Most of the famous X-Men villains, like Magneto or Apocalypse, are products of the ‘60s to the ‘90s. But the 21st century has provided us with one of the most lethal X-Men foes of all time, Cassandra Nova Xavier. The Crown’s Emma Corrin played the character with a sense of delicious, evil glee in Deadpool & Wolverine. Here’s the comic book history of one of the X-Men’s most dangerous adversaries.
Cassandra Nova’s Marvel Comics First Appearance
The genocidal maniac is the creation of writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, introduced during their New X-Men run in the early 2000s. The story that introduced her, “E is For Extinction,” was a game-changer for the X-Men.” First appearing in 2001’s New X-Men #114, she’s since popped up several other times. Usually her appearance makes life hell for the mutant race in each instance.
Cassandra Nova’s Origin Story, and Charles Xavier
Cassandra Nova is that tried and true villain archetype of fiction — the evil twin. But in Grant Morrison’s imagination, “evil twin” has an even darker meaning. Cassandra is what the alien Shi’ar Empire calls a Mummudrai. A Mummudrai is something the Shi’ar believe every living being in the universe has, an astral “shadow self” without form. Cassandra began existence in the same womb as Charles Xavier, but without a corporeal body. She then copied her twin brother’s DNA and essentially became his physical twin, and attempted to strangle her brother in the womb with their mother’s umbilical cord. But the fetus of Charles uses his powers for the first time with a psychic blast, which causes her to be stillborn.
However, the Mummudrai’s essence survived as “chaotic cellular matter.” That blob of cells clung to a sewer wall for years and years, slowly regrowing its physical form, rebuilding itself, and copying human traits. One thing fueled this malevolent being, and that was revenge on her twin brother Charles Xavier, and everything he held dear. Particularly his dream for mutant and human coexistence. Fully grown, Cassandra activated a Sentinel Master Mold, which unleashed the Homo-superior-hunting robots on the mutant nation of Genosha. There, it murdered 16 million mutants in one fell swoop.
Cassandra Nova and the X-Men
After the Genoshan genocide, Cassandra fought the X-Men, and they thought they defeated her. Actually, she switched minds with her brother Charles Xavier, and when he was in her body, she allowed him to be shot and seemingly killed. After months of posing as Charles and creating chaos, eventually Xavier reasserted control of his old body, thanks to Jean Grey storing pieces of his psyche in every mind on Earth, and then putting them back into his original body, forcing her out. Cassandra’s essence then entered a newly created body with a synthetic brain, now locked into a self-repeating program for all time. Or so they thought.
Cassandra Nova was once thought to have been released from her mental prison a few years later in Astonishing X-Men, but she turned out to be a mental projection by Emma Frost. Eventually, she escaped her imprisonment by hopping from one host body to another. Once free, she used Sentinel tech implanted in baseline humans to kill mutants. A human with this Sentinel tech in them would go wild with rage at the very sight of a mutant. Jean Grey eventually used her considerable psionic ability to enter her mind and thwart her plans. She did this by making her feel human empathy for the first time, which caused her to surrender.
Cassandra Nova in Marvel Comic’s X-Men Spin-off, Mauraders
When the mutant community founded their own nation on the living island of Krakoa, Cassandra Nova was moved there. Hoping she’d reformed, she joined Kate Pryde’s Marauders, a sort of corsair group of X-Men on the high seas. Pryde and Emma Frost never believed Nova had reformed, and still held much animosity towards her for the genocide of Genosha. Especially Emma Frost, who was the sole survivor. At one point, the Marauders found themselves stranded over two billion years in the past on a time travel mission. Emma and Kate decided to leave Cassandra Nova stranded there as payback for her heinous acts. What became of her after that remains a mystery. We seriously doubt it’s the last we’ve seen of her in the pages of the comics.
Cassandra Nova’s Powers
Cassandra Nova is one of the most powerful adversaries the X-Men have ever faced. As a Mummudrai, she mimicked all of Charles Xavier’s powers, including his telepathy, but also, all his latent mutant powers. Powers that were dormant within his DNA. Cassandra can do things he never could, like telekinesis, as well as phase through solid matter. She has regenerative capabilities comparable to those of Wolverine’s. She can also even evolve latent mutants to their true potential with a thought.
Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine
In Deadpool & Wolverine, Cassandra Nova’s origin is fairly close to her comic book counterpart. She is still the twin sister of Charles Xavier, who tried to kill him when they shared a womb, by strangling him with her umbilical cord. The MCU version does not appear old, retaining the looks of a younger woman. There’s no mention of anything alien with her creation, however. Cassandra Nova tells Deadpool and Wolverine that Xavier telepathically tried to kill her before she could walk, and she came to the TVA’s attention that way. All we know is that at some point after that, the TVA pruned her existence from the timeline of Earth-10005, and she wound up in the Void. The suggestion is that she grew up there.
Like her brother Charles, Cassandra Nova is an Omega Level mutant with powerful psychic abilities. Unlike her brother, however, she has tremendous telekinetic powers as well. While most others sent to the wasteland of the Void in Deadpool & Wolverine saw it as a curse, Cassandra Nova loved it there. She could use her power with impunity and force those exiled there to do her bidding. In her time in the Void, she killed several variants of her brother Charles Xavier exiled there, as well as a variant of Stephen Strange, taking his sling ring. With this sling ring, she was able to leave the Void whenever she wished. Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Cassandra Nova formed an arrangement with the TVA, however, that allowed her to run the Void with an iron fist, taking care of their “scraps.” In the end, Cassandra Nova proved too much of a wild card, so the TVA’s Mr. Paradox arranged for his spy in the Void, Pyro, to kill her. When she discovered his betrayal, she set out to use a TVA Time Ripper to destroy all timelines except for the Void itself. Luckily, Cassandra Nova was thwarted by Deadpool and Wolverine, and was atomized in the resulting explosion.
Cassandra Nova’s MCU Look
Cassandra Nova sported a very unique look in the MCU. Deadpool & Wolverine‘s makeup artist Bill Corso revealed a little bit more about the process of creating Cassandra. He writes, “When Emma was first cast, I did an initial concept design that leaned a little closer to Cassandra’s interpretation in the comics, but it was decided that Emma had such a wonderful look, why mess with it, just add the bald head. Not wanting to leave it at that, I still wanted to come up with something unusual I could add that would be fun and I realized Cassandra had so much action with her hands that it might be fun to lengthen her fingers. The trick was, when I lengthened them, they just looked normal, so I decided to elongate her nail bed to emphasize the weirdness and length.” The result was unusual and fun indeed.
Will Cassandra Nova Return to the MCU After Her Deadpool & Wolverine Death?
A being of such powerful psionic energy should not be counted out, though. Her brother Charles Xavier also survived his body being destroyed more than once. It’s quite possible we haven’t seen the last of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Cassandra Nova in the MCU.
Originally published on April 22, 2024
