James Gunn has consistently stressed that he had a pretty clear plan from the start for where his Guardians of the Galaxy journey would eventually lead at the end of the MCU movie trilogy. However, that doesn’t mean everything was set in stone from the start. In fact, in the meantime there was even the idea to completely do without an original member of the Guardians in “Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3”.
As Gunn himself in an interview with the revealed, while writing Part 3, he played around a lot with a version of the story where Gamora (Zoe Saldana) no longer occurs: “It was a possibility,” says Gunn. “[Peter] should have come to terms with her loss, but without her coming back and confronting him in this different way.
“Guardians 3” without Gamora?
An omission of Gamora in “Guardians Of The Galaxy 3” would have been very conceivable after the earlier events of the MCU (even if we were dealing with a completely different movie in many places). Finally, in Avengers: Infinity War, she was dramatically sacrificed by her foster father, Thanos (Josh Brolin), so he could get his hands on the Soul Stone.
Already in “Avengers: Endgame” we saw how a Gamora from another timeline, in which Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Co. has not (yet) met, ends up in the present of the MCU, wherever she ends up.
Even though Gamora’s quasi-return was already planned in “Endgame” (where she also briefly meets Peter), that was by no means a guarantee that she would resurface in “Guardians Of The Galaxy 3”, after all, the point is that it turns out to be another Gamora who has had no adventures with the Guardians. And the “Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special” also managed without Gamora, showing us just a lone grieving Peter instead.
Fresh dynamics thanks to new Gamora
In the end, however, James Gunn decided to make the new Gamora an important part of his third Guardians movie – and that certainly enriches the Marvel adventure. The alternate Gamora not only disrupts the dynamic within the Guardians, it is also essential to Peter’s emotional development and ultimately to making peace with the painful loss of “his” Gamora.
A trilogy finale without one of the series’ most popular characters would also have been a shame for fans. So she also gets a (further) round end after she finally got a bit closer to the Guardians and thus also the well-known Gamora, but apart from that she apparently also found a permanent place as a respected member of the Ravagers.