Original Air Date: July 26, 2015
This episode serves as the intro or origin for each of the characters from the movie. The great thing is that this series does take place after the movie but isn’t completely a direct sequel series and is free to explore the galaxy (pun intended). The characters are stylized after their movie counterparts and the origins are the same but aren’t completely tethered to the movies. And as such aren’t connected to the group we saw in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes a few years back. Back to the episode. This episode was later broken into chunks for each character online and that’s how I viewed them and in this order.
Star-Lord:
If you’ve seen the movie you basically know the origin story of Peter Quill (voiced by Will Friedle) as he becomes Star-Lord. His part opens up on his mom passing away and him being abducted by Yondu (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) and some other aliens. So to save himself from these unknown he threatens them with his toy blaster, which we find out is now a real blaster that shoots fire, water, and even mud.
Yondu saves him while the other’s escape. We then flash forward to what I think is the biggest movie reference with Star-Lord dancing to music while on a mission.
Star-Lord being Star-Lord.Rocket Raccoon:
This part opens up in a holding facility where animals get modified to become weapons. As such one of the robots goes to a raccoon cage and Rocket (voiced by Trevor Devall) jumps out and attacks the robot to save his family. But he fails and is whisked to be upgraded into the snarky sarcastic explosive raccoon that I came to love in the movie. Then after the upgrade it flashes forward to when he is let outside on a leash and that’s where we meet Groot (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson as well as voicing the other Groots in a later part). Rocket notices that Groot is dry and gets him water by basically destroying a nearby water tower. Then Groot helps Rocket back by freeing him from his restraints. Rocket escapes and saves Groot in the only way he knows how. By stealing a ship from what I think was the aliens from Star-Lord’s part that escaped Yondu and blowing up the facility. After a fun fight with the drones everyone is freed and Rocket tries to get his mom’s attention and she doesn’t recognize Rocket. They escape and it leads into Groot’s section.
Groot:
Rocket is narrating this part for some reason but it’s pretty cool to have some bleed through from the other part. Here we have the origin of Groot and the other Groots (yep they are all Groot) with how his people are created. Each of them has a part or a whole world pod inside of them that allows them to create more Groots as well as there being a single World Pod as well. Life is great for the Groots until Ronan (voiced by Jonathan Adams) decides to show up and ruin everything. Being Ronan he wants to drain the planet and the Groots are not having it so Ronan, living up to his namesake, destroys the planet and sets it ablaze not before our Groot runs to save the World Pod. But in the end it was all for naught when it was disintegrated making him the last Groot. Yondu rescues/kidnaps him and that’s where he first met Rocket.
Drax:
This part opens with a gladiator match with who I thought was Drax (voiced by David Sobolov), I was right, fighting a few other aliens all vying for the spot to be Ronan’s right hand man. After we see him remove his helmet and child comes up to him begging him to not kill her dad but to throw the match. The fight begins and Drax clearly wins earning the spot of right hand while the other is brought aboard Ronan’s prisoner ship. Both of them are to technically work for Ronan but the other was to be a slave. Drax removes his helmet before trying to turn on Ronan in revenge for killing his family.
Then he stows away on the ship with his last opponent’s daughter in tow. Drax does what he does best and beats up the crew before we get possibly the best instance of Drax taking things too literal. The fight runner-up asked him why he revealed his face and Drax replies with “Because I removed my helmet” and I burst out laughing because I almost forgot that this was part of his character. The ship then flies to a Nova Core outpost where the passengers are freed and Drax is locked up in space jail.
Gamora:
The final part to this intro episode begins with Nebula (voiced by Cree Summer who also voiced Meredith Quill), Korath (voiced by Dave Fennoy), and Gamora (voiced by Vanessa Marshall) receiving their task from Ronan and whoever wins earns the right to be his second-in-command. Nebula and Gamora are at blows even to the point of when they were fighting the sentries Nebula kicks Gamora into freezing water. But that ends up being her advantage as she reaches the target first, a Wizard who frees her mind from its control and there we see a silhouette of Thanos. He gives her a map before leaving her to deal with Nebula and Korath. The map gets knocked away by Nebula into Korath’s hand and he wins the challenge. It flashes over to a bar where we see Yondu and Star-Lord and then the Wizard offers them a map as well.
Final Thoughts:
All in all these were some interesting origin stories. It sort of echoed the movie and albeit it was entertaining. The voice talent for this show is quite fantastic. Each of them having previously done voice work for other comic book adaptations. I really think this is going to be a fun show to watch and honestly I think it’s time I catch up with the other animated Marvel shows too. There really isn’t much to say other than that but I do hope it performs as well as the movie did.
Guardians of the Galaxy airs Saturdays only on Disney XD