Will Poulter to play Adam Warlock in James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

Marvel Studios has finally cast one of the best/cheapest/laziest/awesomest characters to ever come out of the superhero genre, with Deadline revealing that Will Poulter from The Revenant and Midsommar will be playing Adam Warlock in James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. The character, referred to only as “Adam,” was first mentioned at the end of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 as a supposedly perfect being created by Elizabeth Debicki’s Ayesha to destroy the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and now Gunn is making good on that tease.

That’s about all we know, since Marvel movies tend to be very secretive, but luckily Adam Warlock has a long and beautifully nonsensical backstory in the comics we can dig into. Here’s the elevator pitch: He was artificially created to be the ultimate man, and his level of cosmic awareness is so far beyond the comprehension of regular people that he basically doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself unless he absolutely has to (like, say, when Thanos gets the Infinity Gauntlet and tries to wipe out half of all life to impress the literal personification of Death).

Adam Warlock is also the ultimate Christ figure, because unlike Neo from The Matrix (or whoever your preferred messiah is), Adam Warlock can sacrifice his life and come back over and over again. When he dies, he’s reborn somewhere in the galaxy in his magic cocoon, which grants him whatever new superpowers a writer thinks will be cool, and then he can be show up somewhere for a big crossover event, heroically give his life for everyone else, and then go back to his cocoon for the next big crossover event.

He embodies a lazy trope in a way that is clever and cool, but also… you know, lazy. In other words, it’s the best kind of comic book bullshit. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 will go into production at some point later this year.