TLDR: I'm not trying to deny that the reveal may have been shocking or dramatic, I'm just trying to argue that it doesn't align with Ego's characterization in the film. I understand Ego's motive for killing her, but not with cancer.
I think it's because he still needs her alive long enough to take care of Quill. He can't just return home to zap her, remember that he needs Yondu to deliver the children to him, and he didn't know Quill was special back then. And he figured maybe dying through cancer is less abrasive than outright killing them?
I mean, if we want to get down to brass tax, the real reason the logistics of Ego's plan don't make sense is because they had to sanitize it in an attempt to evade the obvious implications of rape and sexual slavery. Realisically an uncaring god who only needed to spawn a single compatible progeny would have just abducted thousands of women and forcibly impregnated them over and over again until one of them gave birth to a suitable child. But that would be utterly abhorrent and abominable so they tried to create the most "moral" alternative by having him woo every single woman and have real feelings for them.
And even with that contrivance, which was necessary to be sure to avoid immediate controversy, it still doesn't make a lot of sense. Apparently there's a celestial gene, so what stops Ego from detecting whether his children have it in the womb? Why does he even leave instead of just waiting 9 months and taking the baby back to his planet with him? There's no reason for him to leave early or have third parties do all this crap.
SonofdonCD said:
I believe they had the celestial parentage planned for sure, I mean they state it outright at the end of the first movie basically. But I'm not sure I can believe that peter's father (who he admits at that point was undetermined) was going to be the cause of her cancer. Unless he's admitting that his 'plan' was literally just a desire to have a scene where Peter's dad would reveal he killed her with cancer (despite not having a plot or character planned where that reveal would make sense), in which case that's the very definition of contrived ("deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously").
Honestly that would make it worse because it would be an admission that the only motive or purpose behind the whole thing was to exploit murder/death-by-cancer to create a dramatic scene.
As it was already stated, Ego gave her cancer so that he didn't go back to Earth and live with Meredith Quill, which would obviously stop his plans from going forward. The how and when, while intriguing, aren't really necessary for the plot to work.
No that doesn't answer the question of why he killed her
with cancer. That answers the question of why he killed her, but not why he did it with cancer. Again, the fact he kills her is one thing, I understand that, that he does it with cancer is another.
I'm not sure why you're so hung up on how Ego said he killed his other kids. While they were his offspring, they were primarily a means to an end. And when they all didn't pan out, he disposed of them. Meredith Quill was the "love of his life"
That's my whole goddamn point. He kills his offspring, who he doesn't care about whatsoever, with relative kindness through instantaneous death. But when it comes time to kill the person who he ostensibly 'loves' he condemns them to a horrific and elongated death.
But either way, he didn't kill Meredith in malice. And he certainly wasn't twirling his curly mustache talking to Peter about it. He did it in such a nonchalant, matter-of-fact way, which in its way shows his indifference.
Fuck that, anyone who has lost someone to cancer knows there's nothing impersonal or kind or preferable about the disease. Killing someone with cancer as opposed to almost any other method is inherently malicious; an aneurysm would be a kind, passive death compared to cancer. If you had to choose how you die nobody is going to go "I'll take cancer please". The very action itself was mustache twirling villain level antics; the fact that Russell delivered his lines well doesn't make them well written.
So while I can understand why you would've liked your tweaks to the story more, I don't see why you can't see the logic in what was given to you. Everything makes sense, is logical and plausible. And judging by the reactions in not only this thread but in theaters all over, people are audibly gasping at the reveal, so it seems rather effective.
Simply saying that other people reacted like you did is not an argument. My direct friend group had similar reactions to my own, but I'm not dropping them as evidence that my position is more or less true (I know people who reacted as you and others did too). Maybe we reacted abnormally. Maybe we didn't. What's important is going through an analysis about the content of the film and sharing opinions based on it. I appreciate hearing opposing positions/interpretations, I don't appreciate hearing arguments of the form "well my theater laughed at the joke so it must in good taste".
Besides, I'm not trying to deny that the reveal may have been shocking, I'm trying to argue that it doesn't align with Ego's characterization in the film. I could buy Ego killing her, but not with cancer.
