When James Gunn started hyping up Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, which is his third Guardians movie and his last work for Marvel Studios for the foreseeable future as he now heads off to run DC Studios, he promised an ending for the franchise, and he delivered one. Nobody died a la Vision, Natasha Romanoff or Tony Stark, but just about every key character arc of each of the individual team members was quite neatly and definitely concluded. As trilogy cappers go, it was reminiscent of some pretty satisfying third installments from different franchises, like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or The Bourne Ultimatum. I specifically mention those two movies because the very good work they did in wrapping up their respective trilogies was unceremoniously undone by ill-advised follow-ups which left both critics and audiences cold. With so many of their Phase Four releases floundering and with Phase Five having gotten off to a very wobbly start with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel might be tempted to lean on a property that, with its box office success, seems to have thrown a lifeline to a mega-franchise that has lost its way. Bitter experience, however, has shown that this might not be a very good idea. Still, money is money and it's virtually inevitable that someone, somewhere down the line, will want to greenlight another Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
When that day comes I sincerely hope that Marvel is able to answer, among themselves, the following questions, or something like them:
1. How do they address Adam Warlock's god-like powers?
Much ado was made about the casting of one-time child actor Will Poulter as the iconic Marvel character Adam Warlock, whose appearance in this film was teased in one of several post-credit scenes in the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie. To be fair, Marvel made good on their promise, but the problem is that they've created a character so powerful that he had to be removed from the story for prolonged chunks of time, kind of like Captain Marvel in Avengers: Endgame. The guy is basically indestructible, and even though this aspect of his character is played for laughs, it obviously posed a few story problems, and since Warlock ends the story as one of the good guys, Marvel are now faced with the problem that would have confronted the Captain Marvel film franchise if it weren't overshadowed by what a PR nightmare Brie Larson proved to be. It's the Superman conundrum.
The only way to pose a threat to Warlock is to confront him with a bad guy who is tougher than he is, or who can negate his power advantage somehow, and while it shouldn't be that hard to find a character that fits that description in Marvel's 5,000+ catalog of characters, this still highlights why it's important to have characters with defined vulnerabilities, because it makes the hero's journey all the more compelling. Marvel has to figure out how to handle this in a way that doesn't make their hypothetical sequel into a pissing contest about who's more powerful. Also, I hope they don't nerf him because that kind of sucks too. Remember how Bucky was virtually invincible as the Winter Soldier but was conspicuously less formidable in Falcon and the Winter Soldier against he likes of John Walker? Marvel should avoid that.
2. With the group broken up, will any of the original actors come back for any follow-ups?
It made perfect sense to leave the Guardians deep in space, far removed from the problems of the more Earth-bound Marvel heroes like Captain America or Spider-Man and to therefore insulate them from any potential overlap. So many post-Avengers solo Marvel movies where the hero faced problems on their own suffered from the awkward question "but where are the Avengers?" With the exception of Peter Quill, whose return in at least one more movie has been explicitly announced after the final post-credits scene, there is no need for any of the other characters to return as they can solve problems in their corner of the galaxy.
If they did revisit that corner, though, would they be able to get any of the original cast members back? Most of the actors involved have declared that they're done with their characters. It quite honestly wouldn't be the same recasting them as a key part of the chemistry between these characters was the actors' performances. Sure, they've brought in a bunch of new faces, but none of them have any defined personality or interactive chemistry yet, so they'll probably need familiar faces (or voices, in the case of Groot and Rocket) to anchor future stories, which means they'll either need to bring back some of the originals or (gasp) recast. On a related note...
3. Will they ever transition to new leadership for the team?
Of the new characters who comprise the Guardians during the first post-credits scene, the only one who's had any meaningful screen time is Adam Warlock, but it might be a little challenging to have him anchor the series moving forward, not just because he's hyper-powerful but because he is basically an infant in a hyper-powered adult's body. He's actually no different from Kai Zen's Phyla, the white-haired kid who has joined the team in the post-credits scene. Someone's got to be the adult from among the new members.
More importantly, though, and let's be honest here, from a commercial perspective one would need someone charismatic to anchor a huge franchise moving forward, someone like Robert Downey, Jr. or Chris Pratt, and right now they don't have that from any of the actors playing the new characters.
4. Is Marvel ready to plumb the depths of its cosmic corner?
While the first Avengers movie featured a full-on alien invasion, it wasn't until the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie that conversations about the cosmic portion the Marvel Universe, i.e. the whole chunk of Marvel's stories set in deep space, could begin in earnest. It introduced key characters like the Kree, the Nova Corps, and, of course Thanos, and laid the foundations for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The only other film so far that has dared wade into that corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been Captain Marvel, but despite the literal billions that the Guardians movies and Captain Marvel have collectively made at the global box office, Marvel doesn't seem all that keen on exploring that part of its universe.
It's notable that, ten full years after the first Guardians movie, Marvel has yet to introduce major space-based characters like Nova or the original Quasar (though Phyla is one of the latter Quasars). My hot take is if they do go back, they should be ready to introduce these new spacefaring characters and get serious about their deep-space worldbuilding.
5. Exactly what kind of adventures can Star-Lord have without the Guardians?
The irony of this question is that Star-Lord was conceived as a solo character by Steve Englehart and Steve Gan in 1976, so it theoretically shouldn't be hard to tell solo stories with him. In reality, though, he only really shot to prominence when he assumed leadership of the Guardians of the Galaxy...and that was in the comics. In the movies, his whole identity is tied into how he interacts with the other Guardians...in space. With him on Earth and away from his crew/family, Marvel will either have to write Quill very differently or find another ensemble for him to play off of in this planned solo film or film series. The problem with the latter solution is that any such team will no doubt feel like Guardians-lite.
The good news for Marvel is that Chris Pratt has proven to be a box-office draw outside of the MCU so he could probably sell whatever movie it is they're going to cook up. But it just seems to me that they've created a bit of a problem for themselves here. Only time will tell if they made the right call.
If Bob Iger is to be believed, Marvel probably won't be revisiting this property for a while, which is probably a good thing given the state of the the MCU brain trust right now, and given that the man responsible for this particular corner of the MCU has left the building, but to my mind, it's inevitable that they'll look in this direction every now and again, so I hope they consider points like the ones I raised above before they greenlight anything.
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