Is Adam Warlock a villain in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3?’

With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 mere hours away from its theatrical release, fans have many a reason to be quaking in their boots; the imminent swansong of the titular band of misfits, the departure of a valuable MCU player in James Gunn as he sets his sights on the new DC Universe, but perhaps most of all the sheer joy of getting to see this colorful crew go on one last riveting adventure together.

That said, it’s an adventure plagued by hardship, trauma, and, for audiences, direct attacks on one’s emotional state, so the Guardians won’t be going out on a smooth road, so to speak, and one such bump in that road is Will Poulter‘s Adam Warlock, the artificial son of Ayesha the Sovereign who, if one remembers from the first two Guardians films, isn’t exactly on friendly terms with the galactic found family.

And while Adam certainly seems to inherit his immediate priorities from his mother (as the many trailers have suggested), the question of whether he’s a villain is slightly more complicated than that; without spoiling anything, here’s what we can say about where Adam falls on good guy-bad guy spectrum.

Is Adam Warlock a villain in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3?’

This should be to the surprise of no one, but Adam Warlock causes more than a few problems for the Guardians over the course of Vol. 3; and of those problems, one of them is no doubt their biggest problem of all.

This is offset, however, by the fact that Adam is under the command of Ayesha, and disobeying that command will likely spell worlds of trouble for the young cosmic being. Of course, self-preservation has never truly excused anyone from “villain” status, but let’s just say that Adam’s decision to obey his mother, however much control he does have over that decision, isn’t exactly rooted in selfishness.

To this end, Adam is more of a tool than a proper hero or villain; he’s certainly one of the bigger thorns in the Guardians’ side, to be sure, but one may find it difficult to equate his presence as an obstacle with the presence of a villain.

So, is Adam a villain in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? Our answer is yes, but only in the same way that an obsolete key is a villain in one’s quest to enter their apartment; it’s certainly a massive, even antagonistic hindrance to one’s success, sure, but it’s not quite the villain that the landlord who changed the locks without saying anything is.

That said, it’s also safe to say that the iceberg of Adam Warlock’s character didn’t even break the surface in Vol. 3; indeed, we won’t say exactly where Adam ends up by the film’s end, nor how it teases the trajectory of what path he’ll be walking down in the future, but one thing we will say is that there’s much, much, much more screentime in store for Adam’s future, and it’s perhaps when we’ve arrived at such a future that we can say for sure whether he’s a hero, or a villain.