket's first word is "hurts," which really drives home the cruelty with which the High Evolutionary experimented on him.
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
The multicolored space suits are a homage to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also deals with the evolution of lower life forms into intelligent beings.
7. Jennifer Holland Cameo
The woman who Gamora shoots in the leg is played by actress Jennifer Holland, who is James Gunn's wife in real life and one of the stars of HBO Max's Peacemaker, which Gunn also writes and directs.
8. Lylla Retcon
When Nova Corps arrests Rocket in the first Guardians movie, his dossier mentions that one of his affiliates is Lylla. Lylla is the otter that Rocket meets in the High Evolutionary's lab, along with Teefs and Floor. But Lylla gets killed before Rocket even escapes the facility, which contradicts the prior movie's claim that she was an affiliate in Rocket's criminal activity. It'll be interesting to see if the MCU retcons this entirely on Disney+. In the past, the studio has made continuity corrections on both Ms. Marvel and WandaVision to better align with the movies and maintain consistency. So there is precedence for this type of post-production tinkering.
9. Statue Of Liberty
On Counter-Earth, we can see a reimagined version of the Statue of Liberty, with the High Evolutionary as Lady Liberty carrying a monkey rather than a tablet. This is right up there the ape Abraham Lincoln statue at the end of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, in terms of sheer ridiculousness.
10. Prisoner 24601
The way that the High Evolutionary spits out Rocket's test subject number as 89P13 is highly reminiscent of how in the Broadway musical Les Miserables, Inspector Javert refers to Jean Valjean as Prisoner #24601. Like Javert, the High Evolutionary is obsessed with capturing his foe. And like Valjean, Rocket spares his pursuer when he has the chance to kill him.
11. Howard the Duck And More
There are lots of cameos during the card game on Knowhere. We see Cosmo the dog, of course, but we also see Howard the Duck, who, like Cosmo, was part of the Collector's collection. We also see The Broker, who declined to buy the Power Stone from Quill in the first Guardians movie.
12. Sean Gunn's Many Roles
James Gunn's younger brother plays multiple roles in the Guardians movies. He plays Kraglin, and he does most of the motion capture work for Rocket. In Vol. 3, Gunn also plays the voice of Young Rocket during the flashback scenes.
13. Abilisk
The Guardians last fought an Abilisk in the opening sequence of Vol. 2, where it's portrayed as a fearful beast nearly capable of defeating the entire group by itself, So when the Guardians run into three Abilisks, it's meant to demonstrate how screwed they are. Last time, however, they didn't have Mantis with them, who is able to quickly bring them under her control.
14. F-Bomb
Vol. 3 has the MCU's first uncensored F-bomb, which Quill yells at Nebula while she's trying to open the car door. To get the F-Bomb past the ratings board, it has to occur deep into a movie, and it needs to be used in a pejorative context, not a sexual context.
15. Face-Off
Quill says, multiple times, that he's not walking into a trap with the High Evolutionary; he's having a faceoff. And at the film's climax, when the Guardians rip the High Evolutionary's face off, they fulfill this claim literally.
16. Creation Of Adam
At the moment where Adam Warlock saves Quill, they are posed exactly how Michelangelo posed God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
17. "I love you guys."
We hear Groot say " I love you guys," but many fans are theorizing that he actually said, "I am Groot." The implication is that after three movies, we as an audience finally understand Groot, and this is James Gunn's way of letting us into his world.
18. Dancing To Florence
The final song that the Guardians dance to is "Dog Days are Over" by Florence + The Machine. It is the first time that Drax dances after demonstrating multiple times, across three films, that he dislikes dancing and thinks it's for losers. The kids, however, are able to push him to it. Nebula's right: He's a father, first and foremost.
19. Mid-Credits Scene
We see the latest iteration of the Guardians in the mid-credits scene, consisting of Rocket, Groot, Kraglin, Cosmo, Adam Warlock, Phyla-Vell, and Blurp. In the comics, Phyla-Vell is conceived from the DNA of Kree warrior Mar-Vell, who was the first Captain Marvel that predated Carol Danvers.
20. Post-Credits Scene
The final scene is of Peter and his grandfather sitting at the kitchen table together. If you look at the newspaper, you can see that Kevin Bacon is telling the story of how he was abducted by aliens, which is a direct reference to the events of the Holiday Special
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