Headscratchers / Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Stan Lee's Cameo

• This is nothing more than a nitpick due to the timeline but Uatu or one of the Watchers talks about his time as a delivery man in Captain America: Civil War but that takes place in 2016 and this movie is just two months after the first one. So is it because the watchers exist beyond time?
  • It's more than possible that he was also a FedEx agent before the events of Civil War, then went back to Earth later.
  • Probably a combination of an inside gag regarding weird timelines in comic book movies as well as Watchers technically being able to foresee stuff as well. The fact that Stan is self aware at this point makes him kind of a Deadpool situation.
  • While it's probably just a gag involving real-life's timeline and not the internal timeline of the MCU, it could also mean that Stan Lee was a FedEx guy on more than one occasion in whatever continuity these cameos follow. Keep in mind that Stan Lee has had cameos in non-MCU Marvel films before, such as Deadpool or the Fantastic Four.
  • Your question also assumes all the cameos are related. One of the prevalent theories is that Stan Lee's cameos are all aspects of Uatu or another Watcher. This could just be a little joke calling back to that theory, and all the different cameos are just Acting for Two or You Look Familiar. It's only the fans that have given the cameos so much weight.
  • There was a report that came out a while back that they had to film all of Stan Lee's cameos for the next several MCU movies in one sitting due to concerns about his health — the man being 93-years-old and what not. It's possible that the cameo here was filmed prior to the rewrite of the movie that placed it only two months after the original and they couldn't reshoot the cameo for whatever reason.
  • James Gunn did admit that he meant that as a nod to the fan theories after having read the idea on a fansite, he just screwed up on the timeline.
  • Or perhaps he was talking about his job at Fantastic Four (2005). Being both Stan Lee and the Watchers, the fact that it took place in another universe may not matter.
    • He wasn't a delivery man in Fantastic Four, he was the door man for the Baxter Building.
    • Wrong. He was a delivery man. He actually hands Reed a stack of bills and is dressed in a delivery man's outfit as seen here
    • He's neither. He's F4 postman Willie Lumpkin.
• It's possible that time travel is involved, to facilitate things like Stan Lee being in World War II in Captain America: The First Avenger while looking the same age.
  • Or Rocket and Yondu were the time travelers, with their massive space jump briefly shunting them slightly into the future.
  • It would be Fridge Brilliance if they had Stan Lee get zapped by the Time Stone/Eye of Agamotto sometime during Infinity War, with a brief montage stinger showing him jumping through all of the cameos we later see him in.

Humans in the Universe

• When Groot brings Rocket and Yondu a cut-off toe, they refer to it as a human toe. Does this mean humans are a race spread across the galaxy, as shown in the first movie with the Xandarian humans instead of them being aliens just resembling Earth humans?
  • I don't remember them saying anything about a "human" toe, just Rocket asking Yondu if he had some kind of refrigerator for body parts.
  • The did say human, but that was probably just Translation Convention. In whatever language they're actually speaking, "human" probably just means "sapient humanoid deserving of being treated as an equal".
  • Quoth Andros: "Earth isn't the only place humans live."
  • Which while never explicitly stated probably does apply in the MCU — given that Peter is not normally described as 'human' but specifically 'Terran.' The likes of Kraglin and the non-technicolor Xandarians like Dey might be human — but from different planets.
  • This is backed up in the first movie when Dey refers to Groot as a "humanoid" plant and Rocket uses "humey" as an insult. It's likely that human or humanoid is a classification that many races fall into, not just people from Earth.
  • In the first film, Peter is referred to as "terran", perhaps suggesting that "human" isn't specific to being from Earth.
  • In the first Avengers movie, Earth is referred to as a human world, implying that there are others.

Celestial Powers

• One of Ego's powers was stated to be controlling matter, it was how he built the planet. He was aware of his imminent death, so he must have sensed the bomb. So why didn't he just transmute the bomb, remove the detonator, or grab it and expel it away from his core? He can create life and planets, but not influence small electronics?
  • Ego doesn't really "see" everywhere on his planet at once, he has to focus on a specific point, or he would have killed Gamora and Nebula when they found the cave of Skeletons. He had no idea that Groot was headed toward his core he only knew someone was shooting at it. He felt the pain from having the ship drill into him and only then moved his focus into his core.
  • The planet is smaller than the Moon and took Ego eons to build. While he has complete control over the planet's already altered matter, I doubt he can as easily alter other kinds of matter without giving him time.
  • It's likely he didn't because he was distracted by the battle and his frustration with [Peter for fighting him and refusing to go along with his omnicidal plan.
  • Also, given that the other Guardians were released once Peter seemed to gain some mastery over his abilities it seems he may have been putting a block on a lot of his power — they were fighting over control of the "light", as it were, as much as each other. The burst of light when Peter has his epiphany to use instinct over thought seems to connect him to Ego's wider network. A better question, I feel, is why Ego didn't just immediately kill the trapped Guardians given he had the ability to grant what are implied to be quick, painless deaths. Or why his core had an access point in the first place — couldn't he just have completely encased his brain in a solid layer?
  • Ego's core did not have an access point. The guardians had to drill a hole with the laser thingy before being able to reach it.
  • As for why he didn't kill them immediately and painlessly, we don't know how he did it with his children but we can assume he did it one at a time. Here he was fighting a group, and he's not so good at multitasking.

The Guardians and Ego

• The guardians should have clued on that Ego wasn't telling the truth already when he was telling them his backstory: How could he have "wanted to know how it was to be fully human" before he ever met another sentient being, much less a human? And yet he shows himself in his human shape even as he sets out to find out if he isn't alone. Somehow the entire crew, who had no problems pointing out logic errors before that, fails to spot this huge logical error.
  • I think what Ego means is that he wanted to know what it meant to be sapient; he knew he wasn't alone in the universe, and he was naturally curious about himself and other sapient beings. But what he found, he found disappointing.

The timing of Ego's revelation

• Ego knows Peter loved his mother more than anything, as Peter just told him that, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to him that revealing he was the one who killed her might upset Peter a bit. So why doesn't Ego wait until Peter has carried out his part in Ego's universal domination move and then reveal all this, instead of doing it in the middle of said move?
  • Because, for all his travels, he is an arrogant Celestial. All his talks with Peter about his heritage are to guide him away from human thinking to Celestial thinking. Even with Ego's understanding of mortals, he doesn't have the empathy to understand their motivations beyond his own needs. It can be thought of it like a dumb, rich kid. They don't understand why others develop strong work habits or care so much about their properties because they have never had to care about it. Regular people repair and maintain their cars; the rich kid gets a brand new one. To Ego, mortals are just flashes of light in the dark while he is an everlasting sun.
  • I think you're confusing necessary with useful; Rich kids do the aforementioned things plenty often just because they're handy skills to have even if they're not essential. Carrying that metaphor forward, Ego would certainly have benefited from knowing "the mortal perspective" on his quest to seduce several hundred women; Meredith probably wouldn't have fallen in love with a man who was incapable of identifying with her. It may not have been necessary for Ego to understand the mortal thought-process, but it would have certainly been a useful skill to possess.
  • That's not quite true. Ego tells Peter that he loved Meredith so much that eventually Ego would've just stayed with her and given up his plan of taking over the universe, so he felt he had to kill her before that happened. There's no reason to think Ego is lying about this, and most likely it is true, because what other reason would he have had to kill her? So Ego knows what a powerful force mortal love can be, and he should also know it's extremely upsetting to learn someone has killed your loved one. Even if he can justify it to himself, he's studied mortals for millennia, so he's pretty stupid if he hasn't learned that such a confession might make them angry. And we can see Ego's pretty good at reading and manipulating Peter's emotions, taking ​advantage of his longing for a father figure, so how come he's so bad at understanding Peter's love for his mother?
  • Ego has a massive ego and as such he wanted to show Peter how much he almost gave up for Peter's mother and how hard it was do what he had to to move on. It would be like a heroin addict telling you how hard quitting was and needing to destroy things that were important to them to quit heroin. He was looking for sympathy, he just didn't understand humans as well as he thought and thought his own suffering would be all Peter would care about as well.
  • He presumed he had Peter on his side when he revealed to him the scope of his plan, and presumed such a minor detail would not bother Peter as a fellow Celestial at this point.
  • All of Ego's interactions with Peter revolve around him trying to make his son think like he does. When Peter gets all galaxy-eyed, Ego thought he had succeeded completely, and Peter would have seen that the plan is much more important than a mortal's life. At this point, he saw Peter as just an extension of his will, and failed to see that Meredith was much more important to Peter than she had been to himself. This shows how, even though he did love Meredith enough to almost abandon his plan, he's still an alien entity, who doesn't have thought processes in the same way mortals do and is too, well, ego-centric to notice that difference.
  • Further, Ego had just about convinced Peter via his mind manipulating link that he was now beyond the bonds he had with the Guardians. Peter is still hesitant to accept this, hence why he proceeds to say, "b-but my mother, you said you loved her?" Ego was in a no-win situation with a question like that, as if he confirmed that he loved her that much then he would contradict what he was trying to convince Peter to do, whereas if he said he didn't love her then he could lose Peter's trust. So it would have perhaps made sense to him to instead state the truth, that yes he loved her but such a feeling for a lesser being was beneath him so he had to break that bond just as he is asking Peter to break his bonds with mortals. Stating it so bluntly one can put down to his Blue-and-Orange Morality and, well, ego.
  • Another possibility: Now that Peter can "see eternity", he was going to find out the truth anyway. Ego coming clean at that point might have actually been his best option.
  • Ego lives up to his name, and what does a big ego like to do? Boast about what he's done and how great it is to everyone in range. And a big ego is also known for wanting what he wants NOW and not waiting. Really, he could have waited until the rest of the Guardians passed on (they have short lifespans by a Celestial's reckoning - it would be like waiting in the drive-thru for a fresh batch of fries) and kept his big mouth shut about the brain tumor, but he's a walking Ego - patience and keeping quiet? Not his thing.
  • Peter is fairly subdued by the point Ego brings it up; he's already willing to abandon his friends and concedes he's now beyond them. Likewise, being at the cusp of victory and reuniting with the son of his beloved makes Ego wistful enough to let his guard drop. It was a mistake, but Ego had reason enough at the time to believe he was in the clear.

Peter's face mask

• Why does Peter not power up his own breathing mask when Yondu is rescuing him at the end of the movie? It allows him to breath and survive for some time in space, as we saw in the previous movie. That way, Yondu could have worn the suit and they'd both be alive. Peter's mask components can be seen behind his ear during the battle.
  • During the fight with Ego, Peter gets smacked by one of Ego's light tentacles, smashing him into a rock, and we see the face mask shatter into a few pieces, leaving just the behind-the-ear mounting points left.
  • And it seems the emergency spacesuits have a (rather sensible) safety feature preventing them from being deactivated in a vacuum, thus Peter couldn't take it off and put it on Yondu like he did with his mask to save Gamora in the fist movie.
  • Why couldn't Peter use his Celestial powers? Simple. It's explicitly stated that Peter's powers are directly tied to Ego's "light." After Ego's light explodes, Peter looks down at his hands and the glowy power he'd been using flickers and dies to signify the loss of it and Peter's immortality. Without Ego's power to feed off of, he's just a regular human being.

Peter and Yondu

• I probably missed it or forgot it, but what made Peter so special that Yondu saved him as opposed to Ego's other children?
  • It's implied that Yondu hadn't caught on to Ego's true purpose until right before he went to get Peter. After that, he decided he decided to go AWOL on Ego, unwilling to feed another child to his insane plan.
  • When Yondu defends himself to the other Ravagers for trafficking in kids, he outright states that he didn't know what was going on, and later Ego mentions that he told Yondu he'd never hurt the kids to get him to go along with it.
  • It's not that Peter was special per say. It's that Yondu was delivering the kids under the assumption that they weren't going to be harmed and Yondu discovered the truth sometime between accepting the job to collect Peter and actually delivering him (it's probable he learned before picking him up but we don't have an exact timeline). When Yondu learned the kids he'd been taking to Ego were dying, he refused to hand Peter over to Ego to try to spare him the fate of the others. Keeping Peter with the Ravagers was a way for Yondu to keep Peter away from Ego and Yondu eventually came to view Peter as his own kid.
  • Yondu thought Peter's small size as a child made him useful for a heist he was planning at the time.
    • This is what Peter was told at the time. It was actually/mostly an excuse he used to the rest of the crew. In reality he wanted to protect Peter from Ego, but he couldn't/wouldn't admit it openly.
    • Considering how fast a mutiny occurs after Tazerface is able to convince the others Yondu genuinely cares about Peter (and has thus "gone soft"), he clearly couldn't admit to a more noble purpose or thereafter to actually caring about Peter or it would likely have gotten them both killed. For a lot of years he probably didn't tell Peter to make it easier for him to play along with the deception, then at some point it just got easier for him to keep the facade up all the time, even when they were in private.
    • Not to mention that if all he'd wanted was some kid to fit into small spaces, he could've grabbed one from a lot of planets more convenient than Earth. For that matter, he could've taken some random Earth kid along with Peter, turned Peter over to Ego, gotten paid, and then undertaken the robbery with the other child. Really, his claim that he needed Peter for a crime was never all that credible.

The other red button

• Why would the immediately-detonate button need to be there? If he couldn't take it out couldn't he just not wire the immediately-detonate circuit to it? Or wire it to a wireless switch to detonate remotely, cos that tech looks pretty stable given Ayesha's wireless squadron.
  • Rocket probably figured he may need an immediate option in case of heroic sacrifice.
  • The detonator was an off the shelf component. I can imagine situations where Rocket would use smaller explosives, planted a safe distance away and wired to the detonator. Earlier in the film we saw him do just that, manually triggering landmines. The button is perfectly useful in other situations, but here Rocket was working quickly with limited resources.
  • There's also the chance of someone attempting to defuse his bomb. If you're panicking or not that bright, your best instinct is to press either of the buttons to try and turn it off, seeing as one of those buttons may have started the countdown while the other might actually turn it off.
• This is also Rocket we're talking about. He tends to think and build in terms of "Rocket want big boom!" first, and the safeties a very distant second, if at all.

Ego and the other Celestials

• Ego's "purpose" is apparently to find (or create) company for himself, as he was alone for several million years. But he knows what Celestials are, which means he knows that other Celestials exist. He's clearly connected enough to the rest of the universe to have heard of the Guardians, and obviously has visited thousands of planets in his travels. So why does he not seek out other immortals instead? The Collector, Grandmaster, other Celestials (if something killed them that's worse Nightmare Fuel than anything else), even Thanos. There's no need for his omnicidal plan when there's an entire race of beings just like him. Unless Ego is so bad the others Celestials won't deal with him.
  • It's possible he's not a real Celestial and, being a powerful entity called Ego, has delusions of grandeur of the highest order.
  • It's also possible that he just didn't meet any of the other immortal characters until after he'd become obsessed with his Expansion plan.
  • Ego admits that he doesn't know his own origins so it's quite possible that he only describes himself as a Celestial because that's the closest that he's come to meeting another being like himself. A similar deal happens in the comics where he's counted as an Elder of the Universe despite not meeting the strict criteria that they use to identify themselves. Also Peter's reaction implies that Celestials aren't rare knowledge. In the first movie, Nowhere is described as the head of a dead Celestial by Gamora. This implies general knowledge of what a Celestial is and that they had humanoid-shaped bodies. The only unknown variable is the size of Nowhere relative to Ego (Who himself was smaller than Earth's moon). The Nova Corp couldn't identify his paternal DNA, which lends credit to the idea that Ego isn't actually a Celestial.
  • A couple of points. 1) Even though in the first GotG movie the Collector showed the Guardians an image of what looked like one of the comic book Celestials, he didn't actual call that character "a Celestial". This movie is the first time that term is used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So it could be that in the MCU the Celestials are something completely different, and as far as Ego knows, he's the only one of his kind. The "Celestial" in the Collector's vision could've been something else entirely, or it could've been merely an Easter egg for the comic book readers that will never get referenced again. It's also notable that in the comics Ego has nothing to do with Celestials, they are are completely different race. 2) Even though other immortal and extremely powerful characters seem to exist in the MCU, they still don't appear to be quite as powerful as they are in the comics. The comic book Collector certainly would've put more of a fight, and even the movie Odin appears to be less powerful than the comic book Odin; he explicitly states that Asgardians have long but finite lives, so he's not immortal like he is in the comics. The only entity we've yet to come across in the MCU who clearly has the same level of innate power (i.e. power that doesn't require external sources, such as the Infinity Stones) as Ego is Dormammu, and he resides in an altogether different dimensions, so Ego probably doesn't know about him. So it's perfectly possible that, as far as Ego knows, he's the only true "Celestial" (as defined in the MCU) in the universe, as he's never come across anything else like him.
    • re 1, No the above poster is correct, Gamora specifically uses the word "Celestial" to describe Nowhere - the severed head of a dead Celestial.
  • Maybe he found the other "Celestials" as disappointing as all the other life he met in the galaxy. He didn't consider them to be on his level, and was going to wipe them out as well?
  • Its possible there was a race of Celestials like in the comics, but either died out/ or Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence or whatever, and there already was a few species who had heard of them, but no real specifics, and the Celestial legend spread till beings classify something really big, powerful, or beyond them as a "Celestial", i.e., Celestial is more of a overarching term rather then a specific species.
    • Something that would be fitting, and incredibly funny/appropriate given the kind of films these are? Maybe he's not the Last of His Kind at all, and the other Celestials just kicked him out for being such an annoying dick. Think Gnosticism where the Demiurge thinks he's the Supreme Being over all of creation, and the other celestial beings know he's a low-level wannabe that's too stupid to waste their time with.

The Missouri Incident

• So given that the film occurs "a few months" after the first film that means it takes place before if not during or slightly after the events of Age of Ultron, as well as sometime around the end of the second season of Agents of SHIELD. Yet the sudden appearance of a giant space tumor that took the lives of a couple hundred people goes unnoticed by both the Avengers (which had not been torn apart by the events of Civil War yet) and SHIELD (which the agents of were admittedly busy overcoming the aftermath of the events of Winter Soldier). There's the obvious Doyalist answer that Vol. 2 wasn't written yet and that because of Perlmutter being dropped from the film side of the MCU AoS has had less and less connections to the movies as the show has gone on; but we need a Watsonian answer dammit.
  • We don't get a mention of every hurricane, earthquake or tsunami that struck either. The "space tumor" was a major event yes, but it looked like a natural (albeit extraterrestrial) disaster rather than an attack by a invading enemy. Beyond not knowing what caused it, it was basically like a natural disaster that people would have had no choice but to move on from. I'm sure there are a lot of people studying it, but once the danger was past there wasn't much need for more than that (and it only lasted a few minutes so there was no opportunity for Shield or the Avengers to get involved). Agents of Shield also has indicated at times that there are strange events they get involved with or study that simply don't get shown or talked about in detail unless it becomes relevant to the episode.
  • Also looking at the time frames with CA:TWS happening in May 2014, Vol. 1 in August 2014, which places Vol. 2 about October 2014 (two months later per WoG), which is about 6 months past TWS, and about the time Tony started to reform or was motivated to reform the Avengers. It's highly possible that the Missouri Incident was part of the motivation to restart the Avengers.
    • In addition, assuming that GOTG2 does take place in October of 2014, it places it in the first half of Season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a time when Coulson's team was busy with the alien city, Diviner, and were severely understaffed.
  • The entire "giant blue blob" incident in Missouri - and on millions of other planets for that matter - only took a matter of minutes to play out. By the time the Avengers or anyone else who might intervene could respond to the threat, Ego was dead and the blobs were collapsing into powder: yet another "weird shit keeps happening" one-day news story for the MCU.

Ego in Love

• A major plot point is that Ego can create a human body that is so accurate and functional that he can impregnate Meredith Quill, Peter's mother. Another plot point is that he starts to fall in love with her, and that interferes with his ultimate goals. Why didn't he just refine his human form so that it couldn't feel love? Or is the point that Meredith was so special among all the thousands of females he's "seeded" across the galaxy that she's the only one his true self could ever fall in love with regardless of what form he takes?
  • Ego considers himself perfect, so he would likely think "why should I change myself when I can simply eliminate the source of those feelings while still enjoying having experienced the feelings?" But yes its also indicated he felt more strongly for her than any of his past loves, but we don't know for sure. He may well have done the "brain tumor" implant on a number of others if his feelings for them threatened to hold him back, perhaps another reason why he is so nonchalant when revealing it to Peter.
  • His mind is separate from his body. He can make a body, but can he really edit his own mind? There's no indication that he can.
    • And one pretty strong indication that he can't, namely that he doesn't just will away his insomnia: he keeps Mantis around to help him sleep instead.

Ego wasting time with seduction?

• Throughout the movie, Ego made it abundantly clear that he was willing to take whatever he wanted and remove anything inconvenient without hesitation or remorse, even murdering his own prodigy (who were children at the time) if they didn't display the traits he desired. So why did he seduce several hundred alien women rather than simply kidnapping them? It would have provided what he wanted (offspring) not only sooner but also more frequently, as he could then sire multiple heirs from the same female. He's shown to be powerful enough to eradicate entire fleets on a whim, so abducting a few isolated mortals would definitely have been within his ability. Immortal though he may be (and thus able to play the long game), such restraint seems out of character for him.
  • You mean why didn't Ego simply rape women like dear old Zeus from Greek Mythology. I think it's because Ego doesn't really have a cruel and sadistic streak and I don't think he's lying when he says that he was lonely and really wanted connection and took a certain amount of pleasure from these bonds. He has Blue-and-Orange Morality, he's not malicious and sadistic, he doesn't hate other people, he just doesn't think mortal life has meaning beyond being pets and toys. The more pragmatic reason is simply secrecy. Remember that Ego's plan is destructive on a cosmic scale and that obviously for all that he wants to get to know people and seek people like him, he's also hiding his true intentions. There's a reason why he contracted Yondu to bring him his children, and sought the Ravagers rather than doing it himself. Asking Yondu to bring his kids to him was a huge risk for him, being an intergalactic rapist is definitely going to draw people's attention to his crazy schemes. Remember that Ego is manipulative as we see in the film, he likes to insinuate himself in people's life and get them to support him. He got Meredith to accept him and bear him Peter, even if, it is implied, she knew he was a "spaceman" and a being "composed of light", so that kept the relationship and his true plans secret as well as the nature of his plan.
  • Kidnapping women and going the whole Baby Factory route (he probably tried that a few times) would deprive him of the fun of having the women fall for him, and tell him how awesome he is, and be devoted to him...while he plays the part and smugly takes satisfaction in knowing how disposable they are. He has all the power in the relationship - all the better to flatter his Ego.
    • This. If all he wanted was to generate offspring with females throughout the galaxy, he wouldn't need to kidnap or even meet them; with his control of matter, he could probably have just built embryos from scratch and implanted them on the sly while the surrogate moms-to-be were sleeping. But artificially impregnating his way to victory wouldn't let him feel smug about his Casanova exploits.
  • Kidnapping the women would also have required turning his world into a prison planet, with hundreds of cells (even if he could make each individual cell the size of a country) and someone to look after the prisoners. It's a lot of effort to go to for no major advantage. As for the multiple children per woman thing, it seems like he wasn't even bothering with multiple children per planet. He seems to have been assuming that he needed diverse genetics in order to produce a Celestial child.
  • Also, disappointed as he was in the life he found in the universe, I reckon he still enjoyed traveling the cosmos, seeing other places, meeting other people. Being generally disappointed in something long-term doesn't mean you can't enjoy small pleasant moments. Especially if you got an eternity to spend.
    • A dog does not invite fleas to live on its back.
  • Alternatively, Ego isn't omnipotent and knows it. The more trouble he stirs up the more likely people are to find out about his plans, his whereabouts, or the location of his seeds. Best case scenario this slows downs his plans considerably. Worst case scenario he gets bombarded by an alien armada. Then there's the detail that he needs his progeny to have his powers, which makes the situation volatile and dangerous if they have any kind of negative predisposition toward him.
  • Ego presumably didn't acquire Mantis's companionship until recently, as she's quite young. Until then, seducing females from various planets was the closest thing to a "pet" he had.

Peter as a power source?

• Ego seems to be telling Peter that he needs a second person with Celestial genes to help him because he doesn't have enough power on his own. He says he might just knock Peter out and use him as a battery for a thousand years. He also says that, if the planet dies, Peter will go back to being a "normal human". So, which is it? Does Ego draw power from Peter, or does Peter draw power from him? If Peter is just an ordinary human without the Ego planet, then why does the planet need him at all?
  • One possibility is that Peter was more of an amplifier than an extra power source (or that his independent life and body allowed Ego to do more than he could with his single mind), but another is that Ego was lying about Peter being dependent on him for power, perhaps as an attempt to make him more compliant. It may be that killing Ego only reduced Peter's power to the point that he will have to relearn how to use it. After all, it took Ego a long time to learn how to use his.
  • Another possibility is something pretty similar to what happened in Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Old Republic. There are some Jedi that aren't quite dead being kept alive so that their connection to the Force can fuel the Star Forge. It's not that Malak isn't plenty powerful on his own; it's just that the near-dead Jedi act as an Amplifier Artifact that make him harder to kill. It's also possible that Peter can tap into something Ego can't, much like the way Vitiate kept Revan on Maelstrom Prison so that he could use Revan as a means to tap the Light Side, which would normally be closed to him.
  • It could be the difference between raw electric power, and processing power. That is, the planet is the outlet, but it takes two minds to perform еоу task of, literally, galactic magnitude. Alternatively, just as in the first Xmen 1, Ego could perform the task personally, but the strain would've harmed or even killed him. Thus, he's using Peter in his stead, with the latter's survival through the process being optional at best.

Other power sources

• If power is what Ego needs, then why didn't he try to use the Power Stone? He heard about it when he heard about Peter. He clearly has enough power on his own to take out fleets of fighter ships, so why not invade Xandar to take an Infinity Stone that could make a nice backup plan in case Peter can't give him what he needs?
  • The Power Stone is currently in a place that apparently even Thanos would have trouble getting it from (its noted in the previous movie that the Nova Corps are the best ones to protect the stone), so presumably the same applies to Ego (who may lose quite a bit of his power simply reaching the planet to begin with, since the ship he uses is part of his body and uses his power to move).
  • Then what about when Ego's tumor erupted on Xandar? It swamped Nova headquarters, covering the Power Stone.
  • It might simply be that the energy given off by the Power Stone isn't directly compatible with Ego's Celestial "light" or is otherwise unsuited for powering the Expansion. Just because he can (presumably) hold it safely doesn't mean its the right tool for what he wants to accomplish.
  • While Ego definitely wanted a child to be his "battery", it is equally apparent that he wanted another immortal for company. One can't play catch with a Power Stone, unless of course, that's what you're using to play catch with.

Taserface

• It doesn't appear that Earth culture is all that well known in the universe, so where did Taserface get the idea to call himself that? For context, the word TASER is actually said to be an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle," after a character and his rifle that inspired its inventor. The Taser itself is also the name for a very specific weapon made by one company, like how the Glock brand refers to one specific company's weapons. It also seems odd that the name translates well enough that everyone has the same idea of what it means in order to find it humorous, instead of thinking it's "[Unknown]face".
  • Taser has become a generic term for electric stun weapons. It's just Translation Convention. Stunnerface or Zapface would sound even stupider, and not necessarily in a good way.
  • In the comics, the original Taserface character had a mask with electric stun weapons built in. It's likely they used the name for the main mutineer Ravager because it was so silly.
  • The translator implants probably make others hear it as a calque: directly translating both parts of a compound expression. These often sound awkward, like "flea market." "Taserface" might have sounded cool in Taserface's native language, but it's hilarious to everyone else.
  • "Taser" might be the only single morpheme Peter Quill knows for electroshock weapons, so the translator implant chose it to express the concept without regard to the fact that Taser is a brand name.
  • Indeed, its a translation convention. In some localizations, where "taser" is not a byword for a zapper he is called "Shockerface".

Ravagers and Peter

• The Ravagers' treatment of Baby Groot gives a very horrifying picture of what it might have been like for Peter growing up among the Ravagers.
  • Baby Groot's treatment is likely much more a result of the Ravagers no longer having to answer to Yondu. Yondu only made his deal with Ego on the condition that the children he delivered didn't get hurt, so it's unlikely he let his own crew go to that extreme with Peter.
  • The Ravagers that are seen tormenting Groot are also shown to be the nastiest and most disloyal of Yondu's crew. They probably weren't nearly as bold when Yondu was still in charge and had dozens of loyalists on his side, which would've offered Peter a lot more stability and protection than Baby Groot was given after the mutiny.
  • The "threatening to eat him" joke was probably as bad as it got, although friendly rough-housing was likely. I imagine it would be comparable to having a lot of older brothers.
  • There was resentment over Peter from the Ravagers in the first film, but this is likely over him willfully flaunting the Ravagers' code. As a child, he was likely tolerated via deference to Yondu's authority to even being liked, his adult actions only leading to problems. Peter seems fairly non-maladjusted, his childhood probably wasn't so torturous as the Baby Groot incident. I would venture Peter had a really fun childhood aside from the eating threats.
  • Peter and Kraglin actually seem to have a quasi-sibling relationship, with Kraglin showing the sort of resentment of Peter that a brother might have for a more favored brother. Peter probably had a relationship with Yondu's crew not unlike the young, favored child who's required to hang out with his older siblings and their friends for lack of kids his own age... and since he probably had no experience with such things he likely interpreted it a lot harsher than it was. I'm guessing most of the Ravagers that mutinied were the ones that joined the crew later on and weren't "family".

Waiting for the plan

• Ego says he had to kill Peter's mother Meredith because she got in the way of his plans to assimilate every planet in the galaxy. Couldn't he just assimilate every planet but Earth? Or, for that matter, let her live out her natural lifespan, then destroy the planet?
  • To him, it wouldn't make a difference. Meredith is mortal, he is immortal. That means concepts like growing old together, I Want My Beloved to Be Happy means nothing to him. Besides, from Ego's view, he was going to take her child from her and he probably saw that predeceasing Peter was sparing her grief. From his twisted perspective, he was doing her a kindness. Meredith knew that Ego was an alien and that eventually Peter would go to space. She suggests as much on her deathbed. So, he obviously spun a fantasy about Peter being special to her.
  • It wasn't anything so complicated; To paraphrase Satan in The Devil's Advocate; "...self-love; the all-natural opiate. You know, it's not that (Ego) didn't care for (Meredith Quill). It's just that (he was) a little bit more involved with someone else: (himself)." Ego simply realized one day that Meredith made him so happy if he stayed with her, he would abandon his plan for the foreseeable future, having found satisfaction with her. Ego's problem was that his ego wouldn't let him give up what he wanted in order to be happy with someone else. And even as Peter and Groot killed him, he still doesn't realize that he threw away the one thing in the universe he had prized even more than his own gratification. His "ego" was so huge he destroyed his own happiness rather than ramp it down.
  • In relation to the above, the fact that Ego says if he returned to Meredith he knew he would "never leave" could imply he was going to have to give up his immortality if he stayed away from his planet for too long (perhaps there was truth in what he said about having to go back to his world to recharge). And living forever was more important to Ego than love, so he destroyed what he saw as a threat to his immortality.
  • Or, alternatively, he feared that if he lived out a life with her until her natural death, he might actually wind up loving her all the more, and grieving for her. Which might cause him to no longer have the heart to destroy all mortal life in the galaxy, given that he'd felt so much mourning for just one. To his self-centered way of thinking, changing his own attitude that much was a more alarming prospect than sacrificing her, thus cutting off those feelings before they could mature.

Trash Panda

• Of all the things for me to get puzzled by, it's this: how does Peter know about the Trash Panda meme? He hasn't been on Earth in decades and I'm not sure it was around in 2014.
  • He hasn't been on Earth, but that doesn't mean he can't access information from Earth. He lives in a galaxy-spanning civilization with faster-than-light communications, it would be trivial to be aware of silly Earth memes if he cared enough to look them up.
  • Given that the level of technology is so far beyond earth that it can almost be considered magic (Rocket fixes the Milano by literally spraying more spaceship out of a hose!) it's a safe guess that he can probably access Earth's internet.
  • It could be Translation Convention, as Taserface's name has been suggested to be on this page.
  • There are other raccoons in the universe, even if Rocket never met them (Drax mentions eating some in the first movie). Presumably, they all are predisposed to digging in trash (even Rocket is!), and there may be pandas in the universe too, why not at this point. I mean, there are (judging by dialogue and appearances) horses, dogs, monkeys, rats, birds and other Earth-like animals on other planets, not to mention humans. Why not pandas?
  • Or, more provincially, who says the person who started the "trash panda" meme online was the first person ever to make up and use that particular snarky nickname for raccoons? I've heard people in small towns call baby skunks "stink kittens" and chipmunks "seed hoovers"; could be that Peter's home town got a thirty-year jump on the world at large in calling garbage-raiding raccoons "trash pandas".

Mantis gets hit by flaming debris

• When Mantis gets hit by the flaming rock, why do the rest of the Guardians just stand around like it's no big deal? They just assume that Mantis has super-strength and will be perfectly fine...and they happen to be right?
  • Being resistant to damage is a quality shared by most of the team: definitely Drax, Gamora, Groot (at least as an adult), Nebula, and Peter (since he's half-Celestial), and likely Rocket (cybernetically-altered, like Nebula), and Yondu, who was formerly a battle slave for the Kree.. After all of the weirdness they've seen that day, they probably just assume Mantis too can shrug off something that would kill or maim a regular human being.
  • Gamora and Drax saw her land quite nimbly and with no ill effects when all three got knocked out of the ship earlier. If she could take the fall as well as the they could, they most likely figured she would have minimum injuries. They don't waste too much time in checking on her and once Ego woke up, Peter's first reaction is to slap the rocket pack on Drax as he was holding Mantis to get her out of there.
• That's not a bug, it's a feature. The GOTG are a bunch of borderline sociopaths who only have enough capacity for empathy to feel it for people who have fought side-by-side with them for a prolonged period of time, and thus become family to them. The movie occasionally reminds of this in kid-friendly, subtle ways rather than having them periodically announce, "just remember, we're the bad guys". Consider that scene a "just remember, these are anti-heroes, not heroes. If they seem like heroes, it's only because they keep running into people much worse than themselves."
  • That interpretation doesn't seem really supported by either of the movies, especially when shortly after Drax is outright ready to sacrifice himself just to help Mantis live a little longer. The GOTG are rough and at times morally questionable but they are far from borderline sociopaths. It seems more reasonable that Drax, a guy who considers being dragged through a forest behind a spaceship fun, would not consider Mantis getting hit in the head a worrying thing, especially when she showed no clear injury. Same for the others, they don't tend to react to dangers or injuries outside outright death with much seriousness, making jokes and such is how they cope.
• Their slow response didn't seem like indifference, but more like a temporary "WTF?" moment of frozen disbelief. As soon as they shake off being stunned by the fluke of her being hit, Drax checks her over and says she'll be okay, at which point they set out to deal with the far more pressing issue of getting off Ego's planet alive: after all, whether or not Mantis is dying of a slow intracranial bleed won't mean squat if she, like the rest of them, is crushed by a flailing light-tendril.

How much did Meredith's family know?

• Meredith and Ego had a relationship long enough for her to find out he was from outer space and for her to conceive a child, Peter. In the prologue to the first movie, it's clear that Meredith's family is heartbroken on seeing her dying promise to Peter that his father's coming. Peter later mentions that they thought she was delusional because of the brain tumor. Did they think Ego was a random stoner deadbeat who seduced Meredith and left her? Did she ever introduce them, and Ego tried to do his spaceman spiel?
  • Well, in the first film, when Meredith starts going on about how Peter's father is "an angel of light," her father interrupts to remind her that she has a present for Peter. The implication being a "oh, great, here she goes again," and her father trying to curtail her crazy talk out of embarrassment, and the fact that she doesn't have much time to pass on what he considers to be actually important information to Peter. If they heard Meredith talk about Peter's father like that before she got sick, they may have either assumed that she was really in love with the guy and being overly poetic. If it only started after she got sick, then likely Ego swore Meredith to secrecy, and she started blabbing as the cancer and treatment damaged her brain, leading everyone to think she was having delusions. Either way, it's probably likely Ego only shared his true nature with the women he was planning on knocking up (he does, after all, have access to hands-down the greatest pick-up line in the history of ever).

Hope for Peter to visit Earth?

• Peter says he doesn't want to return to Earth because that's where he saw his mother die. In this movie, however, Peter avenges his mother's death by killing his father, and he's committed to not repeating his father's mistakes of leaving behind the ones who care about him. He also has more means, with a family crew, a ship, and less of a reputation as a renegade, to make a visit. When he was kidnapped, Peter inadvertently left behind a bereft grandfather and relatives. If we discount the Doylist reason that he can't return — the copyright wrestling for Infinity Wars, Tony and the Avengers are on Earth, and there would be security issues about a "space man" coming to find his family — could Peter find the courage to return to Earth and look up his grandfather?
  • Quill never went to Earth in Infinity War, with the entirety of his role in the film taking place flying through space and on Titan. Reconnecting with his Earth relatives seems pointless anyway — Quill has already found a new family.
  • Quill does wind up on Earth in Endgame, but by the end of it he seems ready to leave with no regrets. (Maybe he bought a couple of new MP3 players or something offscreen to cement not having anything he needs there.) He just seems to take it as a given that it's time for him to leave once the fighting and mourning is done... he's lived his entire adult life off Earth, it's just not his home anymore.
  • Plus, it's not like his last reunion with a long-lost relative went all that well...
  • Peter was young enough when he was taken that he may not even know his grandfather's age, but only that he looked very, very aged to a child's eyes. The last thing he'd want to risk, where family is concerned, is to return to his childhood home in Missouri only to be told that the man is long dead.

Yondu's trinkets

• On Yondu's funeral barge, we see many of his trinkets and collectibles. Pinned to the strips of fabric they lay over his face are many real-world U.S. military rank insignia, badges, and ribbons. These include Lieutenant and Captain's bars, a U.S. Air Force missile maintenance badge, and what I think was a National Defense Service medal. My question is this: What are these meant to be in-universe? Are they Ravager ranks/badges/awards? Random tchotchkes Yondu picked up across the galaxy? Are they specifically Earth trinkets Yondu discovered in a "junker shop" like the Zune? Or are they things Peter had in his backpack when Yondu first picked him up on Earth (I don't know if Peter had any military members in his family)?
  • My money's on a) Yondu collecting them, because he's a man who holds his honor in high regard, and/or b) the Guardians buying them based on Peter's dim memories. They're the most honorable funeral he could think of.
  • There's only so many ways strips of cloth with doodads on them can look. They may very well be from some other planet.

Battery value

• In the beginning Peter says that the batteries cost 1000 units each. Later Yondu says they can sell them for 250 000 units. But from what we see, Rocket stole at most a dozen of them. I get that their price may vary throughout the galaxy, but 25 times?
  • Yondu says "the open market" and he was probably highballing to get the others to go along with him. Maybe he's banking on a bidding war or some prestige factor from the rarity of stolen Sovereign batteries.

Stealing the batteries

• How did Rocket manage to steal them? If if we assume there was absolutely no surveillance, and the entire court Failed A Spotcheck, when he was flaunting and loudly announcing his theft, these are batteries. Aren't they supposed to, you know, power something, so it should be instantly obvious when they're gone?
  • Storage perhaps. They will be needed eventually.
  • We see a shot of Rocket examining the batteries in his hand just as Peter is explaining their value, right after the battle with the tentacle creature. It's possible there was no alarm because of either damage from the battle or it had been shut off because that attacking alien would've been setting it off incessantly during the entire battle.

Insulting the Sovereign

• If even simply insulting the Sovereign carries a death penalty, and they sent an entire fleet after the battery thieves, how was Nebula still alive after trying to do exactly that?
  • Presumably, she was caught in the act and awaiting execution (likely a golden one involving much proclamation of the Sovereign's superiority). Part of their deal with the Guardians of the Galaxy is handing over custody of Nebula so she can face life imprisonment on Xandar instead.

Ego and the Expansion

• Ego planned to convert all the planets in the galaxy into extensions of himself, but said the power to do so was too great for one Celestial. That would be the power to convert all the planets he seeded. But couldn't he start out smaller, converting one planet at a time? Presumably his power would increase with every planet that becomes him, and he'd just need one to manage all the rest.
  • Ego is the type to do things on a big scale. And the more time he takes, the more time the universe has to counter him.

The Sovereign Fleet on Ego

• The Sovereign fleet shows up during the climax fight on Ego to get their revenge on The Guardians and Yondu. But how did they know where to go in the first place? When Taserface informs on the escaping Yondu and Rocket before he dies he sends the Sovereign their current coordinates. 700 Jumps away from Ego. Taserface didn't even know about Ego so he could not have known that is where they were going. He gave them the coordinates of where they were at the time. How did the fleet track them through 700 jumps when they couldn't even find the Milano after a single jump earlier in the film?
  • Remember, Nebula had the address...somehow. If she filed a flight plan, or Kraglin put it in the system, TF could just forward them her destination, since he knows they have history. If this was after Rocket and Yondu left, then they would've had to input a destination, and it might've automatically transferred to the main ship. Or they have the Ravager ship's transponder code, which they didn't have with the Milano.
    • Yondu and his ravagers have been to Ego's planet before to bring Ego's children to him, its location is therefore in the databanks for his ship. Which is how Kraglin was able to pass that information onto Nebula. Yondu's soft spot for Peter was the cause of the entire mutiny thus Taserface would know Yondu and Rocket were going after Peter.

Yondu's Fin on Kraglin

• How was Kraglin able to get a hold of Yondu's prototype fin when Yondu was shown being cremated with it still on? Peter didn't present him with the reassembled arrow until after the cremation, so there's no reason to believe Kraglin would've decided to remove it from his head just as his body was heading out. And given how determined Yondu was to direct Groot to the drawer right next to a sleeping Taserface to grab it for him, it doesn't appear that he had any spare fins lying around.
  • We don't know how much time has passed since Yondu's funeral and that scene. For all we know, Kraglin found or made a second fin to practice with.
  • Yondu could have had other fins besides the one Groot retrieved; they were just hidden in locations that would've been even harder for baby Groot to access and/or to understand how to find.

Other ways to destroy Ego

• Ego is a being with so much power at a cosmic tier, and it took a lot of effort digging into him to destroy him. But, why not use the Power Stone on him? It has the power to destroy an entire planet. The Guardians could just ask Nova Corps to borrow the stone. Considering the threat, they'd allow it. Then they can weaponize it, rescue Peter, then destroy Ego with a blast from the Power Stone.
  • They didn't really have any time to implement a plan like that. Gamora and Drax were stuck on Ego's planet with no transportation besides Ego's own ship, and Rocket and Yondu were coming straight to rescue Quill. Not to mention that Ego wasn't going to make it easy for them to escape, and even if they did, he could still follow them. Besides, in the time it would take to head to Xandar, Ego would've already turned the planet into an extension of himself thanks to Peter's power.

The Jumps to Ego

• When Rocket, Groot, Yondu, and Kraglin do 700 jumps to Ego, Yondu proceeds to tell Rocket that it isn't healthy for a mammal body to do more than 50 jumps at a time. If doing more than 50 jumps at a time is considered to not be healthy, wouldn't doing 700 be considered fatal? Let's use alcohol as an example. In most cases, about 0.2% of alcohol intake would be considered unhealthy while 0.4% would be considered deadly. If you were to consider this, then it is possible that doing any more than 100 jumps at a time would kill a man, yet everybody on board the ship survives.
  • Perhaps the safety regulation Yondu cited is just really conservative?
  • My impression: Ravagers need to be battle-ready the moment they pop out of a jump point. Post-700 jumps everyone but Groot collapses, and it isn't clear how long/what recovery takes.
  • How often has Yondu jumped in what's essentially his escape pod to test this? He could be referencing a generic rule for all ships and mammalians. Perhaps smaller ships and crews survive, but a freighter arriving at a busy jump point, all hands unconscious for X hours, can be a problem.
  • "Not healthy" could mean "increasingly likely to give you cancer in 40 years", not "increasingly likely to croak right now". Of course, given that Yondu doesn't survive the movie, Rocket's whole lifespan is probably shorter than that, and trees don't die of cancer, Kraglin's the only one we'd actually need to worry about, if so.
  • Could be that they just got lucky.

Ego's sexual organs

• Why did Ego give his humanoid body a penis? He does this whole thing where he goes out, impregnates someone, returns to his planet-self to recharge, and then hires someone to pick up his kid (assuming they're still alive), but why not give his body a uterus-and-vagina combo or an egg-laying arrangement or something? That way he could go out, get pregnant, and birth/hatch and raise the kids on his planet-self, ensuring their safety and letting him indoctrinate them in the importance of the Expansion. True, he uses male pronouns and evidently identifies as male, so maybe it would be like a trans man experiencing dysmorphia with a vagina, but his natural state is a planetoid so it's a bit weird that the genitalia of his Kurt Russell meat puppet would be a sticking point.
  • Gestating and raising the children himself would take extra time and be complicated compared to just going around impregnating others as he pleased, plus he'd risk getting attached to the kids and making it hurt more in the likely event that he'd end up having to kill them when they didn't develop his powers.
  • It could be that Ego's worldview is so warped that he would never conceive of carrying a child to birth and then raising it from infancy. It also fits better with his goal, thematically: men are "supposed" to spread their seed and reap the benefits of their offspring.
  • Simple efficiency. A female body can only carry a limited number of offspring or lay a limited number of eggs at a time. By using male forms, Ego could father progeny by the hundreds on one planet after another, boosting the odds that at least one of the many, many offspring who were simultaneously growing up all over the galaxy would serve his purpose.

Ego's stupid plan

• Ego is lonely...so his plan is to kill everyone else in the universe? What exactly does he plan to do with eternity once he's the only being in the universe? Sit around twiddling galaxy-sized thumbs?
  • He's so damaged by his lack of interaction that he doesn't understand that the plan wouldn't bring him fulfillment.
  • Loneliness wasn't his only motivation though, indeed it may not even have been his main one. Narcissism played just as much of a role. That is he hated how all other life was "disappointing" compared to his own "perfect" self. Ending all other life and replacing the planets with extensions of himself, plus a son to keep him company, thus made sense to him and would make the universe "better" as all those disappointing life forms would be gone. Ego very much seems to see all other life forms only in regards to how they benefit him or make him feel, and if they don't make themselves worthwhile to him then to him they don't deserve to exist.
  • He has Peter at his side, either willingly helping him or unwillingly as a living battery. Him being alone after he's killed everyone else is pretty much moot.

Why keep the skeletons

• Why does Ego have a massive vault of bones? Why would he feel the need to keep them when he could disintegrate them?
  • There's plenty of possibilities. To name a few:
    1. It's a symbolic representation of Ego 'burying' his past - possibly subconsciously;
    2. Ego wanted a private memorial for the 'sacrifices' he had to make to achieve his vision;
    3. Ego didn't give a shit about his children's remains as long as they were 'out of sight, out of mind';
    4. Ego wanted the dead children to decompose and add to his planet's mass.
    5. Given the sheer number of offspring he's left scattered across creation, he kept the murdered ones' remains around simply so he wouldn't lose track of which species he'd already attempted to crossbreed with.

Who was that purple guy when Yondu, Kraglin, Rocket, and Groot blew by?

• When the ship was jumping through the cosmos, it passed a barren looking planet with two guys on it, both purple. One was wearing yellow armor and beating up the first guy. Was that Thanos??
  • Probably Kronan

Why did the Sovereign need the Guardians?

High Priestess Ayesha can be heard saying the Sovereign hired the Guardians to defeat the inter-dimensional monster because they couldn't possibly risk the lives of their own Sovereign citizens. Okay, good. Except later in the movie, we learn the Sovereign have a huge space fleet that consists entirely of remotely operated drones. Couldn't they just use that fleet to fight the monster? The pilots would never have been in any danger, just like how they were not in danger when fighting the Guardians.

• Fighting on a scale of ships is different than fighting on a scale of people. The ships would have been too big to fight there and the scale of their weapons would have made it too risky to fire around the batteries. It's the same reason you don't send an attack helicopter in to resolve a hostage situation. The Sovereign's technology in general also might have been specifically ineffective or vulnerable to the creature.
• The Abilisk feeds on power sources. Probably if the Sovereign used drones to attack it, it would just grab the drones and eat their batteries, becoming stronger and more dangerous.

Thanos torturing Nebula

• So, in this movie Nebula says Thanos forced her to fight Gamora and every time she lost Thanos would rip out a body part and replace it with a mechanical one, leaving her in constant pain. The reason for this is never explained, but it's implied he just did it For the Evulz. However, this seems to contradict his persona in Infinity War, where he's portrayed as more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who doesn't want to be evil and is just doing what he "has" to do. So what's the deal? I could write it off as a case of Characterization Marches On but that doesn't explain his treatment of Nebula in the first place.
  • The reason for it is explained explicitly in the movie. He was trying to make her 'better' until she could win against Gamora.
  • I know that, but why be so horrifically cruel about it? Yes he is a villain but he doesn't really seem like a sadist in Infinity War.
    • Thanos doesn't torture out of sadism but if he believes it will serve one purpose or another. In Infinity War, Gamora outright notes how readily he inflicts torture and yet he sees it as mercy. In the case of Nebula the "mercy" would be that he kept trying to make Nebula stronger instead of simply killing her for being a failure in his eyes. That she hated how he kept mutilating her was immaterial to him (much as he is proud of how he molded Gamora into the "most dangerous woman" despite how much Gamora hated it). He is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but said extremes include a ton of behavior that most would regard as just plain insane and/or evil (heck, you just know he signed off on those "rejoice that you are being killed by" speeches that Maw gives his victims).
  • Infinity War and Endgame both show that Thanos is vaguely hostile towards Nebula in general, perhaps due to his disdain over her never being able to measure up to Gamora or anyone else from the Black Order. It's actually probably intended as a slightly "humanizing" trait of his that he makes exceptions to his detached, reserved methods when dealing with his daughters... his favorite gets kinder treatment and exemptions, the unfavorite gets judged more harshly and he looks for excuses to see failure from her.

Inside the Abilisk

• This one's small but it always bugged me when I re-watch the movie. When fighting the abilisk at the beginning of the film, Drax comes up with the plan to get swallowed and attack the monster from the inside, a plan that both Peter and Gamora dismiss seemingly on the grounds that the abilisk's insides would be just as durable as its outside. Is there a reason for them to come to this conclusion? Drax's plan might be stupid for other reasons, but it seems pretty logical that the interior of a monster's throat and stomach would be less protected than its external hide.
  • If he had decided to attack the monster's internal organs, it may not have been a stupid plan. Unfortunately, Drax decided to focus his energy on leaping down its maw in order to attack its skin from the inside instead of the outside.
  • Even if the Abilisk was as relatively vulnerable on the inside compared to the outside as humans are, its outside still shrugged off blaster rifle shots and blades like they were nothing... the inside's still gonna be insanely tough.

EGO FTL

• So a big todo is made in Captain Marvel (2019) about the Space Stone being the key to a method of FTL travel that can circumvent the need for Jump Points. But this film seems to show that Ego's ship has the Warp Drive version of an FTL drive, as we see the space bending around it? What gives?
  • It's one method, but not the only method. Ego is a Celestial, if anyone had the power comparable to an Infinity Stone, it would be him.

Killing his Children

• Just how does Ego kill his children when they fail to carry the Celestial gene? He says they didn't feel a thing when he does.
  • He probably smothered them under a mountain of dirt/sand/rock, like he tried to do with the Guardians in the big fight near the finale.
  • Mantis knew where the children's bodies were. Possibly Ego had her put them to sleep before he killed them.
• In relation, How did Yondu find out that Ego killed the children? Ego kept their skeletons hidden away in a cave and he has no other allies outside of Mantis who A) We don't know if she was there at the time. and B) couldn't have told him or else she'd have been killed by Ego for it (The only reason her telling the guardians didn't get her killed was because Ego was distracted with Peter). And why didn't Ego not try to kill Yondu the moment he got away?
  • Seems simple enough. Yondu takes a kid to Ego, the kid is never seen again. Even if he didn't know, if he was starting to get suspicious then that would be enough to have him keep Quill. As for why Ego never killed Yondu, probably the same reason he never found Peter before hearing about him. Space is big and Yondu never stuck around in one spot long enough for Ego to catch up.

Martinex and Charlie-27's races

• In the comics, the original Guardians lived in the 31st century where humanity had colonized the solar system. Martinex and Charlie-27 were belonged to Human Subspecies called Jovians and Pluvians who were Human Subspecies genetically engineered to live on Pluto and Jupiter. Given that the MCU is set in modern day, you get guess they were retconned into being aliens like Drax and Mantis. But their character pages on this wiki and the MCU wiki list their races as being the same as the comics and the MCU wiki says their homework planets are Pluto and Jupiter.
  • Basically what I'm asking is does it say somewhere that the MCU versions of these characters come from planets in our solar system?

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