‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Releases Concept Art Revealing First Look at Star-Lord’s Shocking New Alliances

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ debuted its latest concept art showing Star-Lord’s newly assembled yet unexpected alliances. In addition to Gamora, Drax, Rocket, and Groot, the new team included Yondu, Nebula, and Mantis.

According to the Independent, director James Gunn revealed the upcoming film’s latest concept art revealing brand new members of Peter Quill’s band of intergalactic misfits-turned-heroes. Gunn’s Facebook post showed three unexpected characters specifically Michael Rooker’s Yondu, Pom Klementieff’s Mantis, and Karen Gillan’s Nebula.

It remains unclear whether these three new characters will team up with Peter Quill a.k.a. Star-Lord’s group until the end but it certainly seems that they will form alliances at some point. In Gunn’s first film, Yondu hunted down Peter for betraying the Ravagers but ended up helping him in the war against Ronan the Accuser. Nebula was definitely a villain as she worked as an assassin for her adoptive father, the intergalactic war lord Thanos.

Mantis, meanwhile, is a brand new character introduced into the cinematic series. According to Entertainment Weekly, she is depicted as an alien woman with antennae growing out of her head. Executive producer Jonathan Schwartz teased, “She has never really experienced social interaction… Everything she learns about dealing with people, she learns from the Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a very weird group to learn your social intricacies from.”

Rooker, Klementieff, and Gillan join Chris Pratt’s Peter in the poster together with the rest of the original crew made up of Zoe Saldana’s Gamora, Bradley Cooper’s Rocket Racoon, Dave Bautista’s Drax, and a tiny version of Vin Diesel’s Groot.

Schwartz revealed that baby Groot will not be the same as Diesel’s original tree man in the first film. He said, “He doesn’t have the wisdom and experience of that Groot… He’s a younger Groot and a more rambunctious Groot. The question is, is he the same Groot, just smaller? Or is he a different Groot that’s sprung up from the seed of the first Groot?”

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ is an upcoming superhero film scheduled to be released on May 5, 2017. It is intended as the third film in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) Phase Three.

It also the follow-up to Gunn’s critically and commercially successful film released in 2014. The first film grossed $773.31 million worldwide against a production budget of $170 million and became the year’s highest-grossing superhero film.