How 'Thor: Love and Thunder' Sets Up 'Guardians of the Galaxy 3'

The Guardians of the Galaxy make a brief but memorable appearance in Thor: Love and Thunder, which helps set up the group's next adventure.

Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper all reprise their roles as Star Lord, Drax, Nebula, Mantis, Kraglin, Groot and Rocket in the Marvel film, respectively.

Their time with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) may be short, but it is certainly packs a punch, and here is how it paves the way for their next solo film.

How 'Thor: Love and Thunder' Sets Up 'Guardians of the Galaxy 3'

The Guardians of the Galaxy only appear in the opening scenes of Thor: Love and Thunder, as it shows the group teaming up with the Asgardian deity in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame.

Alongside Thor, the team work to help various alien civilizations across the galaxy who are in need of their help, and one such battle is shown at the start of the film.

At the end of the battle, the Guardians return to their ship with Thor, and Pratt's Peter Quill checks on how many distress signals they have received in their time on the planet they're on.

It turns out they've received quite a lot of distress calls, well over 1,000 in fact, and it's through these messages that Thor learns of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) and discovers that Sif (Jaimie Alexander) was hurt in a battle with the villain.

Rather than join Thor to help Sif, the Guardians decide to deal with the many other people asking for their assistance, and in the farewell Quill gives Thor some advice on love and keeping the people he cares about the most around him.

The Guardians then promptly leave the planet and Thor behind, and it's likely that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will open with the team helping one of the many people they received distress signals from in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Despite helping to set up the film, director Taika Waititi has admitted that he isn't aware of what James Gunn has planned for his characters in the Guardians sequel.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Waititi said: "No, I still have no idea what that film's about. I never read a script, I never talked to James [Gunn] about that film."

"All I did was I wrote what I thought the characters sounded like, sent those pages to James and he was like: 'Star-Lord wouldn't say that'.

"The same thing with Thor on Infinity War and Endgame, I came in just to help with the way Thor speaks and the scriptwriting on that, so 'This is how Thor would come into the scene, this is how Thor would comment on that'."

The Jojo Rabbit director added that he "didn't really care to know" what plans have been set in place for other Marvel films because it was "so stressful just concentrating on one film."

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has already wrapped filming and it is expected to be released in 2023.

Thor: Love and Thunder is out in theaters now.