As mentioned earlier, the High Evolutionary has an obsession with taking other lifeforms in the galaxy and changing them against their will. This comes from a delusional self-aggrandizement that makes him think he alone understands what the pinnacle of organic life should be, and he alone should change others into what he thinks is more evolved. Many of the villains that the Guardians of the Galaxy have faced in the past share a similar mix of arrogance, toxicity, and a repulsive desire to control others. Ego the Living Planet in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is a perfect example of this, since he wanted to spread his own biomass across every planet in the universe until, as he put it, everything became him.
With the High Evolutionary, his motivations seem similarly egotistical. Since he was a genius scientist who successfully improved himself through genetic modification, he now believes he’s justified in experimenting on others in a similar manner. That is part of what makes his abuse of Rocket so tragic, since he gave what was a regular raccoon the burden of consciousness and the ability to understand the pain it had been through. In the first “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Rocket reveals how traumatic his creation was during a drunken fight with the rest of the team at Knowhere, saying, “Well, I didn’t ask to get made! I didn’t ask to be torn apart and put back together over and over and turned into some little monster!” Although the High Evolutionary’s mastery of evolutionary power is impressive, it has proven to be a cruel tool of manipulation which puts the entire galaxy at risk.