Minor spoilers ahead for Guardians of the Galaxy, in case you haven’t seen it yet BUT WHY.
Even though we don’t find out who Peter Quill’s father is—only that Star-Lord actually does have some alien blood in him—in Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn recently revealed that he’s been thinking about this particular character since even before they shot the movie.
However, now that he’s settling in to write the sequel, he can tell us who Star-Lord’s dad definitely isn’t.
Gunn told Empire that Peter Quill’s father is “definitely not the character who it is in the comics, I’ll say that much.” That would be J’son of Spartax, an alien with a human appearance who seduced Quill’s mom Meredith. The Spartoi are not a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, nor does it seem like they will be. Which is all well and good, since we can’t find much interesting on them anyway.
That said, it doesn’t sound like Gunn has landed on an actual candidate for the absentee alien dad who calls his son up on the night of his mother’s unfortunate death. Their research has stayed secret, known only to Gunn, his brother Sean, Kevin Feige, and Michael Rooker (who played Yondu):
There has been a lot of world building we’ve done that we get to play with in the second movie. There have been a lot of documents passed around about who Peter Quill’s father is, and things like that, between a select two or three of us. That’s been part of the plan since the beginning, that’s something I had to work out and I worked it out before we shot the screenplay. We wanted to make sure Yondu’s place in everything made sense and it does, so it’s all very specific stuff.
We definitely hope to see more Yondu in the sequel. For as arrow-happy as he got, he made a fun ornery surrogate dad for Peter. In the meantime, let’s start speculating on who Star-Lord’s biological father could be! Some outlets are theorizing Adam Warlock or Captain Marvel, i.e. someone who would be of consequence in the tapestry that the MCU is weaving through the movies, but we probably won’t be able to make an educated guess until the casting gets announced and we can work backwards from there.
Although honestly it’s probably Howard Stark and we’ll find out how in Agent Carter somehow. Wheels within wheels, people.
Photo: Marvel Studios
