Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t need to explain the backstory to its bizarre, single-sentence-speaking plant-man Groot. But the upcoming animated series wants to, just as it did with Star-Lord. So behold, the story of Groot... as well as the chance hear the phrase “I am Groot” an awful lot.
Despite what that old issue of Tales to Astonish would tell, you, our Groot is not a surprisingly verbose monster from the planet X according to the cartoon—well, it might still be Planet X as it’s not named, but either way, it doesn’t particularly matter.
As you can see in the video above—and continued in the one below—it turns out young Groot (who looks a lot like the older Groot, just scaled down a bit—and also happens to look like all the other Groots, which seems highly confusing) was minding his own existence among Groot-kind before Ronan the Accuser came along and blew up his entire planet, wiping out every Groot as well as the mysterious “world pod” that gave them life. The sole survivor, Groot gets picked up by Yondu and his cronies and meets a—very young—Rocket and his family, starting the duo’s friendship.
It’s... well, it’s basically like the Star-Lord preview—stuff that could either be easily inferred from the movie itself or was straight up said in the movie, just regurgitated again in animated form. In a way, it’s understandable. The animated series is meant to be perfect for kids who didn’t necessarily see the movie to pick up and be able to watch. But at the same time, I kinda wish the show was doing something new with the Guardians rather than just telling us (or showing us) things from the movie. Did Ronan have to be behind the Groot planet’s destruction? Do we have to see each Guardian’s origin story? Not really. Just give us the goofy action fun that we all fell in love with last year and you’ll be set.
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Animated Series begins September 5th on Disney XD.