The internet’s favourite fan casting choice, Nathan Fillion, is not in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. But that wasn’t always the case. Last year, fans caught a glimpse of some very interesting posters of Fillion on the set of the sequel, and now writer-director James Gunn has explained what happened.
Nathan Fillion, seen here in Firefly, had a meta cameo cut from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Image: Fox
We first reported on the posters in April of last year. That’s when it was revealed Fillion was somehow playing Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man. And in this world, Williams starred in a biopic of Iron Man himself, Tony Stark, titled Tony Stark. So Fillion played Williams, who was playing Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr. Got it?
Here’s a high-res version of the poster Gunn posted on his Facebook.
In the description of the poster, Gunn gets into a bit more detail about how this all came about. Here’s a snippet:
In a small flash to earth I decided to put a theatre playing a “Simon Williams Film Festival,” with six Simon Williams movie posters outside. Obviously, from the posters, he’s had a run of B movies. Most of them in themselves are Easter eggs of some sort or another. Unfortunately, the small section of the scene where they appeared slowed down the movie and I had to cut the Easter eggs from the film (along with storefronts named after comic book luminaries Starlin, Mantlos, Annett and others). Equally a bummer was that a lot of people took photos of these posters on the day so suddenly every fan site was reporting that Nathan was playing Wonder Man in he movie. He was even the third-billed actor on IMDB.
So that’s the full story. Nathan’s only cameo in the movie ever were these posters. I’ll post them all over the next few days.
And, yes, I think we can consider them canon for the MCU, and I hold onto hope that Simon Williams will rise again!!
Hopefully not only will that scene be on the DVD (I assume Ego took Meredith to the movies or something), but Wonder Man, played by Nathan Fillion, will make an official MCU appearance some time soon.
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