Nebula Just Leaked Some Serious Stuff For Avengers: Endgame
If for some truly unbelievable reason you were unaware that Avengers 4 released a trailer--well, they released a trailer (and it’s pretty amazing so you should go watch it). And in said trailer, the studio finally revealed what the name of the movie will be: Avengers: Endgame. After so many years, we can finally stop referring to it as Avengers 4 or Infinity War: Part 2.
And now that the film has revealed one of its most closely guarded secrets, some of the talent who have been working on the movie have started to talk about it publically. Karen Gillan happens to be one of them. For those of you who don’t know, she’s the actor who plays Nebula, and she just recently had an interview with People where she spoke about her character’s plight with Thanos. In her words: “What can I say? Thanos is her dad and she is definitely going to confront some serious daddy issues. That’s for sure.”
Gillan, of course, couldn’t go into detail about the confrontation between the two characters, but by going off of what we already know from the movies, and from her quote, we’re going to guess what kind of confrontation she could be hinting at. Maybe it’s physically, maybe it’s just emotional, or maybe it’s both (it’s probably both). Or--maybe it’s something else entirely.
The Key to Defeating Thanos?
The MCU draws most of its inspiration from already established comic book events, and Infinity War/Endgame is no different. The two movies are the cinematic interpretation of the 1991 comic book series titled The Infinity Gauntlet. So, if we keep that in mind, Nebula’s role in this entire event has the potential to becomes a lot more important.
You see, in the comics, Thanos does Thanos-like things to Nebula, physically torturing her, emotionally belittling her--you know, their usual jig, and by the time he’s done with her, she’s left barely clinging onto life--”she exists on a fine line between life and death,” as he puts it. Later on, while Thanos is dealing with all of the heroes that managed to survive his signature snap, Nebula manages to swipe the glove from him and slip it onto her own hand.
The result is pretty obvious.
Consumed by her anger, hate, a weakened psyche, and her overall personality, Nebula becomes an even bigger threat than Thanos. The situation with her as the big bad spirals so far out of control that Thanos himself actually has to team up with the heroes in order to put a stop to her. And--to give you a further an idea of how bad things got--Nebula ended up taking on pretty much all of Marvel’s most powerful cosmic beings, such as Galactus, at the same time.
In the end, the heroes do manage to get the gauntlet away from her--namely, Adam Warlock--and revert all the damage caused by its use, but as we said before, the entire ordeal puts MCU’s Nebula in a new light.
Of course, if you’ve been following the MCU movies, you know that they take liberties with the comic events that they adapt. It’s gotten to the point to where Infinity War and Endgame may as well be considered only loosely based on The Infinity Gauntlet storyline. For one, Thanos’ motivations for wiping out half of the universe are completely different; Adam Warlock currently doesn’t exist, and none of the cosmic beings have yet to enter the fray themselves. So, of course, it stands to reason that Nebula won’t end up overthrowing Thanos as the biggest threat to the universe. This is reinforced by the fact that she has a newfound relationship with Gamura, which could be considered her moral anchor in the MCU. But that doesn’t mean that she still can’t be the one to get the infinity gems away from Thanos and utilize them for a different motivation.
In the Infinity Gauntlet storyline Nebula was the one to undo the deaths caused by Thanos’ snap, but her reasons for turning back the clock weren’t benevolent, which is why it took so much effort from everyone to get the gauntlet back from her. The MCU Nebula, on the other hand, has reconciled with her sister, and if the Endgame trailer is anything to go off of, seems to have formed so sort of bond with Tony Stark. So if she were to get the gauntlet, she would probably use it bring everyone back just for the sake of bringing everyone back.
While the act may not have been as gruesome as it was in the comics, we have already seen Thanos torture Nebula, which was the first step toward her getting the Infinity Gauntlet. So maybe she’s already on the path towards that. The only difference is, is that now when she gets her hands on the gauntlet, her motivations for using it will be different from her comic book self.
Of course Nebula would wrestle with the idea of using the gauntlet to turn Thanos inside out, but if the gauntlet’s damaged state does turn out to be an active factor in all of this, she may not have the luxury of being able both revive her sister and have her revenge, (through the gauntlet at least). All in all, she would be working out her daddy issues one way or the other, either by letting them go to save someone else, or indulging in them until the very end--or by doing both, whichever floats her fancy.
