‘Deadpool 3’s Cassandra Nova Is Neither Human Nor Mutant. She’s Something Much Deadlier.

Thanks to the rip-roaring second trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, we’ve gotten the closest look yet at the film’s two biggest x-factors that aren’t named Wade Wilson—specifically, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova.

We’re already pretty intimate with Wolverine thanks to his Fox days, but the same can’t be said about Cassandra Nova, given that Deadpool & Wolverine will be the first time in the character’s history that she’s appeared in a film. For those of you meeting her for the first time, then, just know that her debut carries massive implications, and we’re almost certainly going to be seeing her beyond the antics of Deadpool & Wolverine.

For now, though, let’s dive into the seed of many such implications: the fact that she’s a mummudrai.

What’s a mummudrai?

No, a mummudrai isn’t a cow that narrowly dodged some rain; it’s a species made up of cosmic entities that every sentient being must defeat in the womb before they can be born, with each mummudrai acting as a sort of anti-self. Cassandra is the mummudrai of the one and only Charles Xavier, and despite losing to the latter in their first encounter, she was able to rebuild a body for herself, thanks in part to the psychic potential she shares with Xavier.

As the anti-self of Xavier, Cassandra often plots mass mutant extermination campaigns (not dissimilar to the one we saw in X-Men ’97 the other week; I’ll take no further questions). Coupled with her overwhelmingly devastating power set, she’s long been considered one of the X-Men’s most dangerous foes.

Beyond the obvious implication that an anti-self suggests the presence of a self-self (i.e. perhaps the MCU’s rendition of Charles Xavier isn’t far off), mummudrai also happen to be chiefly rooted in the mythology of the Shi’ar, an alien race who have tremendously close ties with the X-Men, particularly Xavier, given his romantic history with the Shi’ar Empress Lilandra.

Long story short, a mummudrai is someone’s opposite, and the presence of Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine means the MCU’s X-Men front is probably heating up in the biggest way yet.

(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)