Star-Lord is having a wonderful Christmas time, but there’s one gift he still wants under the tree: His long-lost love, Gamora.
In The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, streaming on Disney+, Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) travel to Hollywood to kidnap Kevin Bacon as a gift for Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), who’s still down in the dumps about losing Gamora (Zoe Saldana).
Although Thanos murdered Gamora to get the Soul Stone, a time-displaced variant of Gamora shows up in Avengers: Endgame. It’s this Gamora who hasn’t been seen or heard from since the battle with Thanos. So where is she, and is Star-Lord still trying to find her? While the Holiday Special doesn’t provide many answers, it’s still worth asking the questions before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
While Gamora doesn’t appear in the special, her absence is deafening for Star-Lord. We pick up an unspecified amount of time after Thor: Love and Thunder, and Star-Lord is still feeling his heartbreak. The Guardians have made a home in Knowhere and, unlike when Love and Thunder glossed over it, the absence of Gamora is dealt with in more explicit terms. Star-Lord’s sadness inspires Mantis and Drax to kidnap the “legendary” Kevin Bacon.
Notably, Drax and Mantis don’t even think to find Gamora instead. The whereabouts of Gamora — the Endgame version of her, anyway — remains a mystery.
We can probably rule out Gamora returning to her own timeline. There’s simply no easy way for her to do it: Only the Avengers have that technology, and Gamora doesn’t really know any of them.
What’s more plausible is that Gamora is a space nomad, hopping from planet to planet to avoid her notoriety as Thanos’ adopted daughter. Remember, in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora had a galaxy-wide reputation that made nearly everyone want to fight, arrest, or avoid her.
We’ll get more concrete answers on her whereabouts soon. In teasers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 screened at San Diego Comic-Con, Gamora was revealed to be the new leader of the Ravagers (how she takes over from Sylvester Stallone’s Stakar is another question in search of an answer).
The teasers were emotionally charged, which suggests Vol. 3 will be relatively somber compared to its two predecessors. Star-Lord has to accept that the Gamora who stands before him has no memories of their time together, and that the dynamics between the two may be doomed.
Gamora is alive, but the Gamora who Star-Lord loved is dead. Even if the Holiday Special was all about the search for Gamora, the reunion would be bittersweet. It makes sense that the MCU would keep their reunion contained to Vol. 3. There’s simply no better way to ruin Christmas than by running into an ex.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is streaming on Disney+. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will open in theaters on May 5, 2023.
