The following contains spoilers from The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, a Marvel special now streaming on Disney+.
Disney+’s Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special was a candy-filled 40-minute confection by and large. Holiday madness if ever there was one. Still, it provided a middling revelation that should carry over into at least one future MCU project.
Early in the Marvel special, when Mantis (played by Pom Klementieff) lobbies to find a very special Christmas present for the melancholy Quill (Chris Pratt), she privately and casually mentions to Drax (Dave Bautista) her “secret” that he and only he knows – that she and Peter share a father in Ego (played in Guardians Vol. 2 by Kurt Russell).
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Explaining why she has withheld this information until now, Mantis tells Drax, “Peter’s father…our father…killed his mother and tried to kill him. I don’t want him to be reminded of that every time he sees me.
Yet at the end of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, after delivering Footloose star Kevin Bacon (if not Ren McCormack himself) to Quill, Mantis finally revealed to his half-brother their relationship.
“Your father, Peter, he could be…he could be…he’s…my father too,” she revealed. To which a happily surprised Quill said, “Mantis, this is the greatest Christmas present I could ever receive!”
The Mantis-Quill connection isn’t entirely surprising, if at all. Fans have long speculated about their shared paternity — prompted in part by a blink-and-you-missed-it image from Vol. 2, which depicted Ego’s myriad relationships, but also via a quickly deleted social media post from an actress who said she played “The Mantis Mother” in a deleted scene from its first sequel.
And indeed, Guardians Vol. 2 was where this brotherly bond was originally supposed to be revealed.
“I’ve known this little secret for years because I knew about it when I was shooting Guardians of the Galaxy 2,” Mantis’ portraitist, Pom Klementieff, tells TVLine. “I think it should have been in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 then, too [franchise writer-director] James Gunn decided to hold it back and reveal it later.
Klementieff went on to say, “It’s nice that it’s there now” because it “creates more layers and a special and beautiful relationship between the two characters.”
As individuals, Mantis and Quill “can feel so isolated and dark,” Klementieff noted, but moving forward — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is set to hit theaters on May 5, 2023 — “it creates something pretty special between the two of them.”
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special also introduced the MCU to Cosmo the space dog (voiced by Oscar-nominated Maria Bakalova from Borat Next Movie)… revealed that Quill & Co. lived in the Head of Knowhere… gifted Rocket with Bucky’s vibranium arm ( A+ Infinity War callback!)… and introduced the titular team’s new spaceship, which is named after (David) Bowie.
What did you think of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special?
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