Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy sees each hero getting a chance to showcase their trauma, something that makes for the best scenes in the game. Star-Lord must break out of a dream where he is back with his mother, Drax is forced to kill two fake versions of his wife and daughter, and Rocket has to come to terms with all the cruel experiments that were done to him.
While Gamora may get the short end of the stick in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, as her scene is brief and feels as if it was thrown into the game without much build-up, what she reveals to the Guardians is shocking. In fact, Gamora’s confirmation of what happened to Nebula is possibly the darkest part of the Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy story, and it would have been nice to see a bit more attention given to this revelation.
Nebula’s Fate In Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Near the end of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy’s story, Gamora reveals to her teammates that Nebula is dead. Throughout the game, her sister’s fate is intentionally kept vague, though it mirrors much of what happens in the MCU and comics. Gamora and Nebula are tormented by Thanos, with even their gifts being used as a tool to ensure that they become perfect killing machines. However, Nebula and Gamora went down two separate paths, with the former being even more damaged due to what she had to endure.
Through Gamora’s Guardian collectibles, she reveals that she was sent on a mission by Thanos to kill the Resistance. However, she eventually joined them instead, having a change of heart after she came to realize the cruelty of Thanos. Nebula, on the other hand, stayed on a dark path. She became a monster that everyone feared, with Rocket overjoyed to learn that she could not hurt anyone anymore.
However, the twist is that Gamora was responsible for killing Nebula. Forced to assassinate her sister when she became a “hateful, vengeful, monster-thing,” she was supposedly becoming too dangerous for Gamora to let live. As such, Gamora did what she needed to, stopping her sister once and for all. While players do not actually see the fight that ended Nebula’s life, Gamora seems much more confident that her sister is truly dead than Drax is about killing Thanos.
The fact that Gamora was forced to kill her own sister explains her soft spot for kids, ranging from Nikki to the minor characters she spots during the story. She knows what it is like to have an awful childhood where there is no freedom, and she has seen what it can do to people like her sister. As such, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy players will often see her talking to younger characters or being particularly focused on their rescue, as she does not want to see someone become as twisted as Nebula was by her poor upbringing.
Nebula’s fate joins Groot’s final ability, Adam Warlock’s role in the story, and a battle with Fin Fang Foom as one of the most surprising parts of the narrative. It is moments like this that help Eidos Montreal’s versions of the Guardians of the Galaxy members stand out, as the developer took a few risks when adapting the source material. While it would have been easy to fully copy the MCU, those that are already familiar with the characters will likely be happy to see so many new things.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
