YMMV / Guardians of the Galaxy (2015)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Peter rambling on about childhood incidents when he was subjected to the brain worm. Was that really what he was seeing? Or was he reliving the death of his mother, but he simply just knew how to hide his guilt better? Episode 6 shows that Quill is particularly skilled at throwing off or ignoring Mind Control, so there's also the possibility that he was never affected at all, or only very briefly.
• Awesome Art: The "Black Vortex" arc features the Guardians in different Art Shifts but Gamora’s deserves mention since she is essentially thrust into a classic Disney animated film. ^note  This segment in particular was animated by Mercury Filmworks, which also works on Tangled: The Series , which adds to this.
• Badass Decay: Rocket, somewhat. He's still plenty badass but he does tend to lose battles with much larger opponents more frequently than he ever did in the comics or film. Some examples include him trying to punch Drax only for Drax to not feel anything or being swatted away by an even larger Groot or Thor.
• Broken Base:
  • Rocket's voice. Some find his voice in this show annoying while others are okay with it. Some are just bitter over the fact it's still not a Cockney accent.
  • People are also split as whether Will Friedle is a suitable choice for Quill.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The reveal of Titus betraying the Nova Corps' agenda and turning out to be a Dirty Cop isn't much of a surprise to many, especially if they have seen the Ultimate Spider-Man episode "The Return of The Guardians of The Galaxy", where they face off against Titus.
• Complete Monster:
  • The Mad Titan Thanos is a destruction-loving tyrant determined to conquer as much of the galaxy as possible and annihilate the rest. A brutal warlord who has wiped out entire races, Thanos butchered Gamora's homeworld and enslaved her as one of his "children", performing horrible experiments on them all to make them his killing machines. In his quest for the Cosmic Seed in season 1, Thanos tries to annihilate a space station; tortures Peter Quill; and throws the lives of his own armies away in a mad scramble to use the Seed to terraform Earth and use it as a living weapon to conquer the galaxy. Having many of the Klyntar race tortured into insanity, Thanos tries to spread the Klyntar across the galaxy to turn billions into Thanos's puppets, and later attempts to raze the surface of his homeworld of Titan when its inhabitants refuse to cow to him. Thanos's evil runs so deep that he laughs in glee when forced to relive his atrocities, and proudly brags about his hand in the deaths of Drax and Groot's families.
  • Ronan the Accuser is a fanatical, rogue Kree general seeking to cleanse the galaxy of all that he deems impure, and serves as the most recurring threat of season 1. Having carried out Thanos's will in incinerating Groot's race and killing Drax's family, Ronan ran Gladiator Games and slave camps until he was taken down by the Guardians of the Galaxy. Revived by Nebula, Ronan quickly takes to abusing and even attempting to kill the woman despite her loyalty, and immediately attempts to destroy the entire planet of Xandar. Later forcing Black Bolt to try to destroy his own people simply because Ronan finds them repulsive and attempting to kickstart a galaxy-wide war by killing hundreds of his own people and framing others for it, Ronan plans to obtain the Cosmic Seed and use it in a genocidal crusade against the galaxy, and nearly annihilates the entire Earth when the Seed is stolen from him by Thanos.
  • J'son of Spartax is the abusive, treacherous father of Peter Quill, using any and all resources at his disposal in his vision of ultimate power and order across the galaxy. Attempting to orchestrate a war between Spartax and Asgard for decades, J'son allies with Thanos and hands his own son Peter off to him to be tortured in exchange for the promise of Asgard's destruction. J'son used his time as Emperor of Spartax to oppress and brutalize the populace, taking any dissenters and torturing them into members of his cult of loving followers, the Universal Believers, who J'son uses throughout season 2 to carry out a variety of crimes in his name, while sacrificing even the loyal Mantis with casual indifference. Upon achieving godhood when merging with Adam Warlock, J'son dubs himself "the Magus" and begins targeting the homeworlds and loved ones of the Guardians of the Galaxy, hoping to destroy however many planets it takes before the galaxy worships him as a god. With a knack for trying to take hundreds of people down with him when beaten and cowardly using even children as hostages to get his way, J'son contrasted his noble son Peter in every way imaginable.
  • The Serpent is Odin's brother, an ancient evil god who seeks ultimate dominion over Asgard and the destruction of all else in the universe. Orchestrating the kidnapping of hundreds of people, plunging them into comas and replacing them with his robotic Darkhawks from a prison Odin trapped him in, Serpent tries to blow up Asgard out of spite before escaping and making Odin watch as he nearly kills Odin's son Thor. Serpent soon enough takes control of the World Tree, using it to spread spores that drain the life out of anything they consume, with which Serpent hopes to consume the life force of every planet and species across the cosmos until he reigns supreme as the only thing left alive, using his own family as living batteries to power himself up.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Cosmo became one of the fan favorite characters from the show after the first episode's broadcast.
  • Though comic fans consider her one of the weaker members of the Black Order in terms of character and powerset, Supergiant's size-shifting powers and backstory with Peter Quill made her so much more popular.
• Growing the Beard: Season 2 puts more focus on continuity and plot, and several one-off stories or plots are brought brought back and tied to current arcs, giving them more purpose. Also, Peter's Butt-Monkey Character Exaggeration is toned down, and he acts more like a responsible, badass leader.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Mantis turning to dust in "Knights In Black Helmets" becomes a lot harder to watch since Mantis goes out the exact same way in Avengers: Infinity War.
  • Gamora's segment in the "Black Vortex" arc has her in a world animated by the same team from Tangled: The Series where woodland creatures describing various traits of Disney Princesses, such as a wicked stepsister (Cinderella) and "beautiful flowing hair" (Rapunzel, Aurora). Come Season 3 of Tangled, both of those things now apply to Rapunzel. Besides her hair, she also has a wicked stepsister in Cassandra, her best friend who turns out to be the biological daughter of her abusive adoptive mother, but then betrayed her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Despite being an Alternate Continuity from the MCU, it's funny to see how many plot points and other elements wind up getting reused in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 regardless. Special mention goes to "Undercover Angles", where the team debates on attacking a huge monster on the inside instead of the outside!
  • "Don't Stop Believin" has Peter saying of his Archnemesis Dad J'son, "this guy has an ego the size of a planet"! While the show doesn't change Peter's origin to match (and thus spoil) the second film, the line was originally a clear Shout-Out to Ego the Living Planet.
  • Peter protested during a fight of Gamora and Korath that he hates family reunions. In "Vol. 2", Peter had a family reunion of his own, even worse than that.
• Jerkass Woobie: Rocket. He clearly doesn't have the healthiest of attitudes but considering the horrifying process he underwent, one can scarcely blame him. To put this in perspective, after he is changed his own mother does not recognise him.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Animation enthusiasts who would otherwise be apathetic to the series were interested in the Black Vortex event, due to the different artstyles for the various prisons, such as one of them being animated by Tangled: The Series' Mercury Filmworks (which also worked as a good intermission for that series' fans waiting for Season 3).
• Magnificent Bastard: Loki is the suave and cunning God of Mischief, and the Arc Villain of the "Asgard War" two-parter. Amidst rising tensions between Asgard and Spartax, Loki manipulates the Guardians into exposing Emperor J'son for stealing the Cosmic Seed from Asgard years ago. In reality, Loki had stolen the Seed back from J'son, intending to start a war between Asgard and Spartax. When Thor goes to war, Loki hijacks the Destroyer Armor and tries to eliminate his brother which would leave him Asgard's wartime leader and sole heir to the throne. Although exposed by the Guardians, Loki "redeems" himself by aiding in stopping Thanos from invading Asgard. Later imprisoned for unknown crimes, Loki forms an Enemy Mine with the Guardians when Asgard was invaded by Venom symbiotes, only to later betray them and attempts to send the symbiotes to Midgard instead. Thwarted and captured, Loki uses a binding spell he had casted on Star-Lord earlier, influencing him to request Loki be pardoned once again. A smooth-talker and opportunist, Loki always weasels his way out of any situation, claiming to be acting for what's best for Asgard.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Ronan undoubtedly crosses the line in Groot's backstory when he razes Groot's world and all its inhabitants, then has the planet strip mined of pretty much everything useful and leaves it to rot.
  • In "Can't Fight This Seedling", Titus crosses it by attempting to fire an anti-matter missile without authorization on village full of innocents.
  • In "We Are Family" Uncle Pyko crosses this in-universe when it's revealed he's using the same technology as the robots the animals of Halfworld are rebelling against to mutate said animals into mindless war machines. Out of universe, one could argue Uncle Pyko was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist and didn't cross the line until he started mutating the other animals (Blackjack and Wal Rus after they saw what happened to Ranger) against their will.
  • Thanos crosses it in his backstory when he brainwashes Gamora as a young girl into becoming his loyal weapon and butchers her race.
  • J'son crosses it when allies with Thanos to wipe out Asgad, so he could rule.
• Narm: The Nova Corp officer who arrests Drax at the end of his origin has a voice way too over-the-top and caricatural to be taken seriously.
• Narm Charm: For Drax in his origin; however, his inability to understand the metaphor still did not tarnish his Hidden Depths.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: A three-episode arc of this series does more to let the viewer get to know and like Sam Alexander than the two whole seasons of Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) in which he was a main character, providing more context for his cocky, Jerkass behavior in USM.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Much like Avengers Assemble, a common criticism of that show is that it's trying too hard to emulate the movie rather than being its own thing.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Blackjack O'Hare gets a bit role in We Are Family when Rocket is forced back to Halfworld. In the comics, Blackjack is a mercenary and rival to Rocket, and could have been kept on as a foil for Rocket in this new series ... sadly by the end of the episode, the evolutionary Reset Button is pressed on Halfworld and Blackjack is reverted back into a harmless bunny. A similar argument could be made for Wal Rus, Rocket's first mate also from his comic book origin story who made a bit appearance in the episode, although Wal's basic role is pretty much filled by Groot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: We Are Family features Rocket's homeworld, Halfworld, as well as multiple cameos of important characters from Rocket's comicbook origin story, however despite having enough material to easily devote at least a multi-episode plot (or even a small arc) to, everything gets wrapped up by the end of the one episode.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The realistic art did make Rocket Raccoon and others seem creepy to look at.
• The Woobie:
  • Groot qualifies as this just from his origin story. His planet was razed by Ronan and then gutted of all necessary minerals, then after barely securing his race's survival he is captured by Ravagers and caged. The only upside to this story is that he met Rocket.
  • Star Lord also has it pretty rough. As in the film, his mother died of a terminal illness when he was a young boy, but we get shown how his abduction might have panned out. He utterly freaks after seeing loads of alien species, particularly one that tries eating his face, and upon running around the ship very nearly gets himself Thrown Out the Airlock by accident. Yondu then tries to reassure him only for the pirates to try and space him on purpose before trapping him in a shuttle and leaving him to die.