Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 Ending And Post-Credits Scenes Explained

gamespot.com:

Starting with Avengers: Endgame back in 2019, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has told a bunch of different «end of an era» stories. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the latest of these, with a number of the main cast members publicly declaring that this is the last MCU film they're doing--and writer/director James Gunn has taken over as boss over at rival DC Studios, so he probably won't be making any more Marvel movies in the near future.

So, yeah, after three of their own movies, two Avengers movies, a Thor movie, and a holiday special, this is the end of the road for this specific Guardians of the Galaxy roster. The group itself will continue to exist one way or another, however, and it wouldn't be all that shocking to see a new iteration of the group pop up down the road.

Like so many other MCU movies lately, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is pretty well self-contained--this story is concerned only with the past and present of the Guardians themselves, and makes no mention of any MCU stories they weren't directly involved with. But it's still a Marvel movie, and that means that there are bonus scenes after the end credits start to roll that may or may not tease some upcoming thing.

Warning: the rest of this article contains spoilers for the ending of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, as well as the mid-credits and post-credits scenes.

As you might expect from a «one last ride» kind of movie like this, it's got a rather lengthy, Lord of the Rings-esque ending. As the High Evolutionary orders the destruction of his Counter-Earth, the Guardians fight back and assault his space ship/laboratory. During this epic final battle Rocket defeats and kills the evil High Evolutionary, who had turned him into what he is all those