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The casting of The Crown’s Emma Corrin in Deadpool & Wolverine’s in a lead role has led to plenty of speculation as to whether she’s playing the film’s villain. Although some thought she’d be playing a variant version of Deadpool to give a twist on Lady Deadpool, others were adamant she’d bring Cassandra Nova to the party. Now, it looks like the latter has been confirmed.
As seen on the US Copyright Office site, Corrin’s character is listed as “Cassandra Nova,” seemingly confirming she’ll be playing the villainous twin sister of Charles Xavier. Introduced in 2001’s New X-Men #114, Cassandra Nova has similar telekinetic and telepathic powers to Charles Xavier. But instead of using them for good, she tried to eradicate the so-called “mutant menace” by dispatching an army of Sentinel robots to the mutant island of Genosha, massacring millions of mutants in the process. It effectively kicked off a new era of X-Men comics led by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely.
As the story went on, we learned more about Cassandra Nova’s origins. Starting out as a parasitic lifeform known as a Mummudrai from the Astral Plane, Cassandra became telepathically “entanlged” with Charles in the womb and tried to strangle him with his own umbilical cord. When the unborn Xavier hit her with a psychic blast, Cassandra’s physical form became stillborn, and she was left to rebuild her body while clinging to a sewer wall for years. This is obviously why she hates Xavier and mutantkind as a whole.
Cassandra has featured in some very weird and wonderful storylines, such as when she switched bodies with Charles, but we assume she’ll be her own fully-formed character in the upcoming MCU film. Theories aside, many had clocked a potential tease of Cassandra Nova in the first Deadpool & Wolverine trailer thanks to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of a bald head. Even though this was the signature look of Patrick Stewart’s Xavier in all his appearances, this mystery character clearly wasn’t him.
What Does Cassandra Nova Mean for the MCU?
The first trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine showed Wade Wilson being recruited by Loki’s TVA, with Matthew Macfadyen’s Paradox calling on the Merc with a Mouth to save the multiverse. More than Wade Wilson referring to himself as “Marvel Jesus,” it looks like a multiversal threat is on the horizon. Given Nova’s hatred of mutants, she could be touring the multiverse and trying to wipe them out of all realities. Which is likely where Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and the other blasts from Fox’s X-Men past come in.
Deadpool & Wolverine’s trailer included the surprise return of Aaron Standford’s Pyro, while villains Toad and Sabretooth are also rumored to cameo. We’re expecting a high body count, and with Cassandra presumably ready to rip through the mutants of the multiverse, we imagine a who’s who of familiar faces being offed like the Earth-838 Illuminati in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This would be an easy way to bring back legacy characters without taking the shine away from Reynolds and Jackman.
Elsewhere, set photos showed a wrecked version of the 20th Century Fox logo, which is also featured in the trailer. The third Deadpool movie looks like it’s continuing its typically meta humor and fourth-wall-breaking commentary, with Cassandra’s actions presumably folding the remaining X-Men into the MCU. If nothing else, the inclusion of Xavier’s villainous sister brings us one step closer to Stewart reprising his role again.
There have already been plenty of teases of mutants in the MCU, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness bringing back Stewart’s Professor X, Ms. Marvel’s Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Namor (Tenoch Huerta) being confirmed as mutants, and The Marvels’ post-credit scene trapping Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in a new reality with Kelsey Grammer’s version of Beast from X-Men: The Last Stand.
Of course, with Corrin is playing Cassandra, this could be a way to introduce the MCU’s new version of Charles, and assuming we’re getting an X-Men reset, he could have a new lineup of his gifted youngsters in tow. Impatient fans have grown tired of the relentless X-Men teases ahead of the MCU’s big Secret Wars finale, but finally, Deadpool & Wolverine seems poised to bring them into mainline MCU canon. Considering Charles Xavier has always been central to the X-Men movie, we can’t wait to see what his vengeful sister can do.
Deadpool & Wolverine is out on July 26.
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