‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ leaves the fate of 5 fan favorites frustratingly unknown

Warning: If you count knowing who doesn’t show up in a film as a spoiler then this article contains Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 spoilers.

It might not be perfect, but you cannot say that writer/director James Gunn didn’t put his all into making Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 the most complete and impactful farewell to the Guardians saga as it could possibly be. The movie finds time (and, as the longest of the trilogy, it has a lot of it) to give the entire team their due as well as bringing back a few familiar faces from the franchise’s past to boot.

However, even at 149 minutes, there still isn’t room for everything and sadly the threequel misses its chance to reveal the fate of at least five key players from Guardians lore. Two of them haven’t been seen for a long while, but we hoped Vol. 3 might bring them back, one we needed further clarification on, and the final two seem to have simply disappeared off the face of the Marvel universe.

For starters, despite some wonderful callbacks to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 fails to feature the return of both Nova Prime (Glenn Close) and Denarian — formerly Rhomann — Dey (John C. Reilly). Both were important allies to the Guardians in the first film but have yet to appear in the MCU since. Given their no-shows in this one, we can perhaps sadly infer that they perished in Thanos’ decimation of Xandar, as mentioned in Avengers: Infinity War. Although here’s hoping they return in the Nova project.

Speaking of Infinity War, that was the last time we saw Benicio del Toro as Taneleer Tivan aka the Collector. When his cameo was revealed to be a mirage caused by Thanos’ Reality Stone, we assumed he had died in the destruction of his collection on Knowhere. However, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special belatedly revealed that he had somehow survived the Mad Titan’s wrath and had sold Knowhere to the Guardians. Maybe he’s retired to Sakaar to hang with his brother, the Grandmaster?

Even more perplexing than these vanishing actors, though, is the absence of both Aleta Ogord (Michelle Yeoh) and Charlie-27 (Ving Rhames). Vol. 2‘s post-credits scene introduced both characters as part of Stakar Ogord’s Ravager captains team. While Stallone’s Starhawk returns in Vol. 3, along with several other members of his gang, these two are nowhere to be found and are not even mentioned. Given that the Ravagers are supposed to be a tighter unit post-Yondu’s death, it makes little sense why they aren’t featured.

Obviously, the real-world reason for these disappearances is that the aforementioned five actors are among the busiest in Hollywood, so it was likely simply due to scheduling conflicts. The Guardians trilogy may be over, but knowing the interconnectedness of the MCU, let’s hope at least a couple of these characters can reappear somewhere else in time.