The first trailer for Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 may have teased the imminent death of one of the team's longest-standing members.
Star-Lord, Drax, Groot, and the rest of the Guardians will be back in action in May 2023 for their third solo movie together after making their live-action Disney+ debut to close Phase 4 in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
But with this being director James Gunn's final effort in the MCU before his full-time move to DC, he's made it perfectly clear that not everybody is making it out of the threequel alive.
The first trailer for the movie, which debuted in early December 2022, teased that the team is in true danger thanks to the High Evolutionary.
And while it's still unclear who exactly might be in line for an unfortunate end to their story in Guardians 3, there may be an important clue hidden in the first official footage from the Phase 5 outing.
Drax Line Hinting at Guardians 3 Demise?
During the final scene of the first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, fans saw a scene between Drax and Star-Lord that could foreshadow Drax's death by the end of the movie.
Dave Bautista's Drax tells Chris Pratt's Quill that he and the team will "kill anyone who gets in (their) way," to which Quill responds that they're not actually going to kill anyone.
Drax: “And we’ll kill anyone who gets in our way!”
Peter Quill: “No, we will not kill anyone.”
Drax: “Kill a few people.”
Peter Quill: “Kill no people.”
He follows that by expressing how "one stupid guy who no one loves" should be killed.
Could this line be foreshadowing Drax's death, as Drax has been considered less intelligent than the other members of the Guardians crew due to his misunderstanding of certain phrases? Drax is also one of the less popular of the Guardians, which could fit in with his mention that "no one loves" this particular stupid guy.
All this could potentially be indicating that Drax may meet his end in Vol. 3:
Drax: “Kill one guy. One stupid guy who no one loves.”
Peter Quill: “No you’re just making it sad.”
Will Drax Die in Guardians 3?
Looking at the Guardians from a real-world place in the fandom, Drax usually isn't amongst the most talked-about members of the team when compared to Star-Lord, Rocket, or others. Even though the raw data from the last few years has sung a different tune, Drax has only recently gotten to truly shine on his own as a character through the Guardians' Holiday Special.
And although there's no way to tell for certain if Drax is in for a brutal ending in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, there are indicators that lead fans to believe this is the case.
In 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Kurt Russell's Ego revealed that he was the one who killed Peter Quill's mother by putting a cancer tumor on her brain. This turned out to be a kind of foreshadowing for the end of the movie when Ego was taken out with a bomb placed directly on his brain similar to how Meredith Quill succumbed to brain cancer.
For Bautista himself, he's also admitted that he's not expecting to continue playing Drax for much longer after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 if it's not his last outing altogether with Marvel.
Looking at this movie from a logical perspective, any one of the team members is in serious jeopardy of meeting their end as the Guardians face their biggest challenges yet. But if this line from Drax means anything, things may not look good for the team's metaphor-challenged fighter.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will debut in theaters on May 5, 2023.
