One MCU actress accidentally dropped a sizable Avengers 4 spoiler over a year ago. Along with each of the original Avengers, Karen Gillan’s Nebula was one of the few MCU characters to survive the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Gillan previously said that Nebula would get a “new BFF” in the movie, but that never happened. What gives?
The interview in question resurfaced thanks to redditor TheLazerShell “I know who her new BFF is,” Gillan said. “And I can’t tell you. I cant. But I promise you it’s brilliant and unexpected and just so good.” Nebula spends most of Infinity War being tortured by Thanos and his soldiers. Then she escapes, tells the Guardians of the Galaxy to go to Titan, and shows up there for the fight against Thanos. She’s ultimately the only person other than Iron Man that’s alive on Titan in the end.
“She’s on a clear mission, as everybody is, to deal with someone with a glove, and I think that is the most important issue,” Gillan said about Nebula’s goals. “So I think people are grouping together to take care of this task.” Plenty of characters did get unlikely team-ups in Infinity War, but Nebula wasn’t one of them.
All of the MCU actors — Sebastian Stan and Tom Holland, for instance — have confirmed that they never received full scripts for either film. The “Beyond the Battle: Wakanda” featurette included with Infinity War also confirmed that none of the actors even knew which characters died from Thanos’ Snap until the day they filmed it.
Because Infinity War and Avengers 4 filmed back-to-back, we might as well consider the whole thing a single production. So Gillan is probably talking about a friendship that forms in Avengers 4. But with whom?
Karen Gillan as Nebula in a promotional poster for 'Avengers: Infinity War'.
Iron Man is the much-too-obvious candidate who is neither “unexpected” nor all that “brilliant” of a combo. Nebula is ultra-serious and would probably find Tony Stark’s ego grating. But the cyborg is smart enough to know that the best thing for her to do is accompany him back to Earth so she can work with the surviving Avengers to eventually kill Thanos. She’ll probably do anything or team up with anyone to accomplish that goal, so who knows what plan Stark might come up with once everyone regroups.
Nebula teaming up with another badass woman like Black Widow or Okoye seems like a great possibility, or even Valkyrie, if she makes it back for the next movie. We could also see Shuri being fascinated by Nebula’s cyborg nature. Could Shuri build Nebula some upgrades?
Most Avengers 4 theories do assume that the good guys will use time travel to assemble their own Infinity Gauntlet that they’ll then use to take down an injured Thanos. Considering that Nebula is the only living person other than Thanos that knows where the Soul Stone was being kept, it’ll be up to her to retrieve it somehow if she can somehow get to Vormire before Thanos does.
Will she have to sacrifice her new BFF to get the Stone? Let’s hope not, but we’ll find out for sure when Avengers 4 comes out next year.
Avengers 4 will be released in theaters on May 3, 2019.
