James Gunn Had to Explain Why Captain Marvel and Star-Lord Never Met in Space
Next year on Disney+, Marvel will start asking What If …? In their animated series that imagine what familiar stories would be like if history had gone a little differently. “What if Peggy Carter took the super soldier serum?” will be the question of the pilot episode.
However, Marvel fans are playing a different game that might as well be called “How Come?” And their key question lately is “How come Captain Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy cross paths before?” Adding to the fun is that director James Gunn has answered the question.
James Gunn says the universe is a big place
Gunn, who wrote and directed the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, has been known to interact directly with fans fairly often on social media. Recently on his Instagram stories, Gunn said, “I just ate way too much cheese. Any questions?” A fan asked the question that is the subject of this article. Gunn answered,
“There are sextillions of sentient beings in the universe. It would be unlikely they had met.”
In other words, this is like having two people from New York City and wondering why they never met. New York City has a population of 8.6 million. The vast majority of people live their lives there without ever meeting a specific person. The population of Dayton, Ohio is about 140,000, and most people in that relatively small city don’t meet each other either. It isn’t Cheers “Where everybody knows your name.”
Fans on Reddit could relate to this silly question, with one person saying, “No joke, I was at the Maple Leaf in London (Canadian pub), talking to someone at the bar, and she said “Oh you’re from [province]? Do you know [name]?”
Fans playfully push back
On the other hand, some fans thought the idea of Captain Marvel and the Guardians meeting wasn’t really that far-fetched. One responded, “Well, it’s slightly different. She’s kind of a powerful being, presuming they keep tabs on the coming and goings of various universes, and whatnot, wouldn’t be hard to say they should maybe have heard of her.”
The fan makes a good point that fans aren’t asking about average joes, they’re asking about superheros crossing paths. There aren’t sextillions of those. And to be fair, what the fans are probably really asking is, “Will we ever see the Guardians and Captain Marvel together again?”
They didn’t have much interaction in Endgame, but an exchange between Rocket and Carol actually points to the logic Gunn is using. When Rocket razzes her about not doing enough, she responds “Listen, furface – I’m covering a lot of territory. The things that are happening on Earth are happening everywhere, on thousands of planets.” Rocket conceded the point.
What else is James Gunn doing besides answering fan questions?
Right now, Gunn is working on The Suicide Squad, the second movie with that team of super-villains. He’s most likely having interesting conversations with DC now given that the Harley Quinn solo movie Birds of Prey opened to underwhelming numbers. It’s not a failure, but it’s not the hit that the first Suicide Squad was.
The Suicide Squad is filming with an expected release date of August 6, 2021. Presumably after that, Gunn will get to work on the third Guardians movie, which suffered a setback when Disney fired Gunn due to controversial tweets from his past. Disney eventually relented and rehired Gunn. While Captain Marvel wouldn’t seem to fit in the third Guardians movie, one can’t help but wonder if maybe this talk about Captain Marvel is giving him some ideas.
As Digital Spy reported, Gunn has said that he’s writing Guardians 3 and had the most fun with Nebula and Rocket’s stories, but he added, “I also think we have great things coming up for the others, like Quill and Mantis. All of their arcs take place over the three films as opposed to in only the individual movies.”
