The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Trailer Easter Egg You Might Have Missed

Turn up the Awesome Mix: it's time to face the music in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Set to the tune of Spacehog's "In the Meantime," the first trailer for the third and final installment of James Gunn's cosmic trilogy was released Thursday during Brazil's Comic Con Experience in São Paulo. Along with the return of the 2014 alternate timeline version of Gamora (Zoe Saldana) — not seen since 2019's Avengers: Endgame — the footage showed New Men creator the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) and the all-gold cosmic crusader Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). It also featured an Easter egg callback to 2014's original Guardians of the Galaxy.

The trailer starts with a stylized version of the Marvel Studios logo as it transforms into Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt) tape deck. The logo resembles the red-and-white-striped sticker label of Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and Awesome Mix Vol. 2, the cassette mix tapes gifted to Peter by his late mother, Meredith Quill (Laura Haddock).

After classic tracks like Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love" on Vol. 1 and Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" on Vol. 2, the Vol. 3 soundtrack will look a little different: at the end of Vol. 2, Peter inherited a Zune MP3 player with 300 songs, one last gift from adoptive father Yondu (Michael Rooker).

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Soundtrack

In 2020, Gunn shared "Meredith Quill's Complete Awesome Mix," a curated Spotify "master list of Meredith Quill's favorite songs" that Gunn considered for the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 and 2 soundtracks. "I'm not promising I won't use these in future films, but I feel we could all deal with a little joy during our time in quarantine," Gunn wrote of the 64-song playlist, which includes tracks like "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" by Leo Sayer, "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates, and "Renegade" by Styx. 

So far, Vol. 3 tracks include a remixed version of the 1996 song "In the Meantime" by Spacehog and the 2002 song "Do You Realize??" by The Flaming Lips. The latter featured in the San Diego Comic-Con trailer that was made exclusively for the convention crowd.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Cast and Synopsis

In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, our beloved band of misfits are looking a bit different these days. Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Peter Quill must rally his team around him to defend the universe and protect one of their own. A mission that, if not completed successfully, could quite possibly lead to the end of the Guardians as we know them.

James Gunn writes and directs Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, featuring Vin Diesel as Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter and Maria Bakalova. Kevin Feige is the producer and Louis D'Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Nikolas Korda, Simon Hatt, and Sara Smith serve as executive producers.

Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 opens only in theaters on May 5th, 2023.