Karen Gillan’s Nebula has had a surprisingly large role in the MCU. That’s despite that in the original script for Guardians of the Galaxy, she was supposed to be killed. However, Gillan impressed James Gunn so much in her audition that he substantially expanded the role, rethought Nebula’s potential and made her relationship with Gamora one of the key emotional focuses of the franchise. The character then made it into Infinity War, surviving Thanos’ Snap and it looks as if she’s going to play a key role in Avengers: Endgame, too.
That history probably explains why Gillan’s clearly pleased that Gunn’s returning for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. She succinctly expressed her happiness with a tweet posted earlier today that simply read: “We are groot”
The Guardians of the Galaxy cast are obviously very loyal to Gunn. Dave Bautista has been a particularly outspoken cheerleader for him, though the entire gang signed a public letter expressing their displeasure with his firing back in the summer. Now, it seems that it’s all going to be happy families on set, and that Gunn and the cast will get the opportunity to round off the trilogy they began way back in 2014.
A slight twist to this tail is that it seems that Disney and Marvel Studios may not have actually ever officially fired Gunn from the project. They never made any serious efforts to find a new director for the film, after all, with my theory being that Gunn was ‘let go’ so as not to risk any bad publicity putting the brakes on the Disney/Fox deal. There also seems to be at least an outside chance that the cast had gotten wind of this development at some point, with Bautista apparently dropping hints that this would be a big year for Gunn in an interview last week.
Whatever the backstage shenanigans were, I’m just glad the director’s back. While I would’ve gone to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 anyway, I don’t think it’d have quite been the same without him at the wheel.