When Avengers: Doomsday went into production, fans were treated to a four-hour livestream revealing two dozen names of the stars of the new film. I remember, I live blogged the whole thing. There were names we expected, like Anthony Mackie or Chris Hemsworth. Some names surprised us, like the various members of the X-Men. And then there were some that surprised us because we didn’t see them.
While we’ve since learned that not every important name in the Avengers: Doomsday cast was revealed in the live stream, several were conspicuous by their absence. One of those was Chris Pratt. Collider recently asked him just where the chair with his name on it was, and the actor joked that it must have been there; we just didn’t see it. Pratt said…
I don’t know. I think it was far off — like they must have cut away from it. I don’t know what happened. It was there. I’m sure it was there.
To be fair, it was a big soundstage and there were a lot of chairs to keep track of. If one of them had gotten lost in a corner somewhere, it wouldn’t exactly be that shocking.
To be clear, Chris Pratt is just joking and isn’t confirming his appearance in Avengers: Doomsday. If his chair wasn’t there, it’s because he either isn’t in the movie, or Marvel doesn’t want us to know he is, and either way, Pratt is pretty good about not letting the cat out of the bag, unlike some other MCU actors we could mention.
The main reason that Pratt’s name not appearing was a bit of a surprise is that Star-Lord is the one member of the Guardians of the Galaxy cast that we’ve specifically been told “will eturn” as that was stated in the post-credits scene of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. While Pratt isn’t saying when that promise will be fulfilled, he does plainly state that it will be fulfilled at some point. He continued…
I can’t say for fans of mine where they’ll see Star-Lord again, but I can tell them Star-Lord’s not — we made a promise at the end of Vol. 3 that the legendary Star-Lord will return, and he will return.
One assumes that since the movie bothered to specify that Star-Lord would return, somebody at least had an idea for that. Adding the statement seemed to indicate that not only would Star-Lord be back, but that the other Guardians of the Galaxy would not. Marvel Studios thought making that clear was important.
Whatever the plan is, it’s clear there is a plan to bring back Star-Lord. Maybe he’ll appear in Doomsday after all or in the follow-up Avengers: Secret Wars. He might not even appear until all that dust settles, but it seems that the legendary Star-Lord will return eventually.