Marvel used to get a ton of flak for their villains. They frequently crafted stellar versions of beloved heroes, combining perfect casting with solid writing to give a character a brilliant spotlight.Deadpool & Wolverineis built around two great examples of Fox pulling off the same feat. Next to those icons, Marvel’s antagonists often looked one-dimensional and boring. The latest offering pits a selection of beloved heroes against newcomer Cassandra Nova, but the movie lets Charles Xavier’s evil twin get lost in the shuffle while ignoring the real villain.
A lot of fans throw around the term “Avengers-level threat” with a fairly unclear definition. They’re generally referring to an antagonist with a level of power similar to Thanos. The logic suggests thatEarth’s Mightiest Heroesneed a villain who can wipe out the universe with a blink if they want a challenge. The Marvel Comics universe has no shortage of apocalyptic threats, many of which weren’t designed to face the Avengers specifically. Cassandra Nova, for example, fits the bill from a power perspective, but her place is against the X-Men.
How didDeadpool & Wolverineuse Cassandra Nova?
Cassandra Nova is inroughly 15 minutes ofDeadpool & Wolverine. She first appears after the two title characters wind up in the Void fromLoki. She’s essentially a brutal warlord who runs a significant percentage of the temporal purgatory. Cassandra’s powers are almost comically effective. She’s Charles Xavier without an ounce of empathy. She doesn’t get to use them very often, but they make her almost unstoppable. The filmmakers add a fun visual detail that forces her to push her hands through her victim’s skull to read their minds, making her a bit more physically threatening. That detail aside, she’s asolid antagonist from a practical perspective. Her motivation is boring, her actions are uncomplicated, and her role in the story takes a sharp shift near the end.
Cassandra’s power and influence force Deadpool and Wolverine to gather a small army to assault her compound. She’s a means to an end, holding the ability toleave the Void hostage. The heroes win the fight, buying themselves a path home so they can continue the fight against the other major threat. They also briefly forgive Cassandra, saving her life when they could have easily let her die. This presents the perfect opportunity to play Cassandra differently. She could have been a misunderstood ally, ultimately another tool of the same monstrous force that would soon destroy Deadpool’s universe. Instead, she tries tobecome an existential threatand quickly dies when the heroes reach the end of their arc.
Cassandra Nova could be better elsewhere
It’s absurd that anyone would put Cassandra Nova in a movie without Charles Xavier.Deadpool & Wolverine’s script briefly explains Cassandra’s backstory, but her connection to a critical character only demonstrates how bizarre her place here is. Cassandra is the unbornevil twin of Charles Xavier. She’s his dark shadow. She’s everything wrong with the man who founded the X-Men in a human suit. This is likely to be her only big-screen appearance, and she spent it playing off of characters that have nothing to do with her. Cassandra Nova would be a perfect X-Men antagonist, but she’ll likely never get that chance. It’s unfortunate to see her get lost in the shuffle of a film that’s mostly concerned with resurrecting old cameos. Why wouldn’t they just bring back someone familiar for that role too? Anyone in her role would get buried, but it’s a sad fate for Cassandra. It’s especially grim when the film has a far better villain right behind her.
Marvel is the real villain ofDeadpool & Wolverine
For all of Cassandra Nova’s brutal actions, she isn’t really theantagonist ofDeadpool & Wolverine. Matthew Macfadyen’s Paradox is the man who intends to destroy the Fox universe. He intends to wipe out Deadpool and all of his friends for the benefit of the “Sacred Timeline.” The film makes no secret of the fact that the Sacred Timeline is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Deadpool’s universe is the one that contains the 20th Century Fox franchise. This is a sci-fi explanation of a corporate merger. Wade leaps at the opportunity to “go to Disneyland,” but rebels against the risk of his own reality suffering a deadly fate. Paradox is one of many men in suits working for Disney and choosing to pull the plug on the Fox universe.His TVA is responsiblefor trapping all the other cameos in the Void and ending their universes. Marvel is the villain, but the film refuses to depict their corporate consumption of endless worlds, characters, and stories as an act of villainy.
When it comes to Cassandra Nova, she’s an unfixable monster who seeks entropy with very few larger ideas. When it comes to Marvel’s all-consuming nightmare, Paradox is the lone wrongdoer who takes the blame.The film frames the TVA, an obvious stand-in for Marvel, as a decent organization temporarily under the control of one bad apple. Cassandra Nova randomly assumes the same campaign of universal extinction that Marvel has used for decades, seemingly just to save Marvel from blame. Cassandra is the patsy who loses her motivation and reasonable place in the plot, so thatDeadpool & Wolverinecan’t accurately accuse the right target.
This narrative detail feels so forced, especially after the turn at the end of the second act.Deadpool & Wolverineseemed so primed to take Marvel down a peg, but they can’t do that while playing nice with the rest of the franchise. Nova finds the perfect moment to turn over a new leaf, suffering betrayal at Paradox’s hands andfinding forgiveness at Wolverine’s. Then, as if mandated after the original script was turned in, she comes back to do a worse version of Paradox’s scheme. It’s a movie about how evil Marvel is, but it pulls its punches and puts the blame on one of the most brutal antagonists in the comics. Cassandra Nova deserves to be hated for the right reasons.Deadpool & Wolverinecould have been a lot more meaningful if it realized who it was fighting.
