Marvel Cinematic Universe newcomer Will Poulter is golden in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 trailer. Disney dropped the first footage from the third installment of James Gunn’s trilogy at CCXP in Brazil, revealing the golden-skinned Adam Warlock (Poulter), a.k.a. Adam Magus. The cosmic character was teased during a post-credits scene ending 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, where the Sovereign’s Golden High Priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) created the cacooned figure she named Adam. So said the golden gal: “The next step in our evolution — more powerful, more beautiful, more capable of destroying the Guardians of the Galaxy.”
The footage shows Adam as an enemy of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the cosmic crew now consisting of Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Groot (Vin Diesel), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), and talking space dog Cosmo (Maria Bakalova).
Watch the trailer above and see the first look at Poulter as Adam Warlock below.
“I feel very, very lucky and honored to have been welcomed into the Marvel family,” the Maze Runner and Dopesick actor previously told Flip Your Wig. “Particularly in a franchise like Guardians of the Galaxy, which I regard to be incredibly creative and very, very unique. James Gunn is someone I really, really admire so I feel very lucky.”
In the Marvel comics, Adam was a being originally known as “Him”: a synthetic lifeform created in the image of a perfect human being. Emerging from a cocoon as a creation of the Enclave, he was later christened “Warlock” by the High Evolutionary (played in Vol. 3 by Chukwudi Iwuji), who embedded one of the six Infinity Gems in Warlock’s forehead: the Soul Gem.
One of the most powerful cosmic entities in the Marvel Universe, the god-slaying Adam Warlock has fought alongside the Avengers, the Infinity Watch, and the Guardians of the Galaxy, opposing such foes as Thanos and Adam’s archenemy, the evil Magus. Unlike his MCU counterpart — making his debut during Phase 5 as part of the Multiverse Saga — the comic book Adam was a key player in the three-part Infinity saga of the 1990s: The Infinity Gauntlet, The Infinity War, and The Infinity Crusade.
Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 opens only in theaters May 5th, 2023.