James Gunn Admits That One Marvel Character Never Really Fit Into The Guardians Trilogy

James Gunn and Peter Safran are busy as ever as they build the new DC Universe. On February 21, the DC Studios co-heads opened up on some of the DCU’s latest developments in an exclusive update meeting. /Film was in the room for the panel, and interestingly enough, one of the many things Gunn revealed was a blast from his Marvel Cinematic Universe past. 

While discussing the possibility of MCU-style post-credit scenes in DCU projects, Gunn was pensive thanks to his past experiences. As he explained, he found firsthand that post-credit scenes can be a difficult narrative device when he was writing “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and realized that he had forced his own hand when it comes to one particular “Guardians” character, Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). Here’s what he had to say about having to insert Warlock in the film after teasing him in a post-credits scene of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:”

“Those post-credit scenes, they can be a real nightmare. And I’ve done things before where I put in post-credit scenes and writing ‘Guardians 3,’ and I was like, ‘I wasn’t really sure if Adam Warlock should be in it, but I f****** promised people.’ You know what I mean? And I’m like, ‘Oh, well now I’m writing the script and things change.’ And I’m kind of cramming him in there. And I like him in the movie. I like the character, but it made it a little less elegant in some ways, the film. And so I’m really careful about those sorts of promises that we don’t know that we can deliver.”

Gunn set up his Adam Warlock promise in one of the post-credit scenes of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” where disgraced Sovereign leader Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) creates Warlock to attack the Guardians. This is precisely what happens in “Guardians Vol. 3,” but while the character is formidable and Poulter is excellent in the role, he ultimately ends up playing a fairly small role as the movie focuses on wrapping up the original MCU Guardians’ stories.  

Gunn clearly likes Warlock and weaves him in the story well, but his role is still superficial enough that finding out the filmmaker felt obligated to include him does make sense. Warlock has always been an odd man out in the MCU “Guardians” lore; he was originally a major character in “Guardians Vol. 2” before Gunn realized he had too many characters. (The golden boy was also a bit of a pain to bring to screen — creating Adam Warlock’s hair alone was no easy feat.) As such, it’s not hard to see why the experience of painting himself in a corner with such a major character tease might have at least partially soured Gunn to the concept of post-credit scenes.

Of course, neither Gunn nor Safran actually stated that the DCU intends to outright eschew post-credit scenes. Regardless of how they intend to deliver their storytelling payloads, Safran noted that plans on how the DCU intends to handle its overarching narrative are well and truly in place:

“We know where we’re headed to with the larger story, and so James makes sure that those building blocks are going to be put in place. And then around that, there’s a tremendous amount of latitude in terms of what we do.”