Nebula works well as a Noir cop in space.
Let’s round out the year with What
If…? season 2. Last time on What If…?, a variant of Ultron defeated
the Avengers, killed most sentient life in his home galaxy and used the 6 Infinity
Stones to make himself into a God. Using this newfound power, he was able to
detect the Watcher Watching him and attempted to kill him. The Watcher escaped,
but realizing the danger this Ultron put on the Multiverse, went to different
timelines to gather a Guardians of the Multiverse Team to help him. He grabbed
Captain Sharon Carter, Black Panther Killmonger, Party Thor, Star-Lord T’Challa,
Gamora who had killed her Thanos, and Dr. Strange Supreme. The plan is to
somehow start getting Infinity Stones’ from Ultron and use a device Gamora
brought that can break them down to subatomic particles. The group are able to
battle Ultron for a while but he’s simply too powerful for them to put down
easily. They’re able to get the Soul Stone from him, with help from a zombie
Scarlet Witch, and try to break the stone. They lose time when Black Widow from
Ultron’s dimension arrives, but they get the stone into the device. Unfortunately
it isn’t calibrated to this universe’s Infinity Stones and thus doesn’t work.
With not much hope left, Natasha grabs and launches a USB Arrow at Ultron, one
she’d piked up with her Clint before his death the previous episode. The USB had
a copy of Arnim Zola’s mind on it and he overwrites Ultron’s consciousness.
Killmonger then tries to betray everyone and steals the Infinity Stones. Or
tries to Zola powers back up and tries to keep them. Strange Supreme realizes
the final plan here and use his powers to trap them both in a time bubble. He’s
then sent back to hiss destroyed dimension, to hold Killmonger and Zola in their
eternal struggle forever. Everyone else is sent back to their home dimension,
sans Natasha, who is dropped off into the Universe where Pym went insane and
murdered all of the OG Avengers except Captain America. She’s going to be Cap’s
backup. And Carter is dropped off just in time to find out they found her Steve.
Everyone gets what they deserve.
Now, onto season 2
Ep 10: What if Nebula Joined the Nova Corps
We open with Nebula welcoming
people to Xandar. She claims that everyone’s luck on this planet runs out
eventually, even Yondu’s. She’d just found his corpse and is going to
investigate his murder. Her superiors want to just write it off and move on,
but Nebula wants justice for Yondu. One of the Nova Corps officer, Garthan Saal,
tells her that they don’t need Black Order trash mucking things up, but Nebula
tells him that she’s former Black Order and that she will solve the case.
We get the usual opening monologue
about the multiverse from the Watcher before we learn how this timeline came to
be. Namely, in this universe, Ronan the Accuser betrayed and killed Thanos,
along with Gamora. Without her father or sister, Nebula was lost before being
picked up by the Nova Corps and recruited by Nova Prime. Ronan decided to wipe
out Xandar, bombarding it from space. Nova Prime elected to shield their planet
behind a full forcefield, designed to cut them off from the rest of the universe
for fifty years. Unfortunately, five years in, and Xandar is worse than New
York on a bad day.
Nebula begins her investigation.
She says that Saal’s group wasted time looking for the murder weapon, while she
realized it’d be much more important to find the victims. This Nebula crossed paths
with Yondu as well and thus knew his weapon of choice is his whistle controlled
arrow. She played a recording of him that involved him whistling and she got
the arrow to return to her. She catches
it and it plays for her some schematic. She runs a search on it but no one on
the legit or dark nets have any info on it. As she flies, Nova Prime contacts
her. Prime says she trusted Nebula when she recruited her and is going to trust
her now, going on to tell her to switch to a secure channel. On the secure
channel, Prime tells her that Xandar is in trouble and that Yondu got wrapped
up in it. A “dark force” is on the rise, and that they may only have until
sunrise to stop them. Nebula mentions having the schematics and Prime tells her
to do whatever is necessary to stop this.
Nebula lands and enters an underground
casino. We see the Guardians there as well, Groot is rolling craps and Drax breaks
a slot machine before being taken out by security. Korg is at the bar and tells
Nebula ‘the big man,” is at the poker table. She goes up and meets him, Howard
the Duck. I hate that I keep running into this thing. Nebula throws the arrow
at him and makes him talk. She shows her the schematics, and while he knows this
is big, he doesn’t know what it’s for. Korg brings them drinks, and he
recognizes it. He says it’s an old city-wide mainframe corps, a B-42 model. The
core will have all sorts of data on it, including an actual kitchen sink, unpaid
parking tickets, and the important one, shield schematics. Nebula realizes that
whoever is after that source code wants to shut the shield down and that’s bad
due to Ronan sticking around. She’s going to get into the mainframe to destroy
the codes before they can get out. Howard and Korg warn her that might be a one
way trip, but she’s committed.
She realizes that she’ll need a
hacker to get into the mainframe and heads to a prison to get prisoner X2357. This
turns out to be Yon-Rogg. You remember him, he was Captain Marvel’s superior
when she was part of the Kree military. She busts him out of prison, saying
that she needs him to hack into Xandarian security. She stages a prison riot to
give them cover and escape. I feel like she probably could have released him
using proper channels but what are you going to do.
They head to the facility, busting
in and then slide down a cable to the core facility. Yon-Rogg begins hacking
the system, flooding the chamber they’re in but allowing them to enter into the
corp. Nebula uses her cybernetics to access the core and downloads the data she
needs, and deletes the source code. She tries to log out, but Yon-Rogg gets her
with a Space USB that downloads the data he needed and stalled out her log out,
basically trapping her in stasis while the core begins to overheat. He tells
her that Ronan has big plans for Xandar. Nebula seems to be filled with enough
rage to free herself from the log out lock and just barely gets away before the
core explodes.
She’s found by Nova Prime and
Yon-Rogg. Turns out, this was all a set up. Nova Prime made a deal with Ronan.
She surrenders the planet to Ronan, and she’ll keep her position. But, in order
to finish off this little coup, she needed a cyborg to access the core. Hence why
she set up Nebula. The other Nova Corps members are ordered to execute Nebula
and melt down her pieces when they’re done. They try to beat her to death with
tasers, but she breaks free of them and leaps off the building. They say she
died, but Nebula obviously survived the drop. She’s badly damaged, but functional.
She limps back to Howard’s casino, where Groot, Korg and Meek are playing rock-paper-scissors.
She says she needs a drink, a gun, and an arm. She tries to get up, shorts out
and crashes to the ground.
They take her in back and fix her
up. She asks for guns now that she’s repaired. Howard plays coy, saying that
even ‘if’ he has military grade weapons, why would he risk busting them out.
Hearing about the coup doesn’t move him, or stopping suffering, but when Nebula
says Nova Prime will come for his liquor license, he orders his men to move
out. Nebula even puts on Yondu’s fin and coat.
Nebula and her crew take out most
of the Nova Corps guards with relative ease. They reach Nova Prime’s command
base. Nova Prime tells her it’s too late, the codes have been uploaded and the
shield is opening. Ronan’s ship is entering through the gap. Nebula tells her
that she wouldn’t be too sure of that. It’s revealed that Nebula altered the codes,
having the shield open for just long enough for an over eager Ronan to fly his
ship through the opened hatch before snapping shut again, killing him. She says
that she saw Yon-Rogg’s double cross coming, so used her machine brain to alter
the codes. It’s revealed she knew something was wrong from the moment Nova
Prime told her to solve this case by any means necessary. A firefight breaks
out, Howard and his bruisers take out the corrupt Nova Corps members and Yon-Rogg
while Nebula chases Nova Prime. She gets to her former boss just before take-off
and makes her crash her ship. Nebula tries to save Nova Prime, but she pulls a
gun on Nebula and tries to shoot her. The shot misses and Nova Prime falls to
her death. The Shield opens fully and Howard congradulates her for a job well
done. I feel like this story needs to point out who’s in charge of the planet now
that Nova Prime is dead… but okay.
This was an okay start to season
2. I think this story could have used a
full hour to tell instead of thirty minutes. Jumping from crime to breakout to
heist to showdown is just a lot to cover in a half hour. If they’d drawn the
story out a little more, the betrayal of Nova Prime could have been a bit more
impactful, as well as Nebula’s triple cross. That said, Nebula as a gritty no-nonsense
cop in a besieged Xandar works extremely well. Karen Gillian is a great voice
actor, so her performance was solid all the way through. Same for Taika Waititi
as Korg and Seth Green as Howard the Duck, but they have much more experience
at that so I’m less surprised. Jude Law as Yon-Rogg was fine. So long as no one
is as bad as Sebastian Stan was in season one, I’ll have zero voice acting
complaints. Outfitting Nebula in Yondu’s gear including his backup fin was a
nice touch. There’s really not much more to say here. It was a fun short story
that I think could have been stretched out a little, and I personally hate Howard
the Duck even if he’s played by one of my favorite voice actors, Seth Green.
Next time, episode 11.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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