‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Won’t Have Infinity Stones or Infinity Gauntlets or Infinity Anything, Really

We’ve known for quite some time that Thanos won’t be appearing in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which will instead focus on Star-Lord’s dad (Kurt Russell) and a new set of problems — including Ayesha and some very unhappy Ravagers. But it looks like the big angry purple guy isn’t the only one who (literally) won’t be in the picture, as director James Gunn has confirmed that the sequel doesn’t feature any of those pesky Infinity Stones, either.

During one of his semi-regular Facebook Q&As, Gunn responded to a fan who asked about the appearance of Infinity Stones, which — up until recently — have appeared in just about every Marvel film in some capacity. Gunn said “there will be no Infinity Stones in Vol. 2,” and when another fan pressed him about the possibility of Infinity Gauntlets, Gunn made it perfectly clear: “There will be infinity nothing. It’s a story about the Guardians, and isn’t meant to lead to anything else.”

Gunn has repeatedly said that the Guardians operate in their own little corner of the MCU, and while that may change in Infinity War (they’re already familiar with Thanos, so it makes sense), the GOTG films are the weirdo outcast kids in the cafeteria — so don’t expect the sequel to have a bunch of connections to the larger Marvel universe.

As for Thanos, he was last seen in the post-credits stinger for Avengers: Age of Ultron. After several failed attempts to acquire Infinity Stones with the help of other villains, Thanos was finally inspired to get his big lazy purple butt out of that giant space chair and do it himself. We’ll see how that works out for him soon enough, just not in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which hits theaters on May 5, 2017.