How Guardians of the Galaxy 3 sets up an Adam Warlock Marvel movie

Will Poulter, who played Adam Warlock in the movie “The Big Golden Guy”, has a lot of fans. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? There haven’t been a whole lot of signs yet that they do — and it’s going to be an important question for the character’s future.

The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us Guardians 3 finally brings Adam Warlock — the Savior, the Avatar of Life, the head of the Universal Church of Truth — to the screen after multiple teases (in the first and second Guardians movies), James Gunn is the only Marvel director who’s shown any interest in the character so far. With Gunn moving on to help run DC’s superhero-movie slate, leaving his Guardians series behind and wrapping up the story of the original team lineup, his entire slate of characters is now potentially up for grabs. Adam Warlock may or not be included in future Marvel Cinematic Universe stories featuring the Guardians. This makes it difficult to decide who will be highlighted in any future Marvel Cinematic Universe story featuring the Guardians. It may even be up to them whether Adam Warlock is included. Vol. 3’s approach to the character seem like a smart, carefully calculated play on Marvel’s part.

From the comical to the cosmic

Photo: Jessica Miglio/Marvel Studios

Adam Warlock is introduced in the movie as a young, hapless character who mostly serves primarily as comic relief. (Which doesn’t exactly make him stand out among the rest of the Guardians lineup.) He’s literally unfinished: We’re told that the movie’s villain, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), popped Adam out of his creation cocoon “too early,” leaving him malleable and a bit child-like. Adam has nearly Superman-level power: He can fly, he doesn’t need any sort of special gear to survive comfortably in the vacuum of space, he’s incredibly strong and fast, and while he clearly isn’t invulnerable, he apparently heals very quickly. But in this first appearance, he’s a huffy, naive, easily led dope.

The movie’s events start to move Adam away from that direction, but with so many other better-established, more central characters getting story arcs and payoffs to previous arcs, Vol. 3 doesn’t have a lot of time for him. He gets the quickie shorthand equivalent of a standard traumatic superhero origin story, and then he’s done. Which leaves him in a place where Marvel Studios could continue to develop him into the kind of leading-man hero he became in the comics — or we could just never see him again. Gunn, and Marvel Studios seem to leave all of these options completely open.

For fans of the gold-skinned cosmic wanderer, a Silver Age Marvel character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1967, it’s been intriguing to see how the MCU has set up elements that could potentially lead to an Adam Warlock-starring story down the line, without actually committing to anything concrete. And that could be because there would be a lot of complicated decisions involved in translating any of the character’s comics adventures into a blockbuster film, the way Marvel Studios typically does with its long-running legacy characters.

Adam Warlock is a villain.

Image: Jim Starlin, Ron Lim/Marvel Comics

Adam Warlock joins the team of villains in Guardians 3, but he’s had a long Marvel history as a hero. Sometimes he’s teamed with the Guardians of the Galaxy, sometimes with other characters. He had a lengthy arc in the 1970s with Hulk, when Hulk was sent to outer space. He works more often with his team of cosmic misfits. He’s had a lot of minor adventures, like fighting space pirates or the High Evolutionary’s genetically modified wolf-creature Man-Beast. Many of his most memorable arcs were centered around his arch-nemesis Thanos and his attempts to either keep the Infinity Stones away from him or work alongside him in order to protect the Infinity Stones.

As Adam Warlock’s longtime frenemy and thematic opposite, Thanos was one of the villains who most gave the hero a purpose in the Marvel continuum. Comics legend Jim Starlin, who created Thanos, was also one of Adam Warlock’s biggest advocates and developers in his early years, along with Marvel writer and editor Roy Thomas. In their comics, Thanos was obsessed with (and romantically entangled with) Death, while Adam Warlock represented life, and the two frequently clashed — except in stories where they had to team up to save the universe.

It’s hard to imagine the MCU bringing back either Thanos or the Infinity Stones, even though it’d be easy enough in the franchise’s current time-hopping, multiverse-exploring environment to yank another Thanos into the storyline, and the Infinity Stones are by their nature eternal. But both were such a central part of the MCU’s most fan-beloved plot arc that returning to that well would risk undercutting the MCU’s most famous and successful storyline — and looking like Marvel was already out of ideas.

Adam Warlock’s other biggest adventures have involved tangling with the Universal Church of Truth, a galactic organization originally focused on worshiping his other defining arch-villain, the Magus — and eradicating planets who refused to follow suit. The Marvel Cinematic Universe would have major problems if they were to incorporate those storylines.

Marvel: Should they become religious?

Gerry Conway Herb Trimpe/Marvel Comics

With the MCU heading in a bigger, messier, more cosmic direction with Phases Five and Six, it’s an open question whether Marvel Studios wants to veer away from the kind of at-least-slightly socially relevant plotlines that came up in the Captain America movies, around current political debates over drone warfare, government surveillance of civilians, and overseas adventurism. Given America’s current political divide over faith-based politics, there’s certainly a lot of potential for relevance in Adam Warlock’s storylines, which often revolved around belief and religion, both overtly and metaphorically. (In one of his first big arcs, the High Evolutionary sent Adam to Counter-Earth to try to move the populace back to a moral and ethical life — and he got crucified, then resurrected.) Marvel is also well-advised to stay away from religious themes or commentary and focus Adam Warlock on other things, such as battling fanatics.

That isn’t necessarily a problem. Like any MCU version of a Marvel character, Adam Warlock has already been significantly updated and changed for the screen — in Guardians 3The origins of his creator, as well as the personality, have also changed.

In the MCU, it appears that this stone is purely ornamental. In the comics, it’s one of the Infinity Stones — the Soul Gem, which gives him the power to suck the souls out of adversaries, permanently making them part of him. It’s possible that entire idea has been scrapped in a post-Infinity Saga MCU — if nothing else, it might make him feel too much like the Vision, who also had an Infinity Stone in his forehead.

While an Adam Warlock MCU future might appear unlikely, Marvel’s recent introductions of some of Adam Warlock’s long-time team members suggests someone in the company wants him to be able to enjoy a MCU future. The End of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in particular frees up some of the character’s traditional partners, while giving him his first connections with them — but again, without any of the usual Marvel teasing that anything’s actually been planned or scheduled.

[Ed. note: Some very broad end spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ahead.]

Adam Warlock is being set up by the MCU.

Image: Jim Starlin, Joe Rubinstein/Marvel Comics

Adam Warlock’s comics counterpart has, over time, had many different teams. But his core team includes Drax, Gamora, and other MCU-original-flavor Guardians. By the end of “The Avengers”, both of them are left with loose ends. Vol. 3Drax, who looks as if he is in dire need of direction, has a brand new group of friends. Gamora, on the other hand, seems to be at ease with her Ravagers but still free to do what she likes. Pip the troll, another long-time Adam Warlock friend, has recently been introduced into the MCU as part of an Eternals after-credits sequence. Even ending Gamora’s relationship with Peter Quill could be part of that setup, since she eventually became Adam Warlock’s love interest.

Another longtime ally for the character, Moondragon, has never showed up in the MCU — but canonically, she has romantic ties to Mantis, who ends Guardians Vol. 3By heading into space, she will find out who she is and what her goals are. (Which would sound like an open invitation to a romantic arc if Disney wasn’t so queasy about queer relationships of any kind.) Moondragon is also Drax’s daughter in comics chronology, though that comes through a lot of plot twists and turns that aren’t part of the MCU — at least not yet.

Adam Warlock’s return to screen would likely be a radical departure from his Christ-like persona who died repeatedly to save planets and was repeatedly raised in Marvel Comics. No matter what his MCU future is, it’ll require a creator like Gunn, one willing to advocate for more Adam Warlock out of an interest in the character’s Marvel history, and who has a meaningful vision for his place in the MCU. Or it’ll require a notable sense of fan enthusiasm for Adam, which seems unlikely, given how minimalist his character and subplot are in this initial outing. In a series as colorful and complicated as the Guardians movies, one more angsty super-dude who’s trying to figure out who he wants to be and who he wants to be with doesn’t exactly tip the scales in a major way.

For the moment, it seems like Marvel is being careful with Adam Warlock — smartly not investing significant resources in a character tied to the kind of cosmic space adventures that have mostly been a sidebar in the MCU’s Earth-centric adventures, but also not writing him off entirely. He’s Vol. 3 arc, going from a childish, easily led, approval-seeking servant of the High Evolutionary to a Guardian of the Galaxy, mirrors Rocket Raccoon’s story, without any of the same level of detail or emotional commitment. But it’s a full arc that leaves him with a completed story — or leaves him ready to take center stage in a future Marvel Phase. The storyboard for Adam Warlock is almost complete. It just remains to be seen whether anyone’s invested enough to pick them up.