Unsurprisingly,
there’s a lot in Guardians of the Galaxy
that just feels different – than other Marvel titles as well as other space
operas. Yes, it has Marvel sensibilities
and a feel not unlike Star Wars or Firefly, but it also has a tree creature
that grows on command, a super-genius raccoon, and a spaceship that looks like
it’s made of stone. The relationship
between Gamora and Nebula isn’t as wildly different as any of the
aforementioned bits, but it too is something that really feels unlike a lot of
what you see (spoilers for Gamora and Nebula.)
Both
Gamora and Nebula were taken/“adopted” by the warlord Thanos, cybernetically
augmented, and raised to be assassins for him.
In Gamora’s case, we know that Thanos destroyed her world and her people
when she was only a child; not as much is told about Nebula, but it’s to be
assumed that her capture was equal parts violent and traumatic. In a way, they remind me a little of a
combination between the wives and the War Boys on Mad Max: Fury Road, with
Thanos standing in for Immortan Joe.
They appear to have been working alongside each other and doing Thanos’s
bidding for a number of years, somewhat contentiously (even though both hate
Thanos, he seems to play favorites to pit them against each other.) When he loans them out to Ronan, however, is
when their paths diverge.
Now,
there are familiar elements within this.
Gamora betraying Thanos and Ronan to steal the orb and keep it out of
their genocidal hands has shades of Black Widow, a former baddie coming over to
the side of good. The resulting rift
between the sisters, with them on different sides and having to fight one
another (reluctantly on Gamora’s part,) looks a bit like Thor and Loki. But when these separate elements are at play
within the same characters, we’re given dynamics that feel distinct from either
in-universe similarity. Gamora and Nebula
were raised together, yes, but by the warlord who kidnapped them and murdered
their families. If they’re expected to
feel any loyalty to each other, it’s only inasmuch as it would be inconvenient
to Thanos for them to be too much at
odds. And yet, he doesn’t want them to
be too close, either – he prefers any antagonism they feel to be directed at
each other instead of him.
But
that’s the thing: they do care about each other, at least a
little. Gamora doesn’t think twice about
leaving Nebula behind when she goes rogue, but when they come up against each
other in Ronan’s resulting mission to take the orb back from Gamora, Gamora
repeatedly tries to reason with her sister and only fights her once it’s clear
her only options are fight or die. And
while Nebula tries very hard to kill Gamora – repeatedly – she too feels as
much for Gamora as she’s probably able to at this point. Being more of a multitasker, she tries to
kill Gamora and talk her around at the same
time, but there is the smallest part of her that doesn’t want it to go down
the way it is. As she tells Gamora, “Of
our siblings, I hated you least.”
So it’s
this really odd, really damaged relationship where both were raised in really
frakked-up circumstances and not encouraged to care about anyone, and they
don’t like each other all that much, but there’s still this pull between
them. At the end of the first movie,
Nebula cuts off her cybernetic hand and leaps onto a passing spacecraft rather
than kill or join Gamora, and I’m
rabidly curious to find out what happens next for the sisters. I feel like we’ve only seen the smallest
spark of hope for them, but that might be enough.
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