Marvel Studios gave Guardians of the Galaxy 2 a release date of July 28th, 2017 before the first movie was even released, and writer/director James Gunn (who will return for the sequel) has now talked more about what we should expect from the movie and specifically a big plot point which was set up in the first instalment.

However, if you haven’t seen Guardians of the Galaxy, stop reading now!

Near the end of the movie, it is revealed that Peter Quill/Star-Lord’s father is the one who hired Yondu to retrieve his son from Earth, and that he is both an ancient and powerful being. This didn’t quite match up to who he is in the comics books (J’son of Spartax, the Emperor of the Spartoi Empire), but there’s a good reason for that.

“It’s definitely not the character who it is in the comics, I’ll say that much,” reveals James Gunn. “There have been a lot of documents passed around about who Peter Quill’s father is between a select two or three of us. That’s been part of the plan since the beginning, that’s something I had to work out before we shot the screenplay. We wanted to make sure Yondu’s place in everything made sense and it does, so it’s all very specific stuff.”

As for how Thanos (Josh Brolin) will factor into the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, it sounds as if Marvel are still planning on saving the villain for a larger role in a future Avengers movie.

“He will show up [in the sequel] if he helps our story and he will not show up at all if not,” Gunn confirmed. “Thanos is not the most important thing in Guardians 2, that’s for damn sure. There’s the Guardians themselves and other threats the Guardians are going to be facing that are not Thanos.”

If the speculation that we’re going to get a massive Avengers/Guardians of the Galaxy crossover turns out to be correct, it’s hard to imagine Thanos not having some sort of role in the sequel. For now though, the mystery of which cosmic character is Star-Lord’s father in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is perhaps even more interesting…