What If S02E01 Review: Nova

What If, Season 2, Episode 1: What If... Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?

I'm back with MCU content reviews, though fair warning -- I'll take much longer to go through these. It's a bit of a slow burn for me, though I suppose it's going to be good practice for me writing more succinct reviews. 

I have watched all the way to the end of the second season of What If?, and it's rather interesting that... I guess they took some of the criticism of the first season eventually becoming serialized to heart, and actually a good chunk -- more than half -- of the episodes in the second season of What If are actually utterly standalone. At least, for now. It's always a bit of an interesting conundrum with What If as a show in general, because an animated format that doesn't even have to care about continuity can theoretically do anything. Some of the best parts of the first season arose from these questions, like giving villains or side-characters that were basically wasted after a single movie (Killmonger, Ultron and Arnim Zola all come to mind respectively) chances to shine in alternate dimensions. But not all of them are particularly good or engaging. 

And with season two, I get the feeling that they are trying to focus on more interesting alternate continuities, and exploring different styles of storytelling that end up with interesting stories. The premier episode, "What If... Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?" is actually a pretty great start to a season that -- slight spoilers for my subsequent reviews -- didn't really deliver all that well. 

But this one does. Now I perhaps expected more exploration to the honestly rather basic "space cops with fancy Star Wars armour" Nova Corps. If they were going to devote some lore to adapting some of the superpower-granting helmets of the comics, you'd think that a What If episode would be exactly it. But instead, they go for a Blade Runner or Cyberpunk inspired film noir in space, with Nebula as a former crook-turned-cop in a city under heavy lockdown, on her own and trying to figure out the roots of a massive conspiracy.

The 'what if' in this question, interestingly, has very little to do with Nebula or the planet she's in, but rather with Ronan the Accuser. In this alternate timeline, Ronan managed to harness the Power Stone and kill Thanos, and a chain of events later ends up with Ronan besieging Xandar, home of the Nova Corps, and leading Xandar to close up the entire planet with a forcefield. Under siege (and constant noir lighting), the people of Xandar are starved, angry, and at the limit as previously-good Nova Corps policemen like Garthan Saal end up being cruel, crooked cops. 

Nebula herself has been taken in by her mentor, Irani Rael the Nova Prime, and made into a Corpsman. And after some setup about this alternate history, she ends up finding Yondu dead in the gutter. Again, there's a very fun film noir theme to the whole thing, and Nebula's background as a reformed criminal means that the other Nova Corps like Saal don't quite trust her. She knows Yondu is murdered by something, and ends up finding information that Yondu might have stumbled into something huge. Yondu's yaka arrow turns out to contain a holographic map that seems to be hinting at something much, much bigger than what a thief should be involved in. 

Her mentor Nova Prime calls in, goes through a whole 'secure line' deal, and hints at some urgent dark forces threatening Xandar. Nova-Nebula is basically all-in with protecting Xandar, constantly emphasizing that the Nova Corps took her in and gave her shelter and purpose -- not unlike a more organized version of the Guardians of the Galaxy compared to her main universe counterpart, I suppose. 

We get another fun bar scene with the MCU's wacky space cast. Howard the Duck (who gets his biggest role in an MCU project yet) is running the seedy underground casino, with Groot, Korg (who shows up everywhere in these What If's) and Miek running security. Nothing out of these scenes are honestly particularly exciting compared to other sci-fi noir stories, though, other than the appeal of seeing Nebula get to do take a significantly more central role than what she got in the main movies. 

Anyway, the data can take down Xandar's forcefields, potentially ending the siege but also allowing Ronan a chance to get in. We get the surprise and unexpected inclusion of another MCU character -- the also criminally underused Yon-Rogg from Captain Marvel, who's found himself into a jail cell in Xandar. Again, under the flag of "I can trust no one", Nebula ends up freeing Yon-Rogg and enlists his help in breaking into the data core, which... is basically actionized filler. It's all right filler, though, and while the Nebula episode isn't the prettiest of all the What If episodes (that honour probably goes to the race episode) we've got some pretty fun visuals. 

Nebula is able to use her robot brain to access the central codes or whatever, but in a wholly expected plot twist, Yon-Rogg double-crosses her. In a slightly less-expected plot twist, however, it turns out that Nova Prime is in on the plot, having gone crazy in the isolation and wanting to use greater good as an excuse to surrender Xandar to Ronan. They just needed Nebula's robo-brain to get access.

The tropes are pretty basic, but I do feel like Karen Gillan and the replacement voice actor they got for Nova Prime do a pretty great job at delivering Nebula's utter disgust and disappointment at Nova Prime for betraying the Nova Corps oath, the very thing their organization stands for. Nebula manages to escape Garthan Saal and the other nameless Nova Corps goons from killing her by, again, yet another trope -- them kicking her off a ledge and assuming her dead. 

She's a monstrous cyborg, though, and she shows back up at Howard's casino. Howard uses some plot device shenanigans to put Nebula back together. Howard and "rock, paper, scissors" (Korg, Groot, Miek) also decide to arm up after Nebula makes some funny jokes about how Howard would lose his alcohol license if Ronan manages to make landfall. Nebula dons Yondu's coat and the yaka arrow mohawk, and the five of them storm Nova Prime's headquarters. Again, not a whole ton to really say about the action here. It's competently done, though it does rely a lot on the badassery of Nebula using Yondu's arrow, as well as the ridiculousness of seeing Howard the Duck as an action hero for the first time in the MCU. 

The ragtag team almost fail, but plot-twist-upon-plot-twist, Nebula actually gave Yon-Rogg fake codes, and the encoded instructions opens the planetary forcefields long enough... for Ronan's ship to enter and get squished and blown up by the closing shield. Nebula fights Nova Prime and tries to bring her to justice, but Nova Prime is too far gone, refusing to accept help from a 'machine' and falls to her death. Nebula realizes that she has embodied the Nova Corps' ideals and code more than the woman who led them, and ends up becoming Nova. Or as Howard calls her, Super Nova. End scene. 

And... it's a pretty fun experiment. I'm not sure just how necessary Howard and Korg and their dynamic mesh with the rest of the more serious and somber episode, and if they fit the tone at all (Howard being featured more in this series is a huge A+ from me for sure). And, as I mentioned repeatedly in the review... the episode itself is very trope-heavy, I think by design. I feel like it probably would've worked better as a 15-20 minute episode as opposed to the 30-35-ish one they gave us. I do welcome the obviously-coming but still well-done twists with Nebula, Yon-Rogg and Nova Prime double-crossing each other. Pretty all right episode. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• This episode is technically a riff on the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, taking place in Xandar with a majority of that movie's cast -- including the Ronan's Dark Aster battleship and Nova Corps, which were basically ignored afterwards. Ronan actually did have a plan to attack Thanos, and this What If? scenario basically lets that play out. 
• Interestingly, in Captain Marvel, Yon-Rogg is noted to be rather disgusted with Ronan's carpet-bombing tactics because it would often result in Kree casualties. This episode has Yon-Rogg be fanatical to Ronan's cause, though it might be because of many different reasons -- the timeline's different; there might not be other Kree on Xandar; or imprisonment might've caused Yon-Rogg to get a bit crazier. 
  
• Korg, Miek and Howard are shown playing a game of rock, paper and scissors, referencing a similar joke that Korg makes in Thor: Ragnarok. 
• In addition to all the speaking roles, Drax makes a brief cameo as a casino-goer. 
• The comic-book version of Garthan Saal actually did become evil, and actually took the title of Super Nova for himself (one of the various characters to do so). Ironically, comics' Garthan Saal became evil because Xandar and the Nova Corpse were decimated... by Nebula. 
• Returning Live-Action Actors are...: Karen Gillan (Nebula), Jude Law (Yon-Rogg), Seth Green (Howard the Duck), Taika Waititi (Korg), Michael Rooker (Yondu), and rather interestingly, Peter Serafinowicz (Garthan Saal; more than a decade after playing the role in live-action). In addition, Jeffrey Wright returns from What If season 1 as Uatu. 
• Notable non-reprises is Irani Rael, who's voiced by Julianne Grossman; Drax, who's voiced by Fred Tatasciore in all of the What If series; Groot, who's also voiced by Fred Tatasciore.