Spoilers ahoy for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, so read on at your peril.
Just as audiences around the world are recovering from the untold emotional devastation caused by the regularly heart-wrenching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, writer and director James Gunn has put an exclamation point on the situation by confirming a theory that ensures the grand finale packs even more of a punch.
One of the recurring gags throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe threequel is that the Gamora variant introduced in Avengers: Endgame has no idea what the team’s resident sentient tree is saying, to the extent that she refuses to believe the rest of the Guardians can even understand him.
However, at the very end of the movie, Groot shocks the world by saying “I love you guys.” While it was easy to speculate that he’d simply developed a vocabulary having spent so long around people who actually use words, a theory quickly began gaining traction that it was deliberately included by Gunn as a way to confirm we were the ones who’d been welcomed into the family by hearing his verbiage loud and clear.
It’s time to wipe away those tears, then, because the filmmaker has confirmed that was 100 percent his intention.
As it turns out, we are Groot, which is the cherry on top of the icing placed delicately on top of the cake that is the calorific extravaganza Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 turned out to be for both the title heroes and their millions of fans.
