Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3: Everything We Know So Far

Since Guardians of The Galaxy came to our screens in 2014, fans of The Marvel Universe, as well as fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were blown away by this unorthodox team of superhero aliens.

Relatively unknown prior to their onscreen debut, the huge success of the franchise was both a gamble and a pleasant surprise to Marvel studios. Not only did its popularity take the MCU by storm, but it also changed the flavor of many of the other Marvel films. If you were to run through all the Marvel films in release order, you would see the rest of the films after GOTG take a far more humorous turn, some films like Thor Ragnarok almost come across as a parody of themselves.

Therefore after the end of Avengers Endgame, people are already craving to see the third installment of Guardians of The Galaxy, wondering what glorious gems could be brought our way. Even though not much has been confirmed, here's everything we know so far.

Guardians Of The Galaxy - Release Date, Trailer, Plot

Marvel has confirmed the release date of Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 will be May 5th, 2023. This is the furthest future release date Marvel has, with films like the blade reboot staying in the pipeline waiting to be confirmed.

Because it was rumored that filming only started in February 2021, the plot has been kept completely under wraps. Because scenes have only just started being shot, there is of course no official trailer that's been released and no confirmation of when that's likely to come out. However, there is still some speculation as to what Vol 3 will consist of.

Guardians of The Galaxy 3 Cast

We will of course be seeing the full Guardians Ensemble returning including Chris Pratt as Peter Quill (Star Lard), Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket The Raccoon, Karen Gill as Nebula, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer and Zoe Saldana as Gamora.

Many will have remembered the heartbreaking scene in Avengers Infinity War, in which Gamora was sacrificed by Thanos on the planet Vormir in order to retrieve the soul stone. This version of Gamora had made the Guardians her family and she had fallen in Peter Quill. It's impossible to bring someone back from the soul stone sacrifice, even with the infinity gauntlet.

Therefore, instead of the Gamora from Vol.2, we will be seeing the Gamora from 2014 who jumped forward in time with Thanos before betraying him and fighting with The Avengers in Endgame. Will she fall in love with Quill all over again in Vol.3? Will she fit straight into Guardians as she did before or will we see a challenge as she gets constantly compared to her parallel self within the group?

Guardians Of The Galaxy in Thor 4

May 2023 seems like such a long time to wait to see The Guardians of The Galaxy return. However, if you don't have the patience then fear not, because Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 will not be the next time you see the group. According to an interview on comicbook.com, Vin Diesel confirmed that some of the Guardians will actually appear in Thor 4: Love and Thunder.

"I am waiting and excited for my friend James Gunn to knock this next one out of the park. He took The Suicide Squad so he's about to embark on it. Thor will also, the director talked to me about Thor will incorporate some of the Guardians of the Galaxy. That'll be very interesting, nobody knows, maybe I shouldn't have said anything."

It still isn't confirmed which Guardians will actually be making the appearance. It could be all of them, it could only be one or two. There's also no official report of how big the parts will be, whether The Guardians are going to play main characters or smaller cameo's like Doctor Strange did in Thor 3: Ragnarok. Either way, it's going to be great to see them incorporated somehow when Thor 4 appears in cinemas the year before on May 6th, 2020.

James Gunn Returns To Guardians Of The Galaxy

It seems fairly unanimous between actors and fans that a huge reason the Guardians of the Galaxy film franchise was so popular because of its director James Gunn. However, due to some offensive tweets posted over a decade ago on the directors' Twitter feed, Disney fired Gunn from working on the third installment.

It wasn't soon after this that Disney reinstated Gunn as the film's director when fellow actors and fans wrote requesting for him to be re-hired. This included open letters from fellow GOTG actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper as well as a petition of over 400,000 signatures! Even Taika Waititi (Director of Thor 3 and Thor 4) refused to work on the film when asked to replace James Gunn. Seems like Gunn's work was unanimously recognized and admired! Dave Bautista spoke outwardly about Gunn's reinstatement even saying that he would be willing to jump ship and not appear in Guardians 3 unless James Gunn was directing.

Dave Bautista's Last film

Dave Bautista has also confirmed that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will be his final movie stating in a tweet that

"Drax isn't going anywhere, He just won't be played by this dude! By the time (GOTG 3) comes out I'll be 54 years old for gods sake! Face screaming in fear I'm expecting everything to start sagging any second now."

James Gunn, also replied to this tweet stating that

"There's no Drax for me without you, buddy! You ARE the MCU's Drax the Destroyer and, as far as I'm concerned, could never be replaced. And you have the right to do whatever you want with your acting choices!"

Seems like both the actor and director have each other's back to the end!

Therefore this is likely to be the last iteration of The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise as we know it. It doesn't mean of course that there won't be a fourth one but looks like it would unlikely be captained by James Gunn or consist of some of the same cast. James Gunn reported that he would never say never to directing a fourth Guardians movie, but he very much sees this as the last installment to the story he began telling in 2014.

So it seems like we could be expecting some brand new beginnings in the third installment but potentially some very finite ends too.

Related: Spider-Man: No Way Home Villains and What To Expect