Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
If confounded looks spurred on by cameos are the measure of a great Marvel movie, then Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a great Marvel movie. The film, which raked in $145 million domestically in its opening weekend, gives subtle shout outs to characters that longtime Marvel readers never thought they’d see on the big screen. It’s appropriate that those shout outs come in a film starring a cast of characters that were similarly obscure before the first Guardians film became a surprise mega-hit in 2014.
In true Marvel Studios fashion, most of these either head-scratching or fist-pumping cameos come during Guardians v2’s many the post-credits scenes. Obviously this is major spoiler territory, so turn away unless you’ve seen the film or have a burning desire to read about obscure Silver/Bronze Age Marvel characters.
Ready? Here we go!
The Watchers
Two of the post-credits scenes are actually set up during the course of the film. The first comes about halfway through when Rocket and Yondu are piloting their ship through hundreds of wormholes. They fly over a planet that’s home to a Stan Lee cameo—and perhaps the most jaw-dropping of all the deep-cut Marvel characters included in the film. In the quick scene, we see a spacesuit-wearing Lee regaling a group of cape-wearing and bald aliens with tales of his exploits. Those bald aliens are the Watchers, a race of cosmic beings devoted to observing the events of the universe as they unfold around them. They’ve taken an oath of non-interference, meaning they are usually dropped into stories to add a sense of importance (“Oh crap, a Watcher is here? That means this battle is serious.”). Like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, many thought that the Watchers were a Fox property and therefore off-limits for Marvel. After all, the first Watcher debuted in 1963’s Fantastic Four #13 and has maintained strong ties to the FF ever since. This cameo blows that assumption apart. Now it looks like both Marvel and Fox own the rights to the character, and Guardians director James Gunn may have revealed how such a thing could happen in a tweet from last summer.
In both their in-movie and post-credits appearances, we only see a group of Watchers and not one specific Watcher. In the comics, Earth’s Watcher is named Uatu and over the decades he’s become a distinct character in his own right. Unlike many of his Watcher buds, Uatu interferes in Earth’s happenings on a semi-regular basis. It’s possible that Fox owns the rights to Uatu while both Marvel and Fox own the rights to the Watchers.
The OG Guardians
We also meet Sylvester Stallone’s character, a Ravager captain named Stakar Ogord, early on in the film. Marvel fans will probably recognize Stakar by his flashy codename: Starhawk. While you can’t tell from Stallone’s gruff and grumbly performance, the comic book version of Starhawk is an immensely powerful cosmic being that regularly defies the laws of time and space. The Marvel Comics Starhawk is also a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy—but not those Guardians of the Galaxy.
Here’s where things get a little complicated, and it dovetails nicely with the roll-call of Ravagers we see at the end of the film during Yondu’s (Michael Rooker) funeral. There’s a whole other team of Guardians from the comics, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 brings them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the first time. The gist is, the very first Guardians team debuted in 1969’s Marvel Super-Heroes #18 as a ragtag team of extraterrestrial heroes from the 31st century. That team included Yondu, Vance Astro, Charlie-27 and Martinex. Later on, the husband/wife pair Stakar and Aleta Ogord (both have used the Starhawk codename) joined the team, as did the android Mainframe and the wormlike alien Krugarr. The Guardians we all know and love (the Star-Lord/Gamora/Drax/Rocket/Groot lineup) didn’t appear in the comics until 2008. Unlike the original 31st century Guardians, the 2008 lineup existed in the modern Marvel Universe.
Got all that? Yeah, it’s a lot.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 brings the 31st century Guardians team into the MCU fold, albeit as various captains of Ravager factions. During that funeral roll-call scene, we see Starhawk (Stallone) and the crystal-headed Martinex (Michael Rosenbaum), Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames), and Aleta Ogord (Michelle Yeoh). In one of the post-credits scenes, Starhawk decides to get his old team back together — and that team is, basically, the 31st century Guardians of the comics. In addition to Starhawk, Martinex, Charlie-27 and Aleta, the lineup includes the alien Krugarr and the artificial intelligence Mainframe (voiced by Miley Cyrus). Whether or not we’ll see this team on film again remains unclear, but a Marvel movie starring Stallone, Rhames, Yeoh and Cyrus sure sounds bizarrely appealing.
Adam Warlock
The post-credits cameos don’t end there, either, as another scene shifts focus back to the gold-plated race of — as Rocket called them — douchebags, the Sovereign. The scene finds Sovereign high priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) wallowing in defeat and vowing revenge. She reveals that she’s built something that will allow them to take on the Guardians, a new member of the Sovereign that’s more powerful than any that have come before. She’s named him…Adam.
She’s talking about Adam Warlock, a character that rapidly rose to prominence in the early 70s. Warlock is another gold-skinned and artificially-created being, one that possesses enormous strength and power. After debuting as a personality-less android in Fantastic Four #66, the character received a full-blown Jesus Christ Superstar (no joke) makeover courtesy of Roy Thomas and Gil Kane for his return in 1972’s Marvel Premiere #1. A few years later, writer/artist Jim Starlin (the guy that also created Thanos, Drax and Gamora) moved Warlock to the center of Marvel’s expanding cosmic universe. For around 30 years, Marvel’s cosmic line centered on Adam Warlock, his sidekicks Gamora and Drax, and their mission to destroy Thanos.
Warlock’s arrival in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a big deal for a number of reasons. He’s a major character in the comics and was also a member of the 2008 Guardians team. His arrival was also teased in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, when eagle-eyed fans spotted what appeared to be Adam’s cocoon in the Collector’s collection. That turned out to be an unintentional (?) misdirect, as Adam’s mechanical cocoon was revealed in Guardians Vol. 2’s post-credits scene.
What does it all mean?!
Most importantly, Adam Warlock’s debut may lead to the reveal of the final Infinity Stone. Almost all of the Marvel movies are linked together by one overarching plot: the mega-villain Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) quest to gather all of the Infinity Stones and attain ultimate power. There are six of them, and five of them have so far been used as MacGuffins in other Marvel movies (the Tesseract, the Aether, the Power Stone, Loki’s scepter, the Eye of Agamotto). The one stone we haven’t seen yet is the Soul Stone; in the comics, that’s the stone that Adam Warlock carried around on his forehead. It’s entirely possible that the Sovereign have the Soul Stone and have used it to power their new weapon named Adam.
Of course, we won’t find out if that’s the case until next year’s Avengers: Infinity War — or possibly not until the third, still unscheduled Guardians of the Galaxy film. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sets up so many new characters, there’s really no telling when — or where — any of these threads will be picked up again.
