A couple of days ago, a chart was posted on Reddit that showed which of the MCU’s main characters have met and which have yet to cross paths. While Thanos was left out of the diagram, the image makes it all the clearer that the Mad Titan has done a better job than most of these heroes at getting to know the major players of franchise, proving to be quite the social butterfly in Avengers: Infinity War.
But amidst all the tyrant’s interplanetary encounters with super-powered opponents, there was one key character he never got the pleasure of meeting. That character is Rocket Racoon, who somehow spends the entirety of Infinity War without any direct encounters with the movie’s main villain. As another Reddit thread would suggest, the closest that the Guardians of the Galaxy regular came to making his acquaintance might have been in the climactic Battle of Wakanda. Though Thor and Groot were called on to assist Captain America in a last-ditch effort to stop Thanos, Rocket, for whatever reason, stayed behind.
Naturally, the fans have their theories for why this is. Probably the simplest explanation is that Rocket just didn’t hear Steve Rogers’ call to action. Others argue that the Racoon knew that his guns and explosives would have little effect against the Mad Titan, so chose to stay where his skills were more useful. Some, of course, have attributed his actions to good old-fashioned cowardice in the face of a formidable foe. Strangely, though, few fans seemed willing to consider how Bradley Cooper has just outed himself as a Thanos sympathizer.
In any case, while the two of them never met in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos certainly gave Rocket a lot of reasons to hold a grudge against him, so you can imagine that the last of the Guardians is going to feel pretty committed to the fight when Avengers 4 comes out on May 3rd, 2019.
