'Guardians of the Galaxy 2' Cast Includes Nathan Fillion: Marvel & 'Firefly' Collide!

Long before Nathan Fillion helped solve crimes on Castle, he was the most awesome of all space cowboys, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, in Joss Whedon's short-lived and iconic Firefly -- and he's joining yet another powerful franchise. New set photos from James Gunn's Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 show the Serenity captain is back in space!

According to io9 Gizmodo, new pictures from the Guardians 2 set have leaked online, featuring what's obviously a movie theater. On it, there are a few posters from fictional movies (including a little MCU inside joke: a Tony Stark biopic!), and Fillion's featured on each of them, and there's a movie festival with his character.

Of course, this isn't only exciting because it means Fillion will get a bigger role in the MCU (he already had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo on the original Guardians film, as the "Monstrous Inmate"), but he's also playing a pretty interesting character. As Comic Book reports, the character Fillion will be playing is Simon Williams, an actor and former Avenger in the Marvel universe.

It's unclear whether Fillion will actually act in the sequel or if he's just appearing in poster form, but it's still pretty great to see the face of Captain Mal in a space-themed movie.

Now, the appearance of a movie theater and posters in Guardians 2 seems to confirm a theory about the sequel: at least part of it will be set on Earth. While that doesn't necessarily mean we'll see Chris Pratt's Star-Lord and the rest of the gang on Terra, the presence of one of the movie posters could easily mean it's a modern-day scene back on Earth: it seems unlikely that filmmakers would make a movie about Tony Stark before he was Iron Man.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will be released on May 5, 2017.

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