Now that Guardians of the Galaxy has proven to Marvel that cosmic stories are not only profitable but pretty awesome, we're seeing an expansion in those kinds of films. We already know that Inhumans will be coming in 2018, but long before that we're going to see a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. One of the characters fans have been dying to see, and hoped would appear in the first film, was Rich Ryder aka Nova, most prominent member of the Nova Corps. James Gunn took questions from fans over on his Facebook page, and when asked if Nova could appear in the sequel this was his response...
Gunn: "I don’t want Nova right now because I think Quill being the only earthling is important. That serves the entire movie going audience and not just the handful of Nova fans… I have nothing against Nova in future movies, but it doesn’t serve the movie right this moment."
There's still the chance Nova pops up elsewhere but it wouldn't make quite as much sense. Gunn was mainly focused on the idea that studios are basically putting the cart before the horse, building massive shared universes without a strong film to ground them, citing Marvel as an example of one that got the process right. He also makes it clear that despite Kevin Feige's claims everything is mapped out through 2028, the Marvel plan is hardly set in stone...
Gunn: "The ONLY thing in GotG that was connected to the rest of the Marvel Universe is the existence of Thanos and the existence of an infinity stone. Everything else – how Thanos was connected, who he was connected to, what were the properties of the infinity stone, etc, etc, were all basically made up by me. It’s much much looser than people think it is. And it certainly wasn’t planned out when they did Iron Man. They just thought about making a good Iron Man movie – which is exactly my point."
The Nova-less Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will open May 5th 2017.
