While Chris Pratt's Peter "Star-Lord" Quill is the central protagonist of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, he's far from it's only lead. More like The Avengers than Iron Man, the film has a responsibility to give screen time to a full ensemble of characters - including Zoe Saldana's Gamora, Dave Bautista's Drax, Bradley Cooper's Rocket, Vin Diesel's Groot, and more. This is a responsibility that was handled beautifully in the well-balanced 2014 feature, and Gunn looks to mimic that approach in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. How? By not introducing too many brand new faces to distract from the titular team.
Having recently finished the second draft of the script for the sequel, James Gunn hosted one of his impromptu Twitter Q&A sessions earlier today, and it was during this period that the writer/director explained why fans shouldn't expect to see a huge wave of new characters in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. You can see his Tweet below, which includes a link to the question that seeded the response:
This really does make all kinds of sense. If the movie is introducing a whole bunch of new characters, that means that the story is going to need to dedicate a whole bunch of time to explain who they are and what they're about. If James Gunn keeps that to a minimum, however, he has much more time to focus on Star-Lord on his crew - and those are really the characters that people want to see more from in a sequel anyway.
All that being said, we still do expect Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 to feature some new faces - and if another Tweet from Gunn is any indication, we may wind up seeing more girl power:
Both of these responses in mind, I find one big name coming to mind: Moondragon. In addition to being a key female character from Guardians of the Galaxy comics, Moondragon's presence would actually seriously benefit the "personal time" we get to spend with one particular member of the eponymous gang: Drax The Destroyer, her father. We already know that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will partially deal with Star-Lord finding out who his dad really is, so Drax finding out that his daughter is still alive would definitely fit into the sequel thematically. This is just speculation, obviously, but it does make a good amount of sense.
While it really doesn't seem so long ago that audiences were first getting to experience the world of Guardians of the Galaxy, the sequel will actually be heading into production in the early months of next year. Obviously we expect to hear a lot more updates between now and then, so be sure to stay tuned for more news!
