The Guardians of the Galaxy saga represents just one small part of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it looks like a Guardians spinoff film — or series of films — could already be in the works.
James Gunn, who wrote and directed both Guardians films, admitted in a recent interview with Collider that “there’s always discussion” surrounding a potential spinoff film focusing on the Ravagers, the “original” team of Guardians led by Stakar Ogord (Sylvester Stallone), aka Starhawk.
In a short, cheesy post-credits scene from Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (spoiler alert!), Stallone — who played a small role in the film’s main plot — is seen reuniting with the rest of his estranged crew: Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames), Aleta Ogord (Michelle Yeoh), Martinex (Michael Rosenbaum), Mainframe (a robot voiced by Miley Cyrus), and Krugarr (some sort of CGI fish-monster thing). Michael Rooker’s Yondu was also part of the Ravager crew prior to the events of the Guardians movies.
It’s unclear whether the Ravager team will play a larger part in the third Guardians film, for which Gunn will be returning to write and direct, though Gunn did hint at a more substantial role for Stallone’s character in the MCU going forward. He did talk about “finding a place” for Stallone, so it’s possible the kinks are still being worked out there. Guardians 3 figures to wrap things up for the current team of Guardians, though Gunn refused to rule out a fourth entry, saying: “I think that there could be a Guardians Vol. 4, but it would not be the same. It would not be the same group … basically the story of this group ends with Vol. 3.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was released in May to mixed reviews (we thought it was good), but found box office success nonetheless, grossing $860 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. Thus far, most of the movies set within the MCU (about which we learned lots at Comic-Con) have been well-received, deftly blending awesome action sequences with witty scripts to great effect.
We expect that when superheroes and Guardians cross paths in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War (likely to unite against Ebony Maw and Thanos’ villainous Black Order), things are only going to get more epic.
