'Guardians of the Galaxy' director apologizes to fans for making them cry with 'Infinity War' spoiler

As the world still reels from the unprecedented box office hit “Avengers: Infinity War,” one key cog in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) machine had to apologize to fans for literally making them cry with one heartbreaking tweet.

[SPOILER ALERT: The remainder of this article will discuss the ending of “Infinity War.”]

The film, which is technically a sequel to 18 others under the Marvel Studios banner, brought together superheroes from all walks of life only to bring most of them to the same place by the film’s end — death.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that most of the heroes that make up the MCU were killed by Thanos in the final moments of “Infinity War.”

While the loss of characters like Spider-Man and Black Panther was devastating enough, it was the loss of Groot and his close friend Rocket’s reaction that stuck with most fans.

For those unfamiliar, Groot is an alien that’s essentially a living tree introduced in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” He was a fully grown man in the first film, but sacrificed himself in order to save his cohorts. His son was adopted by the Guardians, but met his end when Thanos wiped out half of the universe's existence.

His big claim to fame is the fact that he’s only capable of saying three words, “I am Groot,” that other characters can inexplicably understand as full English sentences. As he vanished in “Infinity War,” he spoke his trademark line to Rocket. That’s when “Guardians” director James Gunn took to Twitter to reveal to a fan what Groot’s last line meant.

“Dad.”

That’s right, in his final moments, he not only called Rocket his father, but called for a parental figure out of fear for what was happening. Marvel fans did not take this news lightly, with some even reporting to the director that the reveal made them shed legitimate tears for the fictional character. This prompted Gunn to issue an apology on Twitter to all the Marvel fans he affected.

“I knew my answer to the spoiler question last night was touching and sad, but I really did not expect to wake up to so many tweets of people telling me they’re crying,” he wrote. “Sorry for that if you’re at work or whatever. But it means a lot to me you love the characters as much as I do.”

Fortunately, fans far and wide speculate that Groot and the other characters lost to Thanos will not be gone for long as the untitled “Avengers 4” hits theaters in 2019 and several of the characters have been confirmed for new stand-alone movies.