Why is Gamora (in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3)?

As great scholars have asked, “Where is Gamora?” “Who is Gamora?” And “Why is Gamora?” And with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 skyrocketing to theaters, and Full. 2 six years ago in the rearview mirror, you may be wondering, “How does Gamora live in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? Didn’t she die? Avengers: Infinite War?”

Yes she did. And then some other things happened, and now she’s back. Kind of. It’s complicated. Let’s freshen up.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Marvel Cinematic Universe movies up through Thor: Love and Thunder, but not for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.]

Who is Gamora (in the MCU)?

If you’re a die-hard Marvel fan, some of this is basic, but let’s go over a few basic cornerstones of Gamora lore (Ga-lore-a).

Introduced in 2014 Guardians of the Universe, and played by Zoe Saldaña, Gamora is an assassin nicknamed “the deadliest woman in the galaxy.” When Gamora was young, the intergalactic warlord Thanos conquered her planet, killed 50% of the population, adopted her as his own daughter, and turned her into a life of space assassination. But in Guardians of the Universe, she was on the run from her adoptive father after defecting from his armed forces. She teamed up with the Guardians to prevent the Kree General Ronan the Accuser from obtaining the Power Stone, and over time encouraged her sister Nebula to defect from Thanos as well.

Where is Gamora (in the main MCU timeline)?

Technically, Gamora is dead. During the events of Avengers: Infinite WarThanos kidnapped her and took her to the planet Vormir, home of the hidden Soul Stone, demanding the sacrifice of a loved one to wield it – and apparently the possessive affections of an abusive father explicitly willing to kill his daughter to gain power counts as love.

He threw Gamora to her death, and even the Infinity Stones can’t reverse a Soul Stone sacrifice, so she didn’t return to life with the rest of the people killed by Thanos’ snap.

Why is Gamora (alive again)?

The real answer is that Zoe Saldaña is under contract to star as Gamora; she is a main character of the Guardians of the Galaxy sub-franchise; and passing up a chance for Saldaña to play Gamora leaves star power, money and bargaining power on the table.

The in-universe answer involves the non-intuitive way Avengers: endgame built the rules of time travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

How is Gamora (alive in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) doing?

Image: Marvel Studios

As one of the interlocking parts of the Avengers’ attempt to collect a full set of Infinity Stones from the past, Nebula and War Machine traveled back in time to intercept the Power Stone before the Guardians, Kree, or Thanos these obtained.

Now, logistically, the way all this Gamora stuff works is a lot more like visiting an alternate universe than traveling back on your own timeline – as Bruce Banner explains in Endgame, it is nothing like Back to the Future rules. When the Avengers went back in time to seize the Power Stone and were discovered by an earlier version of Thanos, the time heist created an alternate universe where Thanos, years before it happened, became aware that there was a timeline where he had lost all Infinity Stones and broke half the universe to death, leading the Avengers to travel through time to collect the Infinity Stones in an attempt to break their own moment into their own present.

So, after kidnapping the Main Timeline Nebula, Alternate Thanos of the parallel universe stole the Avengers’ time travel technology and followed them back to their own “present” (i.e. to their own universe) to steal back the Infinity Stones. His plan – given the evidence that breaking half of all life had provoked so much resistance – was to make an even worse break, destroying all life in the universe so that he could recreate it as he saw fit. could make. And he took his still-loyal assassin daughters, Alternate Gamora and Alternate Nebula, with him.

During the Avengers’ final battle against the Chitauri armies of Alternate Thanos (which, let’s never forget, took place in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York), Main Timeline Nebula killed her alternate self and convinced Alternate Gamora to go for the good guys. to fight. After all, Alternate Gamora was already pretty close to defecting from Alternate Thanos on her own, just as Main Gamora had been at the same time in her life.

And so at the end of Infinite War, when Iron Man sacrificed himself to drive away all “Thanos’ powers”, Alternate Gamora remained in the main MCU timeline. The hitch for her friends in the Guardians of the Galaxy was that this Gamora never met them, never shared their adventures, and never fell in love with Star-Lord. She refused to join the group and went her own way in the galaxy. And as we saw from their introductory appearance in Thor: Love & Thunderit kind of left a hole in the group, and certainly a hole in Peter’s heart.

Although we can’t say what that means for Alternate Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, we know she’s in it. And it’s hard to imagine a universe, alternative or not, where the way she feels about a group of lunatics she’s never met who insist they miss her dearly isn’t a huge part of the movie .