Could there be an Iron Man 3 Guardians of the Galaxy connection? I think there is but – be warned – this article is full of spoilers from Iron Man 3 and the Guardians of the Galaxy comics.

First, I’ll start off with Iron Man 3.

After The Mandarin attack on Tony’s house leaves him injured and almost dead, Jarvis programmed Tony’s armor for a trip to Tennessee and Tony is stranded there. Tony had already planned to travel there to investigate an explosion that is similar to the ones that The Mandarin has been pulling off.

Here, he meets a little kid named Harley. This brave little kid allows Tony to stay in his garage and work on rebuilding his armor. Soon, Tony heads out to find the mother of the soldier everyone believes set the bomb that killed people. At this time, Tony is attacked by Extremis soldiers and would have died if Harley hadn’t saved him.

It is here that Tony learns three things about the kid. His father left when he was little, his mother neglects him and doesn’t really pay attention to him, and he is very brave.

Let’s move over to the Guardians of the Galaxy comics.

Peter Quill is the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy under the name Star-Lord (played in the upcoming movie by Chris Pratt). His origins are pretty simple. When he was a child, his father died and his mother struggled to raise him. She was killed by an alien and Quill eventually realized his real father was an alien and he was next in line to be a Star Lord.

A lot of people think that Harley will be Peter Quill and that is the connection. I don’t think that at all. But, I do think that Harley will be a major character in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie

Lets go to another hero that will appear in the movie as part of the intergalactic Nova law enforcement corps, basically Marvel’s version of the Green Lantern Corps. For years, the earthling in the Nova Corps was Richard Rider. However, in the new Marvel Now Nova series, he is a kid named Sam.

Basically, Sam is a kid whose father goes missing while he is young and whose mother is always working and never really there much for him. However, soon he learns that his father’s old stories about being a superhero were true, that his father used to be a member of the Nova Corps, and then Rocket Raccoon and Gamora show up looking for him.

Here are my thoughts on this.

I don’t see how the kid could grow up to be Star Lord, but I really think the possibility of him becoming Nova is strong. This is not that far fetched, because rumors started circulating a couple of months back that Richard Ryder was appearing in Iron Man 3 as a kid.

Now, the kid in Iron Man 3 is named Harley Keener, but Keener could be his mother’s maiden name and Harley could be his middle name.

This is just my personal Iron Man 3 Guardians of the Galaxy theory, but I see a lot of reasons to think that Harley could end up being Nova as a way of connecting the two movie franchises, and that would be very cool. If any of you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.