Karen Gillan Confirms That Nebula Is In 'Avengers: Infinity War'

There are days where trying to remember which Marvel characters will actually play a role in Avengers: Infinity War is like herding cats: an impossible, useless task that will only give you a headache after awhile. Perhaps the best course of action is to simply default to "Every single Marvel Cinematic Universe Character is going to pop up in the movie in some capacity" and leave it at that. Let's stick with that second one for now, especially since Karen Gillan has officially said, out loud, in front a reporter, that Nebula will play a role in the upcoming galaxy-wide crossover movie.

As you probably remember, the MCU version of Nebula is the adopted daughter of Thanos (making her the sister to Zoe Saldana's Gamora) and she acted as the chief muscle in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, first for dear ol' dad and later for Ronan the Accuser. While Ronan bit the dust, Nebula escaped to fight another day and she makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-her appearance in the first Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 teaser. Pieces of art related to the film have presented her as part of the team line-up, which certainly suggests that we'll be seeing a team-up in the upcoming sequel.

And now that we're all refreshed, we can look to Gillan's quote, which comes at the very end of a much longer profile put together by the BBC. After reminding everyone about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and the currently-filming Jumanji, she says:

So look out for those. And then I'll be making a little appearance in the next Avengers movies.

Okay, so it's not much, but this is a slow news day and it's nice to have some kind of confirmation on matters like these.

It should be noted that Nebula actually plays a major role in the original The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries, which was written by Jim Starlin, drawn by George Pérez and Ron Lim, and was published in 1991. In that series, Thanos assembles the six Infinity Gems (renamed Infinity Stones in the movies), constructs the Infinity Gauntlet, and proceeds to rule over the universe like a god. One of his early victims (before he decimates half of all life in the universe on a whim) is Nebula herself, whom he reduces to a maimed and mindless shadow of her former self. Naturally, Thanos didn't think that one through and she ends up bouncing back for the grand finale in ways that are...let's just say interesting.

Of course, it's not clear if Avengers: Infinity War will stick to the comics and anything and everything is subject to change. After all, Nebula doesn't have a role of any significance in the actual Infinity War comic, which was published in 1992. So really, the only thing we can say for sure is that Nebula is in the movie and anything beyond that is a guess.

Avengers: Infinity War is set to open on May 4, 2018.