The episode sees Nebula becoming a Nova Corps investigator after Ronan betrays and kills Thanos. She ends up developing close ties to Nova Prime (Julianne Grossman), who recruits her to the Nova Corps and tasks her with finding out who murdered Yondu. In time, though, Nebula discovers Prime is aligned with Ronan and successfully teams up with Howard, Groot, and Korg to stop Prime’s plan to let Ronan take over Xandar. It’s a pretty upbeat way to conclude things, although the episode nearly took a darker, tragic turn. According to Bradley:
“This idea of doing like a darker detective episode came into our minds and then Matt ran with it. It was funny; Matt was writing that episode during the early days of the pandemic and he called me at one point. He’s like, ‘It’s darker.’ The first draft was really dark. It almost ended in a tragedy. And then we lightened it up.”
Bradley declined to elaborate on the specifics of that original draft. How dark did things get? What was the tragedy that Chauncey cooked up? All we can do is hopelessly speculate. One thing we can comment on, though, is the episode as it exists. It does work effectively as a way to further redeem Nebula, building on the events of movies like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Avengers: Endgame.” This is a character who has been through a lot, even if she was aligned with Thanos for so long.
As she exists, Nebula is someone who has had to endure enough darkness. There’s something to be said for letting her get the win here. Whether that’s as satisfying as the MCU going full-on dark and tragic is another question entirely.
“What If…?” seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Disney+.