Avengers: Endgame Fan Theory Reveals Why Nebula Was Spared From Thanos’ Snap

Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame saw half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe get dusted in Thanos’ Infinity Guantlet Snap, leaving behind a bunch of broken and rattled survivors. The decision about who got dusted in The Snap and who didn’t was supposedly random – though choices about the surviving characters makes it hardly seems that random at all. The original Avengers team just so happened to all survive to take on their final mission together in Endgame; and as one new Marvel fan theory points out, the final “Child of Thanos,” Nebula, may have been spared on purpose.

Check out the theory about Nebula’s survival of The Decimation, via Reddit user Capricious Salmon:

Thanos for all his terrible deeds, has one redeeming and yet damning flaw: he loves his children. Like he loves gamora but he won’t hesitate to kill her to get his wish of a better universe even if it hurt him. Or he loves nebula but doesn’t hesitate to rip out all her organs because he thinks it’ll make her stronger. He even says in endgame he regrets he was too hard on her.

Nebula mentions in endgame how he always said that when the snap happened, the sisters and Thanos would retire to a quaint little planet and live peacefully forever.

Subconsciously the snap was affected by that principle. He already lost most of his kids that day.

Unlike some Marvel Cinematic Universe fan theories that go way out there with the logic stretches, this theory actually feels somewhat sound. We know that Thanos has a very twisted and abusive slant to the “love” of his children, honoring them one moment, and threatening to them in the next (parenting… am I right?). So, even though we see Thanos doing untold cruelty to Nebula in both Infinity War and Endgame, The Mad Titan very well could’ve felt enough fatherly love for his daughter – the last of his “children” – to make sure that Nebula was safe from The Snap. After all, Thanos wasn’t just trying to set the universe back in “balance” for nothing – he wanted a universe that would thrive with life and resources for the survivors, and surely wanted his surrogate “family” to enjoy it in a way that his actual family never got to, when Titan fell.

Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022. Marvel Studios Disney+ series without release dates include Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk.