Who is Deadpool & Wolverine’s psychic villain, Cassandra Nova?

Deadpool & Wolverine will send the titular duo on an epic journey across time to save Deadpool’s timeline from a world-ending calamity. That threat goes by the name Cassandra Nova, and she’s one of the X-Men’s most powerful, dangerous, and disturbing villains.

Cassandra Nova is a twisted reflection of the X-Men’s founder, Charles Xavier, and her origin story is a snarled web of revelations that even the most die-hard X-Men fans have trouble keeping track of. So before Deadpool & Wolverine premieres this Friday, let me tell you everything you need to know about Cassandra Nova.

Cassandra Nova is an extinction event made flesh

Cassandra Nova debuted in the pages of New X-Men #144, penned by the legendary comic author/artist duo Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly. To cut to the point, Cassandra is a mummudrai, a bodiless parasite from the Astral Plane. Attaching herself to Xavier while he was still in the womb, Cassandra used Xavier’s DNA to create a body, becoming his twin sister.

Murder from the moment of her conception, Cassandra attempted to strangle Xavier with his own umbilical cord. Xavier used his nascent psychic powers to fight back, obliterating Cassandra’s body and leaving everyone to assume she’d died in the womb. Unfortunately for everyone, Cassandra survived, using her own psychic powers to build a new body and go into hiding.

Years after her conception, Cassandra made her presence known to her brother and his X-Men in the most horrific way possible. Using an armada of mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, Cassandra launched an all-out assault on the mutant sovereign nation of Genosha. This event, adapted with terrifying accuracy in the fifth episode of X-Men ’97, left sixteen million mutants dead and inflicted a scar on the X-Men that’s never fully healed.

Over the years, Cassandra has clashed with the X-Men multiple times, driven by an all-consuming hatred for the brother she failed to kill. Circumstances outside her control have driven Cassandra to join the X-Men occasionally, but her innate bloodlust always drives her back to the path of villainy.

Cassandra Nova is a nightmare on the psychic and genetic level

The X-Men villains are some of the most powerful in the Marvel Universe, and Cassandra is no exception. Cassandra, benign Xavier’s twin, has all of his abilities. Xavier’s psychic powers are among the most powerful in the Marvel Universe, regularly invading the minds of millions of people. The only thing preventing Charles from enslaving or killing everyone on Earth is his restraint, a trait Cassandra sorely lacks.

On top of her psychic abilities, Cassandra can also manipulate DNA, allowing her to copy and alter her and others’ genes. When she uses it against mutants, she can effectively steal their powers, making her the All-For-One of the Marvel Universe.

Who plays Cassandra in Deadpool and Wolverine?

Cassandra Nova will be the first X-Men villain to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, helping to usher in the MCU’s “Mutant Era.” Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in the fourth season of The Crown, will play Cassandra in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Based on what we’ve seen in Deadpool & Wolverine’s trailers, Cassandra has taken over “The Void,” the cosmic junkyard that Loki’s Time Variance Authority dumps everyone and everything that existed on the countless timelines they’ve “pruned.” Commanding an army of mutants, Cassandra has presumably set her sights on escaping the Void and unleashing her unique strain of chaos on the MCU’s main timeline.