Groot is coming back to Disney+ – Marvel just recently announced that the fan favorite animated spin-off series of shorts is being renewed for a second season, bringing everyone’s favorite plant-based Guardian back to the screens.
It was widely believed that Secret Invasion, Loki, and Echo would be the only Marvel TV shows coming to Disney+ this year, and that the rest have been delayed to 2024 and beyond primarily due to the ongoing strikes in Hollywood.
However, Loki will not be the next MCU series premiering on the streaming platform. Marvel revealed that I Am Groot Season 2 is coming next month to Disney+ with a new trailer, giving fans some insight into what to expect from the show.
In the teaser video for season 2, we see Baby Groot chasing what seems like a spaceship version of an Ice Cream truck. The titular character is also seen doing his usual antics of using household items in hilarious ways.
There will be five episodes of animated shorts for the upcoming season which is similar to the number from the previous season. We expect that the episodes for the new season will have a similar length of five to six minutes.
Vin Diesel will be reprising his role as the voice of Baby Groot in the second season. The actor has appeared as the sentient tree-like humanoid since the character was introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1.
Just like the first season, the upcoming sophomore outing for Groot looks to be a standalone project and will not be related to the Guardians of the Galaxy. The final movie of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy has a now-grown “Swole Groot”, so we assume that the animated short series is set in a different timeline.
Marvel Studios animated producer Brad Winderbaum opened up about the I Am Groot series last year when the first season premiered. Winderbaum said that having the multiverse saga allows Marvel to explore avenues for characters like Groot.
“I think what’s amazing about the Multiverse Saga in particular is that you can go down so many more roads,” Winderbaum told Variety. “We’ve experimented at the studio for a long time about telling stories that take place in a linear fashion, but also going back in time, and being able to show how the MCU can blossom in the past.”
“But what the multiverse does, it allows us to look at alternate paths and other takes on the characters, which is, of course, what happens in the comic books as different artists, different writers, different storytellers work with characters. You see them expanding and growing in unforeseen, unexpected ways. And that’s something that is our guiding light as we make more animated projects.”
He adds, “It’s fun to see what he does when nobody’s looking. Like an actual kid, that’s where he gets into the most trouble – when he’s right outside the realm of parental eyes. That’s part of the shorts you kind of identify with, or at least I do. You watch it and I remember what it was like to be a kid, and the other side of me is, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s like to be a parent, watching a kid and worrying they’re going to be doing something terrible.'”
This second season for I Am Groot shows that Marvel isn’t quite done with the cast of the Guardians of the Galaxy, even if they’ve had their last dedicated movie and renowned director James Gunn has departed for DC.
There has been speculation that a new Guardians of the Galaxy team with Rocket and Adam Warlock may be in the works based on the post-credits scene from Volume 3. The end of the Guardians threequel also hints that a stand-alone Star-Lord movie may be happening.
I Am Groot is coming to Disney+ on September 6, 2023.
