Unless you haven’t seen the trailers or haven’t heard anything about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, there’s an… interesting character making an appearance.
The first GotG introduced the world to a group of little-known, ragtag Marvel heroes. Get ready to meet a new one: his name is Ego the Living Planet, played by Kurt Russell. And no, we’re not making this up.
Back up. A planet?
Yup, you heard us right. Ego the Living Planet is a character that was created by comic book legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The character is, in fact, an actual planet that gained sentience. He started out as a bad guy but eventually became his own sort of entity: not necessarily good or bad. He’s made appearances in comics starring Thor, the Silver Surfer, Nova, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers, just to name a few. In fact, he made his debut in a Thor comic… more on that later.
So how does a planet become Kurt Russell?
Excellent question. We’re not really sure how this will play out in the movie, but Russell will be portraying the character in both a human form and his planet form. Director James Gunn said that figuring out how a planet could become a father (in this case to Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord) was one of the more challenging prospects of bringing the character onboard.
So, to answer your question: the planet became Kurt Russell because he had the power to do so. But why?
Right now, it looks like the answer to this is because he was lonely. Being an intelligent, all-powerful planet hurtling in space all alone would probably be enough to make anybody want at least some conversation. And, in the case of Ego, it also meant human contact… of a sort. *Ahem*
What will Ego be like?
We don’t know all that much about what the character will be like in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Because he wasn’t Peter Quill’s father in the comics, this left a lot of room to expand on his character. Obviously the dynamic between the father and son will play a role in the new movie. We’re pumped to see exactly what will happen.
For now, it’s safe to assume that his appearance will shock Peter. It’s also a good assumption to say that he’ll have—you guessed it—a big ego. After all, he’s an ancient, celestial being that not many people in the galaxy know about. So we’ll have some surprises coming our way.
Anything else?
Possibly. As we said before, Ego’s first appearance was in a Thor comic, where he was actually bent on interstellar domination (thankfully he changed his tune very soon after Thor defeated him). So it’s definitely not out of the question that there may be a Thor cameo, a Thor endscene (because there’s 5 of them), or at least a reference to the god. This would be perfect considering Thor’s new movie is coming up soon.
In any case, Ego is an unusual character to say the least. It’ll be interesting to see how he interacts with Peter and the other Guardians. It looks like we’ll just have to wait until the movie is released on May 5 to find out!
What do you think of this new character? Let us know on Twitter @PureFandom and check out our ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ playlist here!
(Featured image via screenrant.com)
