James Gunn was talked out of killing a ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ favorite who quit the MCU anyway

For the most part, James Gunn has been given a fair amount of freedom to do whatever he wants within the confines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an approach that’s served Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 very well.

It’s very much his vision, and you can feel the affinity he has for the characters he’s been writing and directing for the last decade, especially when he admitted he wasn’t best pleased with how Joe and Anthony Russo handled them when they took over for Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

Even if he hasn’t been as beholden to the overarching saga to the same degree as many of his MCU contemporaries, it’s nonetheless ironic that Gunn was talked out of killing Zoe Saldana’s Gamora in Vol. 2 given how the rest of her trajectory panned out.

While the variant was used to further her complicated relationship with Star-Lord in Endgame – a thread that would be referenced in Thor: Love and Thunder and picked up in Vol. 3 – Saldana surprised many when she announced that she’d be joining Gunn and co-star Dave Bautista in bidding farewell to the franchise for good after her latest outing.

Basically, Kevin Feige convinced the writer and director that Gamora was better off left alive, before the actress who brought her to life decided that she was done with spending hours in the makeup chair being painted green. You couldn’t make it up, and it may been a creative decision driven more by the Infinity Saga’s concluding Avengers double-header than any plans Gunn had in mind for Vol. 3 at the time.