Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 provided an emotional send-off for the beloved heroes, but some incredible fan art brings all of those emotions flooding back. The Guardians trilogy was a beautiful series that highlighted a group of outcasts finding one another and becoming a family. However, the third film spent a considerable portion of the runtime looking back and exploring the origin of one character who struggled to open up and connect with the rest of his team, Rocket Raccoon.
The movie revealed that Rocket had actually found himself in a makeshift family before, with a group of animals who were used as experiments by the cruel and self-absorbed High Evolutionary. Tragically, this found family of Rocket’s were not as fortunate as him, and they lost their lives in a failed escape attempt. This tragedy was an integral part of Rocket’s story, and it provided a clear reason behind the characters’ struggles with opening up and accepting love. However, despite the movie being released almost a year and a half ago, this fan art from @uzuriartonline brings all the emotions back to the surface.
Why Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3’s Story Means Rocket Needs To Return For Avengers 5 & 6
Rocket Raccoon Is The New Leader Of The Guardians
While Peter Quill was technically the leader of the Guardians, and the first two movies explored Quill’s relationships with his late mother, his celestial father, and his surrogate father, Yondu, Vol. 3 clearly shifted the focus away from Quill and onto Rocket. At the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Quill decides to return to Earth and reconnect with his grandfather. This means that Rocket is likely to step up as the new leader of the Guardians, as he is the heart of the team, and finally accepts his new family after getting closure with the High Evolutionary.
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are set to be huge-scale epic films which will bring back and introduce many characters from all of Marvel. It’s obviously possible that Quill can return for these films, considering his central position on Earth where many of the other heroes reside, but Rocket needs to return. As the newest leader of the Guardians, and considering his incredible growth, it would be disingenuous to simply discard Rocket after his emotional arc.
Of course, it’s possible that Quill will return to lead his old team, but the reality is that the Guardians are a family, and Rocket has always been a natural leader who can bring others together. Now that he has accepted his past, and begun the process of healing emotionally, Rocket will be an incredible ally whose intellect and engineering skills could come in extremely helpful. And if he didn’t experience the level of growth and development he did in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, it’s possible he wouldn’t have been as ready to step up and help.
