Warning: The following article contains spoilers from Thor: Love and Thunder
The MCU trailers have the infamous reputation for misleading fans with promises that they have no plans of following through on. But no betrayal has hit us harder than the barely-there presence of the Guardians of the Galaxy in Thor: Love and Thunder when the trailers for the films seemingly hinted they would be in the thick of things and probably aid Thor in his fight against Gorr. And while the film doesn’t provide any obvious answers about the Guardians’ future in the MCU, there are enough breadcrumbs to piece together a plausible answer.
Spoilers ahead.
Guardians of the Galaxy’s warp speed cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder
At the beginning of Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor is seen with the Guardians, his “ragtag motley crew of misfit desperados,” and is busy hogging their spotlight as he single-handedly wins a battle. We soon learn that the Guardians, along with the temporary members, had been catering to distress calls from different planets where Gorr had killed Gods on his revenge spree.
But they soon part ways as, while assessing the countless distress calls, Thor notices one from his old friend, Lady Sif, who begs for help against Gorr. Star-Lord suggests that Thor should go to save Lady Sif sans the Guardians as they have too many places their help is needed and the best idea would be to split up. While it makes total sense, we have a sneaking suspicion that the God of Thunder’s crazy goats — who scream loud enough to wake the dead — probably were the major reason fueling the suggestion.
Though the official trailer of the film seemed to point at an adventure where the Guardians would join forces with the God of Thunder, Love and Thunder ended up being an exclusive Team Thor escapade. They left minutes after making their appearance and didn’t pop back up, not even for a passing post-credit scene or to answer one of MCU’s current pressing questions — where in the Universe is Gamora? (or “What is Gamora?”). So, where did they go?
What are the Guardians of the Galaxy up to?
It is hard to imagine that after what we have seen the Guardians doing in the film, the team would simply be seen on some other out-of-the-blue mission the next time we see them. While Thor: Love and Thunder does feel rather disconnected from the rest of the MCU — even more than Moon Knight — it would be foolish to believe that there won’t be any far-reaching consequences of Gorr’s God-killing crusade or that it all wrapped up with his death.
Unless the MCU is planning to forget that Thor 4 exists, it won’t be too far-fetched to say that while Thor was busy fighting Gorr, the Guardians were stuck dealing with the mess he made on other planets by killing Gods, which includes the resultant power vacuum as well as the ensuing chaos. While Kang remains the big bad of Phase Four, we can expect the after-effects of Gorr butchering the Gods to be felt in the next few Marvel projects, especially where the Guardians are concerned.
It is safe to say that when they left Thor, Korg, and the screaming goats-slash-banshees — aka Toothgrinder and Toothgnasher — they made their way to another planet in dire need of quick help in dispatching some world-ending phenomena or perhaps a baddie who reared their head after some all-powerful God died.
Given the MCU’s rather convoluted timeline at the moment, it remains to be seen where the future adventures of the Guardians will fit in — will they be putting out the Gorr-induced chaos at the same time as the events of Love and Thunder or will they be strictly dealing with what happens after? We also have to entertain the possibility that MCU might not have any long-term plans for Gorr and his massacre.
In that case, the upcoming Holiday Special on Disney Plus may see James Gunn wrapping up the loose strings of Thor’s latest heroic adventure while hopefully answering where the alternate Gamora is as well as whether there is any hope for Star-Lord to actually have a love story going forward. This in turn will allow his favorite team to tackle their super-exclusive mission — which will include facing off against their new, super-powerful adversary, Adam Warlock — in the director’s last film with them, i.e., Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which will serve as the conclusion of the trilogy.
Thor: Love and Thunder is currently in theaters.