What is Counter-Earth in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3?

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.’

In the MCU’s humble phase one beginnings, bar a trip to Asgard, Marvel kept its first wave of stories quite grounded on our home planet. As the franchise grew and evolved, things slowly got a little more interstellar, with 2014’ Guardians of the Galaxy blowing the floodgates wide open when it came to how far-reaching the tales that the MCU could be.

So, as we’ve come to expect of these films – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 takes us on another lap of the far reaches of space, only in this installment, the team of misfits pays a visit to a world that is almost identical to our own, albeit with strange, yet humanoid creatures inhabiting it. 

You may likely have caught glimpses of this strange new world in the film’s trailers, showing off a humorous exchange in which Drax lobs a ball at a child’s head. but if you’re yet to see the film in its entirety, proceed with caution – because we’re going to be spoiling the movie a little going forward. With that out of the way, let’s dig a little deeper into what we know about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’s Counter-Earth.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’s Counter-Earth, Explained

Counter-Earth is the handiwork of the GotG threequel’s big bad, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji.) When the guardians meet this villain, he explains to them that he once paid our own Earth a visit, and discovered an appreciation for our art and culture, but cared not for the troubles we faced – poverty, crime, and so on. 

With his ultimate purpose being to ‘perfect’ the universe, the High Evolutionary created a facsimile of Earth, and inhabited it with what he considered to be ‘perfect’ creatures, after successfully accelerating them to their final form of evolution, which based on early experiments conducted with the help of Rocket, he considered to be peaceful, and non-violent – and have their own unique language. 

While his grand Counter Earth experiment proved to be a success in many respects, creating idyllic suburbia and order in many parts of the world, his version too would eventually end up with its own pockets of squalor, classism, and criminal activity. If you’ve seen the film, you certainly know what happens upon this discovery. While Counter Earth doesn’t quite meet the same fate in the comic books, its origins remain largely the same and is often a contested destination between the universe’s heroes and villains.