The I Am Groot shorts have shifted from separate Disney Plus selections to a singular series on the streaming platform.
I Am Groot’s first batch of shorts dropped last year, months before The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and now the second group is being released in the shadow of the highly successful third cinematic feature – James Gunn’s completion of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy.
Although Groot has been physically and personally developing past his Baby Groot persona, these tales focus on his smallest, most adorable form, and therefore land on the MCU timeline between the first Guardians of the Galaxy’s mid-credits scene and the second movie’s Groot stinger.
When I Am Groot first came out, the show was presented as separate shorts, with five distinct selections on the Disney Plus screen. This is how almost all of Disney’s unconnected short films are accessed, but the precedent for a “series” with this type of format was set by Forky Asks a Question.
After each animated Forky short, instead of the next one queuing up to play, the remaining Forky’s are shown as recommended viewing. Viewers can even search for Forky Asks a Question to find that there are ten detached choices to click on, rather than one series.
The Forky formula was utilized when I Am Groot released its five shorts last year. The initial thought process probably consisted of the idea that the individual segments do not contain a specific story continuity and therefore can be enjoyed in any order. Although, it was suggested that “Groot’s First Steps” began the troublemaking twig’s journey while “Magnum Opus” did make sense as the finale, with Groot incorporating each member of the Guardians into his artistic endeavor and the anecdote even included Groot’s partner Rocket.
Now Marvel and Disney have retroactively grouped those Summer 2022 chapters into a collective season, with a predetermined order, and each episode will play one after the other like a regular television series. “Magnum Opus” is indeed the last of the five in that first season. This restructuring was done in preparation for the newest batch of I Am Groot shorts, to better organize Groot fans’ viewing experience.
The reorganization designates the first five episodes as Season 1 and the latest collection are Season 2. This will serve audiences by avoiding unnecessary confusion over which chapters have just been dropped versus which came out last year. There is no need to click on separate selections – one can simply choose the I Am Groot series and allow the entire show to play through all ten episodes.
The new I Am Groot additions are similarly not narratively interconnected and therefore would not require a specific order, nonetheless they flow breezily from one to another. The last episode entitled “Groot and the Great Prophecy” does have more of a grand finale ambiance, especially with the startling presence of The Watcher. There would be a nice sense of symmetry if Baby Groot were to somehow guest star in a story from What If…?’s upcoming sophomore season.
What did you think of the new I Am Groot shorts? Do you want to see a Season 3?