As a cinematic universe that has featured more character crossovers than pretty much any other franchise out there, the MCU is no stranger to foreshadowing. In case you don’t know precise storytelling terminology, foreshadowing is when a line of dialogue or action that takes place early in a story hints at what’s to come further down the road, and here’s one example.
When Tony Stark throws the nuke into the wormhole toward the end of 2012’s The Avengers, he refers to Thanos’ armies as the “endgame,” which turned out to be the title of 2019’s grand finale. But foreshadowing can be even more specific than that. At other times in the series, Marvel directors have used this device not to tease names and characters, but precise plot points.
In the original Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance, Rocket – a talking space-raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper – foreshadows the fact that Star-Lord will screw up in the fight against Thanos, causing the Mad Titan to emerge, for a limited time only, as victorious. If you’ll recall, at one point in the film, fellow Guardian Drax loses his temper. Seeking revenge, he decides to fight an enemy rather than flee and this action subsequently causes the Guardians to lose one of the Infinity Stones.
Disturbed by their failure, Rocket proceeds to berate Drax. After flinging numerous insults at the passionate warrior, he ends by saying that “everybody’s got dead people…it’s no excuse to get everybody else dead along the way.” The precise meaning of this sentence is, as ScreenRant points out, rather obvious. And that’s that avenging fallen friends will only cause you to lose more people in the process.
This, interestingly, is exactly what happens in Infinity War. After discovering that Thanos has killed Gamora, Star-Lord refuses to follow his team’s plan and proceeds to beat the Mad Titan, causing him to break free and, by extension, snap half of all life out of existence.
Tell us, though, did you catch this reference in Guardians of the Galaxy upon rewatching the film? Let us know in the comments section down below.
