While the movie hasn’t even been officially announced yet, with writer/director James Gunn currently making a detour into the DCEU with The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is widely expected to form a key part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Five alongside sequels for Captain Marvel, Black Panther and Ant-Man, and no doubt a couple of new faces.
Gunn has made it clear that he’s always planned for his cosmic franchise to be a trilogy, and doesn’t have any intention to make a fourth installment, so it looks like Vol. 3 could be the end of the road for the Guardians as we know them. The filmmaker has already confirmed that not everybody is going to make it out of the movie alive, and while he wouldn’t give any details, given the way Yondu was killed off in the sequel for maximum emotional impact, you’d have to figure that it would be a key supporting player at the very least.
Rocket Raccoon is said to be the focal point of the story this time around, that much we know, but we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us the Guardians will cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder and that a Justice League Dark show is coming to HBO Max, both of which were correct – that the band of intergalactic misfits could be set to recruit an unlikely new member for the team. And it’s one that’ll come as a fairly big surprise.
According to our intel, the plot will see Rocket on a mission to track down the people that created and experimented on him, and it will turn out that Howard the Duck was the result of similar experiments. The two anthropomorphic antiheroes will then work together in an effort to bring them down, solidifying Howard as an official member of the team in the process.
James Gunn has admitted that Howard the Duck’s 1986 solo movie wasn’t very good, but he clearly has a soft spot for the character. And while we don’t know exactly what’s in store for him just yet, it certainly makes sense that his role would be expanded for the grand finale in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
