In ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ Emma Corrin plays one of MCU’s scariest villains

Cassandra Nova, a Marvel villain who got her start in the X-Men comics in the early 2000s, will see her first live-action debut in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film “Deadpool & Wolverine.” She’s among the deepest of Marvel deep cuts when it comes to finding an antagonist for Wolverine and Deadpool’s buddy-cop duo, and she just happens to be one of the most threatening and evil villains out there.

Emma Corrin, who plays Cassandra in “Deadpool and Wolverine,” never read the comic book material to prepare for the character. Instead, they skimmed through Marvel’s character database, collecting notes and nuggets about the character’s origin. Corrin chose to drill into Cassandra’s relationship with her brother.

“She is the way that she is because of being hurt or feeling rejected by family, or feeling like he rejected her before they were born,” Corrin said. “And now he’s just a very benevolent, revered person and she has become the opposite out of bitterness or because she had no other choice.”

Without getting into too much detail, Corrin’s version of Nova spends time inflicting gruesome pain on people (presumably through mind control). “She’s manipulating minds. She does a lot of mind work,” Corrin said.

In the comics, Cassandra Nova’s story is rather gnarly. She’s the long-lost sister of Charles Xavier (she’s actually “chaotic cell matter” that survived after Charles “murdered” his twin in the womb, but sister is the easiest way to describe her). Her debut came as something of a twist: She covertly put Charles Xavier’s mind into her body, and hers into his, to the eventual shock of the X-Men (and readers).

Early on, Cassandra ordered a “Wild Sentinel” — that is, a mutant-killing robot — to commit the genocide of millions of mutants. Yeah. Dark.

The X-Men eventually thwarted her by — bear with me — trapping her in a sluglike alien and basically erasing her brain. She’s returned from time to time since, most recently as a member of the Marauders team, though they left her stranded somewhere in the past. We should all be relieved.

Though Corrin never read the comic book material, they say their version of Cassandra shares a bond with the original. They’re both humans who feel like they’ve lost a piece of themselves and want to do whatever they can to reclaim it. Even if it means bloodshed and broken minds.

“You don’t just end up as a villain, you’re not born a villain,” Corrin said. “As fantastical as these characters are, I’d like to believe the same applies. I don’t think she was born evil. I think certain things happened, and she was made that way.”

In the movies, Cassandra Nova resides in The Void, a portion of the multiverse first seen in the “Loki” television series that basically serves as a plot and Easter egg trash can for the MCU. It’s littered with variants of MCU characters (there’s an entire batch of Lokis there) and locations from multiple timelines. Everything that ends up there has been “pruned” by the Time Variance Authority, which controls the flow of time (or as I like to call them, the Plot Hole Police).

Cassandra, it appears from the trailers, lives within a dead variant of Ant-Man, whose enormous skeleton rests in The Void. We don’t know much else about her role, though it’s clear from preview footage shared with journalists that she’s got mind-bendy powers and is seeking something from Deadpool and Wolverine, who end up there after a run-in with the TVA (who are hunting them down because they’re skipping through timelines).

Cassandra’s arrival is another sign the X-Men are now a major part of Marvel Studios’ plans for their cinematic universe, after Disney won the franchise in the acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which had produced the X-Men films over the last two decades. After that cameo at the end of “The Marvels” last November, the animated series “X-Men ’97” revived the popular heroes for MCU fans. “Deadpool & Wolverine” promises a few nods and winks to the characters, too. Case in point: Wolverine is now wearing his classic yellow-and-blue X-Men uniform. (There are also rumors of an “Avengers vs. X-Men” film on the way, but for now they are just that.)

According to Corrin, the MCU will be the perfect playground for more Cassandra Nova — if the villain survives this film, of course. “I was given so much freedom,” they say, “and it was like a real playground. You can kind of try anything, and there were no wrong answers, and that’s kind of rare.”