After fighting purple space warlords, an alien terrorist, and a sentient planet, one might be wondering just who can pose a threat to the Guardians of the Galaxy anymore. At SDCC, James Gunn revealed just who is going to challenge our favorite soft-rock heroes in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It is none other than the purple-clad evil scientist The High Evolutionary, being portrayed by Gunn's Peacemaker collaborator Chukwudi Iwuji.

But unlike the villains of the first two Guardians volumes, The High Evolutionary actually connects to just about every side of the Marvel Universe instead of just being a cosmic threat. The High Evolutionary was actually born on Earth and directly interacted with everyone from the Avengers to the X-Men. Whether it be just being another villain for these heroes to punch, or directly creating superheroes himself, he has made his presence known throughout the Universe even if he never posed as big of a threat as Thanos.

Where does this mad space scientist come from? Why is he only showing up now if he apparently has such a deep connection to so many Marvel characters? What makes Chukwudi Iwuji such a spot on casting for the role? And more than anything, why should the Guardians be so scared of him in their latest adventure? All of this and more will be answered below!

RELATED: Everything to Remember About the Guardians of the Galaxy Before 'Vol. 3'

The High Evolutionary Origins and Inspirations

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Despite being out in the galaxy by the time we will meet him in the MCU, The High Evolutionary was actually born in England during the early 1900s. Before becoming a mad scientist, he was just a kid named Herbert Edgar Wyndham. Unlike most normal kids, he became weirdly obsessed with genetics and genetic manipulation. So much so, that as a child he began torturing animals as "science experiments," already showing off his capacity of being a serial killer.

Given that little Hebert here is in the Marvel Universe, unfortunately, he was around at just the right time to be highly influenced by the X-Men villain Nathaniel Essex, AKA Mr. Sinister. While that name might not ring a bell to fans who have only seen the X-Men movies, where the character was only ever alluded to but never made any appearance, Mr. Sinister is one of the biggest and baddest X-Men villains. He normally uses Mutants as test subjects as a means to horribly experiment on them to test and expand new powers for his own amusement. If there's any one word to describe Mr. Sinister it would be "camp." He's almost like a villain in a Disney animated movie like Jafar or Ursula. He knows he's evil and freaking loves it! So, it's easy to see how someone viewing Mr. Sinister as an inspiration already is a huge red flag.

Crossing Paths with Inhumans and HYDRA

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Fast-forward to the 1920s and '30s, and Herbert has grown up into an actual geneticist who studied at Oxford. While studying, he met an Inhuman named Phaeder. For those at home whose first time being exposed to Inhumans was Anson Mount as Black Bolt in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Inhumans are a society of humans who were experimented on by the Kree (the bad guys in the first Guardians movie and Captain Marvel) that live on the moon. A bit crazy yes, but it's comics, describing anything is going to sound insane.

Phaeder isn't really a character of any consequence in the comics like Black Bolt is, but his existence as a genetic experiment opened up Herbert to more ideas on how to experiment with human's genetic code. The result of his experiments horrified his peers so much that he was expelled and denied his Ph.D.

Even this did not deter Herbet's ambitions, and he went on to attend scientific conferences run by Nazis and Hydra. While learning from his evil peers, like Arnim Zola (Toby Jones' character in the MCU), he teamed up with a man named Jonathan Drew, father of the future Spider-Woman. With some help from Phaeder, Jonathan and Herbert teamed up to create a lab away from the judgmental eyes of any rational human being. That lab just so happening to be in Wundagore Mountain.

Wundagore Mountain: Where Science Meets Demons

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Image via Marvel

Also featured in Doctor Strange 2, Wundagore Mountain has essentially the same backstory in the comics as it does in the MCU. It's a big, scary mountain filled to the brim with dark magic forged from the eldritch demon, Cthon. Eons before Herbert and Jonathan laid foot on the mountain, Cthon used it as his place to create the Darkhold, the Marvel equivalent of The Necronomicon. The same book of chaos magic that provided Wanda Maximoff with so many of her powers that she didn't inherit from being a mutant. But more on this in a bit.

After setting up their lab, Herbert hit the ground running with his experimentation. His latest goal: evolving animals to what he views as their highest potential. This spawned his New Men, advanced animal-humanoid hybrids with the ability to speak and think. The New Men were Herbert's first army, the first group he had complete control over, furthering his already massive ego and narcissism. Surprisingly, this is where Wanda and her brother Pietro come back into the picture.

Werewolves, Spiders, and Chaos Magic

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Image via Disney

In the comics, Wanda and Pietro have a really complicated lineage that gets retconned every few years. But for the majority of the time, they are the children of Magneto, and belong to the House of Magnus. To be kept away from society, which the reasoning for has also been retconned a bunch, as babies they were left at Wundagore Mountain. At this point, the only human who was really occupying the mountain was Herbert himself, who at this point created a suit of armor and fully embraced his God Complex, now going by The High Evolutionary. To get even more biblical, he also simply goes by HE. If you want to get even more unhinged, he will also accept just being called God. His massive ego is so all encompassing, it ended up pushing away his lab partners.

The first partner who abandoned him was Jonathan Drew, after his family was destroyed by association with The High Evolutionary. For starters, his wife got attacked by a werewolf around the mountain, the same werewolf that went on to spread the disease to Werewolf By Night, who is set to appear in an upcoming Halloween special played by Coco's Gael García Bernal and directed by frequent Marvel composer Michael Giacchino. Jonathan's daughter also had to be put in suspended animation due to her being exposed to so much of the uranium deposits in the mountain. Jonathan and The High Evolutionary attempted to fix the issue by crossing her genetics with Spider DNA, which is what eventually gave Jessica the powers to become Spider-Woman.

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Image via Disney+

His other former partner was Miles Warren, a biochemist who eventually became the Spider-Man villain Jackal, because this is comics and apparently everyone must be important and connected to something. Warren was shunned from the mountain because he started a cult among the New Men, and promised those who followed him that he would give them a serum to make them fully human. Obviously this didn't sit well with The High Evolutionary, so he nipped the problem in the bud and Jackal was kicked out.

Now that he is fully alone on the mountain and devoted to continuing his own sick experiments, when baby Wanda and Pietro stumbled upon his lab, he left them in the care of one of his New Men. The New Man in charge or being the twins' mother figure was a talking cow woman named Bova. Bova even got a shout-out in the second episode of Wandavision. In that episode's intro, there is a scene of the characters in an animated grocery store, and in the background there is an advertisement for a fake milk brand called Bova.

Now to keep count, so far The High Evolutionary has directly impacted, caused, or interacted with Inhumans, Mr. Sinister, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Werewolf by Night, Jackal, Spider-Woman, and Hydra. Now for the big twist of this villain: this is all before his first appearance happened.

The High Evolutionary Emerges!

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Image via Marvel

The High Evolutionary showed up first, fully formed in his suit with an army of New Men, in Thor #134. In the comic, Thor visits Wundagore Mountain with Jane Foster, and fights The High Evolutionary's New Men. A refreshingly straightforward story considering his complicated origins. After battling with Thor, he also fought with the Hulk and a couple other Avengers. After dealing with these pests for a while, he no longer wanted to deal with Earthly heroes anymore. He desired something better. Something that would, in his eyes, be perfect. He desired to create the ultimate lifeforms.

Ridding himself of any remaining humanity, he essentially bonded with his suit and evolved himself into being an advanced AI. After this, he rigged his demonic castle lab to blast off into space where he can conduct his new experiments in peace.

The High Evolutionary and Adam Warlock

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Image Via Disney

Out in the galaxy, The High Evolutionary attempted to achieve his sick view of perfection by creating a near one-to-one replica of Earth called Counter-Earth. Located on the opposite side of the sun from regular Earth, Counter-Earth is solely inhabited by his New Men and other creations. He rules over this planet with an iron fist in a manor not dissimilar to Big Brother in 1984. Any creation of his deemed imperfect was killed as soon as they fell off The High Evolutionary's view of perfection.

Around this time is also when he came across Adam Warlock, set to be played by Will Poulter in Vol. 3. Adam Warlock's whole deal is that he is supposed to be the perfect man, which of course peaked The High Evolutionary's desire for perfection. Their meeting led to him essentially adopting Warlock as his own son, and he gifted him with the Soul Gem (called the Soul Stone in the MCU), which Warlock then began to wear proudly in the center of his forehead.

Long story short, their relationship soured over time as Warlock became a hero and High Evolutionary remained a mad scientist. Now that he is out in space, barely resembling a human anymore due to his own experiments on himself, and ruling a planet, The High Evolutionary has remained a frequent opponent of nearly every major Marvel team. But with his connection to Warlock and a certain gun-toting raccoon, he is most frequently fighting the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Rocket Raccoon's "Father"?

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With all this talk of the new Guardians of the Galaxy villain being a guy who tortures subjects until they become humanoid animals, lines can easily be drawn that this High Evolutionary fellow is the creator Rocket Raccoon. Surprisingly, the answer to that is it's true sometimes but not always.

Rocket comes from a planet called Halfworld, a similar but different planet from Counter-Earth. Both are planets comprised of humanoid animals that were created by mad scientists. Rocket himself escaped Halfworld with his buddy Wal Rus and his otter girlfriend, Lylla.

But even with all of these similarities and connections, The High Evolutionary is only sometimes Rocket's creator. Much like Magneto being the father of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, it's something that gets constantly retconned to being true or false depending on whatever fits the writers needs in any individual comic book run.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

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While James Gunn has stated in the past this third fill will deal a lot with Rocket's origins, saying The High Evolutionary is his creator is nothing more but sheer speculation at this point. There really isn't any particular reason to connect the two dots until Gunn directly says so. So ignoring the possibility, The High Evolutionary is still a logical villain to show up in the franchise.

Gunn isn't exactly subtle when it comes to the purpose of the villains. Each minor or major bad guy that appears in the first two films connect to the series themes of recovering from childhood trauma. The main villain in the first is Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) and the second is Ego (Kurt Russell), the Living Planet. Just these names alone are so on the nose that it's practically breaking it. These are villains that strive for total control and power, meant to represent abusive parents vying for total control of their children. Thanos (Josh Brolin) even does it in a literal sense by abducting Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) and literally ripping them apart and replacing body parts with cybernetics to fit his ideal image of them. Ronan destroyed the city of Xandar in an attempt to control people. Ego left spores across many planets to reproduce and terraform the planets into his image, forcing the Galaxy into a united hive mind. But their plans failed.

The High Evolutionary is a character that has already succeeded. He doesn't need to attempt control like the previous bad dads did, he already has it. An entire planet populated by his own creations, none of which ever live up to his idea of perfection. Rocket's creator or not, that is why he is the villain of this third movie. He is a character that embodies the next evolution, if you will, of the same themes and ideas that have persisted through the last two Guardians volumes.

Chukwudi Iwuji's High-Evolutionary

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So with all of this rich backstory in mind, it's easy to see why Gunn is having him as the villain to end his trilogy. He fits the theme of an abusive, narcissistic, father figure that persists across all of his Guardians villains. Given that he is a villain that tortures his creations to life only to rule over them, is a pretty logical next step after characters like Ronan, Ego, and Thanos. Particularly with Iwuji playing him, his background as a member of The Royal Shakespeare Company will certainly only benefit him playing a role that is so grand and bombastic.

Will he be connected to the X-Men, Spider-Woman, and all these other characters like he is in the comics?.... Probably not. Gunn purposely made his individual Guardians films as things that could stand by themselves without the assistance of the rest of the MCU, but it is a fun fact. The High Evolutionary's complicated history is why he is such a fantastic villain and has constantly appeared outside the comics, as far back as the 90s X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons.

He's big, he's bad, and to quote Chukwudi Iwuji's in-character appearance at this year's San Diego Comic Con Marvel panel, he "can't wait to dissect you all!"