Mantis
Mantis is a humanoid alien and one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. She is an empath, and she is introduced in the W-Series What-If episode "What If... a Guardian Fell from the Sky?".
Background
Mantis's antennae read emotional weather patterns that nobody else aboard the Benatar can perceive. Rocket reports her to the pack as a hazard: her sympathy makes everyone in the room sadder, including her.
Personality
Mantis says what she reads out loud, without editing and without much sense that it might not be welcome. Being told off does not injure her for long. She wilts a little and keeps smiling, because she knows what she felt whether or not anyone wants it named.
Series History
W-Series
What If
The What-If episodes are alternate timelines and do not affect the main continuity.
In "What If... a Guardian Fell from the Sky?", Mantis sits cross-legged on the deck through the crew's usual argument about Quill's music and announces that Rocket is not actually angry — he enjoys the argument, because it makes him feel included. Rocket shuts her down before she can finish the sentence. Minutes later the rift throws her across the deck and takes him through the hull.
She kneels in front of him when he comes back. Her antennae pulse, whatever she reads fills her eyes, and she tells him he feels different, and that what he feels like is enough. For once he does not argue with her. On the flight home she is humming along with the music, off-key in a way nobody minds.
Key Relationships
Rocket
Mantis is the only member of the crew who can see what Rocket is doing when he picks a fight, and she is the only one he ever asks to stop looking. What she reads in him on the ramp is the nearest thing anyone offers to an account of what two weeks in Zootopia did.