Deadpool & Wolverine is easily the most anticipated comic book movie of the year, and with the latest trailer, we seem to have confirmation that the movie’s big bad is Cassandra Nova, the evil twin sister of Charles Xavier. But who is she? Why is she evil? And how big of a threat is she? Let’s find out.

Cassandra Nova first appeared in New X-Men 114 in July of 2001 and was created by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. In the issue, we are introduced to Cassandra as she guides Donald Trask III, a dentist and relative of Bolivar Trask, through assimilation of what early human life might have looked like 30,000 years ago. In the simulation, she shows Donald a gruesome example of homo sapiens slaughtering what’s left of the caveman in order to make the point that the next stage of evolution has arrived with the mutant race and that they must be exterminated before they destroy humans in the same way humans wiped out the Neanderthals.

As she puts it to Trask, ‘Imagine the day when the leering freaks and the mutations come kicking down your door to bash your daughter’s brains in. Evolution takes no prisoners.’ So right out of the gate, you get a sense of how dark her mindset is and what her intentions are, especially once you realise that, as a member of the Trask family, Donald’s DNA can control all Sentinel technology.

A true use for Donald becomes immediately clear as they remove their VR headsets, and the helicopter they’re flying in lands in Ecuador, where she reveals a huge Master Mold Factory in the middle of the jungle. She goes on to explain that this Master Mould’s AI was uniquely engineered to adapt to its environment and programmed to build wild Sentinels using any and all technology within a certain test radius.

Cassandra then leads a very confused and disturbed Donald Trask through the jungle and brings him into contact with those self-made wild Sentinels that have used scrap and spare parts from the nearby Mimball Factory to, as Cassandra puts it, evolve themselves into more effective forms. But just before these Sentinels destroy both of them, Trask screams, ‘Don’t hurt me,’ which causes the Sentinels’ built-in protocol to preserve Trask’s DNA to activate, and they stand down.

Cassandra then tells Donald, ‘They’ll do anything you say, Mr. Trask. I brought you here in my capacity as a biologist because I feel it’s your duty to save the human species,’ and then proceeds to fully reveal she brought him to Ecuador so he could help her take control of the Master Mould and turn it into a mutant-killing machine. She then tells Donald on the final page of the issue, ‘Forget your dental practice, Mr. Trask. Your future lies in genocide.’

So that tells us her intentions and goal, but we didn’t learn the why for a few more issues, which we’ll get into in a minute. Our first glimpse of her power, however, came a few pages earlier in issue 114, when we saw Cassandra invade the mind of Professor X while using Cerebra. We see Charles in extreme pain as she taunts him about what she calls Charlie’s big, ugly secret, then nearly causes him to kill himself before Jean intervenes and puts a stop to it. This scene is clearly meant to establish very quickly that Cassandra Nova is an incredibly powerful being, because watching her do that to Professor X, one of the most powerful telepaths in the Marvel Universe, while strolling through a South American jungle thousands of miles away makes it abundantly clear that she’s an incredibly dangerous enemy.

Then, in issue 115, once they’re inside the Master Mould, we learn she was only using Trask to gain access to get things started. She then humours him for 10 hours while she copies the three billion base letters in his DNA sequence so she can take control of the Sentinels herself. She tells him, ‘I’m done with you now,’ as she merges her hand into him, killing him. Another thing worth noting here is that after Professor X sends several X-Men to Ecuador to find the Master Mould, the Sentinels capture Wolverine and Ugly John and bring them to Cassandra. And after she dispatches all the Sentinels, Wolverine breaks free from his restraints and attacks her in a confrontation similar to what we briefly see in the latest Deadpool and Wolverine trailer. So that could be an interesting hint at what they could be doing in the movie. At the end of issue 115, we learn that Cassandra sent the Sentinels to destroy Genosha and its 16 million+ mutant population, as we see them completely destroy everyone and everything on the island, with Charles watching in horror through Cerebra as the population drops from over 16 million to zero. We actually just saw a rendition of this in episode 5 of X-Men ’97, which is clearly setting us up for her role in the MCU. Let’s talk about a complete and utter genocide.

Now, as we roll into New X-Men 116, Cassandra will attack the X-Men at their mansion, blowing out all the windows, with Charles saying her mind is a trap and telling Jean to stay back. He then tries to shut down her motor functions, but that doesn’t work, and she crushes every X-Men present and makes her way to Cerebra. However, Emma Frost, who’s just outside the mansion in a cab, senses something is wrong and goes inside, where she finds Cassandra hooked up to Cerebra. She then walks up to her and snaps her neck, saying there are some things you shouldn’t be allowed to get away with. But that somehow doesn’t kill Cassandra, and when she tries to get up, Professor X wheels himself in and shoots the old girl multiple times. He then says, “I had to put a stop to it. I won’t allow any more mutants to die. Things must change now.” And he finishes like a boss with the iconic line, “To me, my X-Men.” But hold up; you know that can’t be the end of it. That would be too simple, right? Just way too easy. Well, at the end of the issue, we learn that Cassandra had projected her consciousness into Charles’s body and that she was actually the one who killed her own body in order to convince the X-Men it was over and buy herself time. She then uses Charles to introduce the X-Men to the public because, at this point in time in this run, the public didn’t know who the X-Men were. And then from here, she’s like, ‘Good riddance, mutants. I’m going to go to the Shi’ar Empire, and you know, dismantle them from the inside out.’

But with Cassandra making herself Enemy Number One, Jean decided she needed to know who she is, where she came from, and what her motives are for committing such unbelievable acts of evil. So in New X-Men 121, we see Jean use her abilities to probe what’s left of Cassandra’s body to see what she could learn from her past. She really saw how it went down and how Cassandra became the person she was. It starts at the moment of conception, where we see her swimming out of Xavier’s father’s manhood into Xavier’s mother’s egg. She has a front-row seat to it all as Charles and Cassandra are conceived and begin to grow in their mother’s womb.

The problem is that when Cassandra was big enough to open her eyes, she looked over at her brother Charles and started to strangle him with the umbilical cord. But baby Charles is like, ‘If that’s how you want to play it, sister, only the strongest will survive,’ and uses his mutant abilities to kill his sister inside the womb, which causes his mother to fall down the stairs and deliver Cassandra as a stillborn. Now, at this point, you’re thinking, ‘So Charles had an evil twin sister in the womb who he killed in self-defence. Then how is she still alive?’ Well, at the end of the issue, Jean tells Cyclops, Wolverine, and Emma that Professor X tried to kill his twin sister while they were both still in the womb, with an with an emphasis on ‘tried’. So, though Charles thought he killed her, he clearly did not because she’s back and somehow taking over Charles’s body and evicting Charles’s consciousness into her old, very broken body, which Jean and Emma discovered while they were on their little mind adventure.

In issue 122, as they’re trying to communicate with Charles and Cassandra’s bodies, Wolverine asks, ‘What’s all that stuff on him?’ Jean tells them, ‘He grew that shell around our life support equipment. Cerebra is all that’s holding his thoughts together.'” Cyclops asks, “And if his mind is in her body?” Jean says, “I know. It’s why she came here. The first time we fought her, she used Cerebra as a booster. She trapped him in her brain’s right hemisphere, but Emma and I managed to bring him back to awareness. Here, in her body, he’s very weak, but we’re communicating via telepathy.” Beast then says, “There’s also another reason why she could do what she did. She’s Charles’s twin sister, kind of.” Wolverine asks, “So how have we never heard about any twins before?” Jean tells him, “Because this professor didn’t even know he had a sister. The last time they met was in the womb. I’ll show you,” as she shows them a partial replay from her memory record, saying, “By rights, Cassandra Nova should be dead. She was born without a body of her own. I know that much. She had to improvise using Charles’s cells. She appears educated and intelligent, but I think she’s only mimicking human traits. She’s a living emotional energy, formless, immense, and totally unique. In Cassandra’s mind, our universe and the womb she became aware of are one and the same. Only she and Charles are real. We have no idea how she survived their past battle, but her motives are basic. She has to kill Charles for mastery of the universe as she sees it. She announced our existence to the world. She wanted to expose and weaken us.”

Beast continues explaining, “I hardly need to mention that she’s in Charles’s body to fool the Shi’ar into accepting her, which demonstrates the scale of what she’s attempting.” Beast follows this by explaining that she wants to control the Shi’ar because they’re a highly advanced Type Five interstellar empire through which she could rule the universe. And with control of Charles’s mind, she could pull it off. He also emphasises that she is much more dangerous than expected by saying, “Cassandra is much scarier and smarter than we thought. She plans in advance, and she thinks of everything. She even booby-trapped her own body to disable Charles.” And he finishes by saying that he’s found multiple neurological diseases that will affect and eventually kill Charles in her body within a week if they can’t extract him.

Once New X-Men 123 rolls around, we see that Cassandra, through Charles, has infiltrated the Shi’ar Empire and is manipulating their Empress, Lilandra, to exterminate the mutants of Earth. But a royal sage and adviser sees what’s happening and tries to snap the Empress out of it. He finally confronts her in issue 125, where he gives a huge revelation about Cassandra when he says, “Empress, I have served you faithfully since your ascendancy, but now this thing has taken your soul. Dressed in friendly flesh, Mummudrai are books called anti-self. This is not Charles Xavier, but his terrible opposite, the immensity of hate, liar, and destroyer.” So, a summary of what he means here is that Cassandra Nova isn’t necessarily the evil sister of Charles Xavier, but rather the evil essence or side of Charles Xavier that wanted so badly to break free that it created a physical form of itself in the womb alongside Charles. But even though Charles killed it in the womb, it was able to survive and make its own physical body enter Cassandra Nova. She’s Xavier’s anti-self, or, as the Shi’ar call it, a Mummudrai. Yes, that’s a crazy reveal, and honestly, it makes her backstory even better.

Now, ultimately, Cassandra would be defeated in New X-Men 126, but only after she caused some serious damage, including the near destruction of the Shi’ar Empire. She also chokes out and bodyslams Gladiator, who is one of Marvel’s Superman-like characters. That’s on top of outing the X-Men and committing genocide against over 16 million mutants. But in the end, she was defeated by the combined power of Professor X, Jean, and Emma Frost by using Cerebra to push her out of his body and into a synthetic brain, where they wiped her memory and started the rehabilitation process.

That’s Cassandra’s first and most prominent story arc, but she would later pop up in the Astonishing X-Men arc called Dangerous, where she was apparently now part of the Hellfire Club. Cassandra returns and implies that she’s the one responsible for Emma’s second mutation, being able to turn her body into diamond, which ended up saving her life. Cassandra then uses this to trick and guilt Emma into helping her take down the X-Men.

Then, after this, we have the X-Men Red series, where Cassandra is at it once again, this time framing Jean for the death of a senator. Cassandra literally makes it look like Jean blew up somebody’s head. As the end of the issue reveals, it is indeed Cassandra as she looks at a Sentinel head, saying, “I am Cassandra Nova, and I can control what’s in a person’s head. I can make them red.”

Eventually, Cassandra would be moved to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where she’s placed into isolation all by her lonesome. However, Kitty Pryde, or Captain Pride eventually, would discover her and recruit her to be part of the Marauders because they needed her for knowledge.

All in all, Cassandra Nova is a really cool character, and while she hasn’t been used that much, she’s an incredibly interesting character nonetheless. Although you’ve got to wonder, out of all the X-Men villains they could have chosen to be the main antagonists in Deadpool and Wolverine, why pick Cassandra? It has to do with her connection to Xavier or maybe the extinction of mutants because, remember, that’s what her character is all about. She hates them, and that could be a key to how Marvel will introduce the new X-Men into the MCU.

That’s who Cassandra Nova is and how she came to be. She is someone you do not want to have to face, but let’s get into her power set a little bit more to really drive home how big of a threat she is and why she will likely be a force to be reckoned with in Deadpool and Wolverine. As previously mentioned, Cassandra is a Mummudrai, and according to the Marvel Database, Mummudrai states that Mummudrai, also known as anti-self, are entities that each individual must fight before being born. The Mummudrai are residents of the astral plane and are born alongside every sentient creature. They often fight with the mind of their host for control over the body, meaning that usually only one survives. But in Charles Xavier’s case, there was an exception.

As Charles Xavier has vast mutant potential and abilities, Cassandra was able to survive and build herself a body. Because of this, she has Charles Xavier’s abilities, but perhaps on an even greater scale. She has the ability to access and merge DNA, meaning she could access the full spectrum of Charles’s latent mutant abilities, if any never developed, making her the full potential of Professor X. Let’s just reiterate that she has every power that Charles could have ever had or might get in the future due to potential latent mutations she can access. And we’ve already seen her do things he couldn’t, like create a human body with psionic powers alone. All of this makes her unpredictable and a deadly force. In fact, on paper, a character that has Charles’s abilities as well as the potential abilities he may get definitely implies that she could be superior to Charles Xavier.

To further that point, let’s break down some of her powers a bit further. She has telekinesis, telepathy, and is even able to create an astral form, which only heightens her other abilities. I mean, we’ve seen her defeat most of the X-Men all by her lonesome. She was ultimately defeated, but it took Professor X, Jean Grey, Frost, and the entire X-Men. That’s serious firepower, and they barely came out with the win.

But another crazy ability that Cassandra has is that she can copy the DNA of any living being, which she could then use to make it into a physical form. This is how she was able to build herself a body from scratch. Also, you know how she was able to gain full access to latent mutations in Charles? Well, that’s not limited to him. She can access the latent mutations in anyone’s genome. That is a crazy ability to have, and she demonstrated it when she merged with Donald Trask, taking his DNA and essentially becoming a Trask so she could command the wild Sentinels.

But if none of that is terrifying enough, Cassandra once told Emma Frost, “I could strip you down to a single screaming neuron of pain without blinking, and the only thing that stops me is my confidence in your practicality.” That should tell you everything you need to know. While not an Omega Level mutant, Emma Frost is considered to be one of the strongest mutants in Marvel, so that’s just kind of insane. Really, think about that. She has the ability to manipulate DNA. She can break down someone’s DNA to a molecular level. That’s some Doctor Manhattan-type bullcrap. That’s a type of power where you don’t throw punches. You’re not worried about your hand-to-hand skills. You can essentially just blink someone out of existence. That is what we call true power.

Then you lump onto the pile her control of all Sentinels with Trask DNA, and it’s a bit ridiculous. She has an insane healing factor—a Deadpool-level healing factor. She can regenerate limbs or organs. Anything you cut off, her leg grows back.

But you know what? Let’s just do a rapid fire of some of her remaining powers. She has a psionic shield, mind alteration, mind possession, mind control, telepathic illusion, psionic blast, astral projection, mind transferal, mental detection, telepathic cloak, telekinesis, and the list goes on.

All in all, she’s a pretty great character who was created by two comic legends, Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly. And now, we’re very curious to see how they introduce her in Deadpool and Wolverine. Will she come from the world where she’s defeated Charles Xavier and killed all the mutants, and that’s what she’s looking to do throughout the multiverse? It seems like she’s the leader of the evil Brotherhood of Mutants in the trailer, so maybe she’s convinced them to work for her for similar reasons. One thing is for sure: She’s going to be incredibly powerful, even in the MCU. In the trailer, we see her literally just wave her fingers to control all of Wolverine’s movements, which may have some of you asking: How is someone like Deadpool or Wolverine going to fight a character like Cassandra Nova when with a wave of her hand or thought she can control them like a marionette? There may be another powerful character, like Xavier, who shows up to assist.

The MCU has a lot of potential for Cassandra Nova, given her power set from the comic books. She can do a hell of a lot of things and even create physical bodies. What if, in the MCU, they modify her a bit and she’s able to create actual life and characters? It’s just a thought. Or maybe, more simply, something she does is the crux for Deadpool and Wolverine, starting a new timeline and continuity.

Either way, we’re very excited to see what the MCU does with Cassandra Nova because she has a tonne of potential, especially when it comes to the introduction of the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.