 The film starts in a cage full of little baby raccoons, while they are all freely playing among each other. A menacing figure, a high evolutionary, approaches the cage. He reaches his hand out to one of the raccoons, Rocket in particular. In the present day, the guardians of the galaxy, Peter Quill, Rocket, Groot, Nebula, Mantis, Craglin, and Cosmo the space dog, have taken refuge on nowhere and set up their headquarters there. Peter has still been mourning the loss of the original Gamora and has been drinking himself unconscious, and Nebula has to carry him to his room. Meanwhile, Craglin and Cosmo have a bit of a rivalry going on as they test their telekinetic abilities. Craglin has been trying to master using Yondu's arrow with his fin, but he hasn't quite gotten the hang of it. From deeper out in space, the being known as Adam Warlock, created by the Sovereign High Priestess Aisha, comes flying in at full speed to nowhere, crashing into Rocket. The guardians leap into action, but during the fight, Adam tears Groot's head off, he's okay, though, and directly targets Rocket. Peter and Mantis try to help Rocket after he has been gravely wounded by Adam, while Drax attempts to beat up the Golden Man. Before Adam can kill Drax, Nebula impales him with one of her blades. The med pack that Peter is using on Rocket is not working, and comes close to killing him before Nebula tells them to take it off him. Adam retreats while nowhere is left in destruction. As the guardians carry Rocket to safety, he appears to have a flashback to his time being experimented on by the High Evolutionary. He was marked 89p13 and thrown into a cage with three other animal test subjects, an otter with mechanical arms, a walrus with wheels for legs, and a rabbit with other mechanical attachments. They befriend the frightened Rocket and make him feel less alone. The guardians find that Rocket has a kill switch in his body that could detonate if they attempt to perform surgery on him, and they figure Adam was sent to retrieve him. Nebula finds that there's a pass key that can override the kill switch, but it would be with OrgoCorp, the company that experimented on him. Peter wastes no time in leading the guardians, minus Craglin and Cosmo, to head out there to save his friends. At the Oret Lab on Counter Earth, the High Evolutionary meets with Aisha and Adam, as they not only work for him, but High Evolutionary is responsible for the creation of the Sovereign, among other races and species across the galaxy. He sent Adam to retrieve Rocket, as he is High Evolutionary's most valued asset. When he tries to torture Adam for his failure in retrieving Rocket, Aisha pleads with him to stop, as she views Adam like a son. The High Evolutionary tells his henchmen Thiel that he knows where the guardians are headed. The guardians arrive at the Orgoscope, where OrgoCorp headquarter would be. While they prepare to break through the shield, Peter and Mantis discuss how he has never returned to Earth since he was taken by the Ravagers, and Peter says the only person he would know is his grandfather, and he doesn't know if he's still alive. Moments later, a guardianship is bordered by Ravagers, led by Stack R. Ogort. The alternate Gamora has joined them, and she has been secretly communicating with Nebula. Peter is stunned to see Gamora, even though this version is not familiar with the rest of the guardians. Stack R gives the guardian spacesuits and instructs them to avoid Orgoscentries while they try to access the company's records for information on Rocket. Another flashback shows how Rocket was highly intelligent, which is why High Evolutionary kept him close. He had also witnessed the development of Counter Earth, where High Evolutionary was sending his completed experiments. He showed Rocket a machine where he tried to advance the evolutionary stages of certain animals, but had not perfected it to the point where they were anything more than mindless monstrosities that he would dispose of once they were viewed as failures. To the surprise of High Evolutionary, Rocket seemed to have figured out the problem involving the proteins in the organisms they were using. The guardians descend onto the Orgoscope, with Peter trying to have a heart-to-heart with Gamora, only for her to reject him since she is not the same Gamora he used to know and love. They stash their spacesuits somewhere before being found by Orgoscentries led by Master Karja, but the guardians pretend to be working there. Peter splits off with Gamora and Nebula while Drax and Mantis go together. The former three encounter one Orgo employee, Eura and force her to take them to the records. Just as they find Rocket's file, the Orgoscentries go after the guardians. Their spacesuits end up sucked into space because they stashed them in the wrong place, but Drax and Mantis attempt to fight off the guards. Karja shoots at them, hitting Drax and Nebula, weakening them. Peter convinces Eura to help them, and she lets him access their systems to turn off the artificial gravity to get the Orgoscentries off their tails and allowing them to return to their ship. In another flashback, Rocket is seen with his animal friends as they dream about being free. Here, they come up with their names. The otter names herself Lilla, the walrus names himself Tiefs, and the rabbit names herself Flaw, before Rocket picks his own name after seeing a rocket flying over Counter-Earth. The guardians play Rocket's file and witness the horrors that he was subjected to under high evolutionary. The pasquie is also not found in the file, but it is in the memories of a device in Thiel's head. When Peter starts trying to head out to find Thiel, Gamora argues against the plan until Nebula tells her that Rocket is still their family. The Orgoscentries meet with Aisha and Adam as they take in a captured ravager and his pet named Blurp. While Aisha tries to get Adam to interrogate the ravager for info on the guardians, he ends up frying him to death with his powers, angering Aisha. Moments later she hears Gamora contacting the ravager over a radio, sending coordinates for her to get picked up and unknowingly letting Aisha know where they are headed. Meanwhile, Adam takes a bit of a liking to Blurp. Another flashback sees the high evolutionary madly bringing Rocket to witness his next experiments, as he took Rocket's suggestions over the proteins in the animals and had perfected it to make his creatures more advanced. High evolutionary also talks down to Rocket as though he was a failed experiment full of mistakes, and then orders the perfected creatures to be incinerated. The guardians make it to Counter-Earth, which has many suburban neighborhoods like the ones Peter used to know, inhabited by humanoid animal creatures. When they touch down, Drax makes a bad impression by throwing a ball at a child's head, and the other inhabitants begin pelting the guardians with garbage until Groot makes himself gigantic to scare them away. After Peter helps a Batwoman, she takes him and his friends into her home, where they help the guardians find high evolutionary stations so they can find feel, and the family lets Peter take their car with Nebula and Groot. They arrive, and high evolutionary's guards escort Peter inside. One last flashback shows Rocket having stolen a device that helped him unlock his and his friends' cells to escape. After he and Lilla embrace, high evolutionary shot Lilla fatally as punishment for the attempt to escape. Rocket wailed hysterically and attacked high evolutionary's face, clawing and disfiguring him. When two of his henchmen showed up, Rocket killed them, but they had also shot Tiefs and Flawdead. Rocket escaped alone, mourning the loss of his friends. Back on Counter-Earth, high evolutionary's minion war pig flies to the guardians ship to attack Gamora and Rocket. Adam finds war pig as she attempts to bring Rocket in, and he tears her head off. Peter meets high evolutionary and confronts him over his actions before he declares that he is going to destroy the planet and start all over. Counter-Earth begins to get destroyed, along with its inhabitants. Adam tries to fly back to Aisha, only to watch her get blown up in her ship. Peter and Groot fight off some of high evolutionary's henchmen before jumping out of the window with Thiel, and Groot creates wings to keep himself and Peter up as he drowns Thiel and steals his memory. The rest of the guardians make it back to their ship as the planet continues to blow up around them, in the Chaos Mantis tracks, and Nebula end up on high evolutionary ship while Peter and Groot make it back to their ship with Rocket and Gamora. Nebula blames tracks for their predicament while Mantis tries to defend him despite knowing he does stupid things that get them in trouble. Peter, Gamora, and Groot frantically rush to use the passkey to save Rocket. He finds himself in a white realm being met by Lilla, Tiefs, and Flawdead, as though they are welcoming him to the afterlife. Rocket seems ready to join them until Lilla tells him that he still has a purpose left in his life. They share a kiss before Rocket finally comes back to life and embraces his friends. They then receive communications from Nebula, as she and Drax and Mantis have found a large group of captured children that high evolutionary has been keeping for experiments. They hear Rocket's voice over the radio and are overjoyed to know he's alive. Unfortunately, high evolutionary captures them and lets the other guardians know. Peter leads them to go rescue their friends and contacts Craglin for help. Drax is able to calm down the captured children since he speaks their native language, and he also manages to make them laugh by acting goofy like he used to with his own daughter. He, plus Mantis and Nebula, get put into a room with three Abolishks, but Mantis manages to use her powers to get them on their side and help them charge into battle. Craglin and Cosmo help bring nowhere close to the ship, but high evolutionary's forces begin attacking. Craglin sees a vision of Yondu, encouraging him to use his heart in order to fly the arrow, and it works when Craglin destroys the high evolutionary's drones, while Cosmo uses her telekinetic powers to squash a henchman coming their way. The high evolutionary's henchman attempt to revolt, only for him to use his powers to vaporize all of them. Once the guardians reunite, they are joined by Adam and Blurp. Together, they take on high evolutionary's army and utterly annihilate them. Cosmo uses her powers to get the ship closer to nowhere so that the guardians can rescue the captured children and take them to safety. Before leaving, Rocket finds a litter of baby raccoons along with other animals and begins to try and free them. High evolutionary finds him and almost kills him, saying once again he is nothing more than a failed experiment, until Rocket reminds him who he really is. The other guardians then show up and deliver a well-deserved beatdown to high evolutionary before Nebula pulls his face off, revealing the horrible disfigurement that Rocket left him with. Rocket chooses not to kill high evolutionary, but they leave him to die as his ship begins to explode. Rocket frees the other animals, but Cosmo's powers give out before Peter can make it to nowhere. He nearly freezes to death in space until Adam flies him on to nowhere to safety. Back on nowhere, the guardians meet one last time together. The mora is set to continue working with the ravages, while Peter has plans to finally return to Earth. Mantis says that she also wants to go off on her own to find out what she wants to do for herself. While Drax offers to go with her, Mantis says she needs to do it alone, and Nebula says Drax is better suited to looking after the children since he was always meant to be a dad, and she will be in charge of nowhere. Peter passes down his leadership title to Rocket so that he can lead the next guardian's team. Before Gamora leaves, Peter acknowledges that they will not be together, but there is a hint of attraction and flirtation between them. He returns to Earth and finally reunites with his grandfather Jason. After the guardians partways, Rocket is given Peter's zoom, where he plays dog days are over for all of nowhere to hear and begin to dance to. Mid-credits scene, Rocket and Groot now lead their new team, which includes Kragling, Cosmo, Adam, Blurp, and one of the orphan children named Fyler. As a horde of enemies come their way, Rocket leads them by playing come and get your love as they head on their next adventure. Post-credits scene, Peter and Jason have breakfast together, discussing Jason's steps on with his second wife.