What Does Deadpool & Wolverine Villain Cassandra Nova Want, Exactly?

This article contains spoilers for "Deadpool & Wolverine."

About a third of the way into Shawn Levy's new superhero flick "Deadpool & Wolverine," Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) are zapped by a baton-like dimension-hopping widget and shunted into a realm nicknamed the Void. The Void is a handy pocket dimension overseen by the Time Variant Authority, a shadowy organization tasked with wrangling crossovers between disparate parallel universes. It seems that if people dimension-hop too frequently, it can have cataclysmic comic consequences, and that kind of activity needs to be policed. 

When someone gets a little too cavalier for one dimension, or their continued presence poses a vague cosmic risk, they are sent to the Void as punishment. The Void is a vast desert wasteland, peppered with vehicles, buildings, and a few stragglers fighting to survive. Fans of superhero cinema will be happy to learn that many abandoned characters from now-defunct film franchises have lived on in the Void, and many might wiggle with pleasure over the film's many random cameos. 

The Void is overseen by a rogue wasteland tyrant named Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the evil twin sister of Professor X from the X-Men comics. Cassandra is a powerful psychic like her brother, but uses her powers for evil, controlling the denizens of the Void with an iron fist. She can also reach into people's brains and manipulate their thoughts; no one has secrets from Cassandra. 

Naturally, Cassandra serves as one of the film's central villains, and she will ultimately find herself elbow-deep inside a doomsday device later in the film. She explains what she's doing, and the makers of "Deadpool & Wolverine" make it clear why she needs to be stopped ... but it's never clearly explained why Cassandra wants what she wants. Her villain motivation is pretty flimsy.

It's explained that Cassandra had been living in the Void since she was very young, having grown to see the realm as home. She loves being able to rule over the random superhero castoffs that have been imprisoned there and found her livelihood as a ruler of the wasteland. She has constructed a cozy fortress out of Ant-Man's outsize corpse and knows where to hide when the carnivorous cloud Alioth appears in the sky. For the average viewer, this may not look like a very comfortable existence, but for Cassandra, it's all she's ever known. 

She also, it is revealed, has a deal with the Time Variance Authority: she is allowed to rule the Void, provided she never leaves to wreak havoc in any other dimensions ... something she is more than capable of doing. Late in the film, however, it is revealed that Cassandra's TVA contact, a man named Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), arranged to have her killed. One of her superpowered underlings (a fire mutant named Pyro) was in Paradox's pocket, and Pyro was nearly successful in killing his evil psychic mistress.

Cassandra, miffed by Mr. Paradox's attempt on her life, hijacks his doomsday device — called a Time Ripper — and announces her plan for revenge. She will insert her hands into the machine, and order it to destroy every parallel universe in existence, save the Void, which she hopes to return to. It's easy to understand Cassandra's anger over being betrayed by Mr. Paradox, but her revenge scheme is a little nonsensical. How is destroying hundreds of parallel universes going to teach a lesson to Mr. Paradox? 

The only real motivation stated out loud by Cassandra Nova is that she loves being a wasteland queen. She doesn't seem happy or comfortable in her position — she has no scenes that aren't exposition-heavy — but she does say out loud that she likes the amount of power she wields. She was happy to live in the Void with the TVA looking over her, as their shenanigans populated her realm with discarded heroes and artifacts that she could enslave and live inside of. 

Indeed, it seems that Cassandra needs the TVA to survive; they provide her with fresh meat in two senses of the word. 

Yes, Mr. Paradox tried to have her killed, but surely her beef is with Mr. Paradox, and not with the TVA at large. One might think that torturing and/or killing him would be enough. If she needed some creative ways to punish Mr. Paradox, perhaps she could merely read Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," and turn him into a great soft jelly thing. 

But Cassandra, instead, uses Mr. Paradox's Time Ripper against him and proceeds to erase hundreds of parallel universes, seemingly out of spite. She wants the Void to be the only dimension left. And she intends to return there and continue to be its tyrant. Her actions belie an unspoken motivation, however. She may have grown tired of dealing with the TVA or arranging agreements with its agents. Perhaps she no longer needs new heroes to dominate, and already has sustainable food sources. It seems that Cassandra merely wants to be left alone.

It should be noted that the raison d'être of "Deadpool & Wolverine" is to integrate X-Men characters, previously owned by Fox, into the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe. Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2017, and with it, the film rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. The MCU was not permitted to make crossover movies with their Avengers characters, bringing the vast bulk of the Marvel comics universe under one corporate umbrella. 

The Void is populated by "castoffs" from the Marvel universe, which is to say, characters from Fox's superhero movies. There is a dimension, it seems, that Disney hasn't touched (Ant-Man notwithstanding), and where Fox characters thrive. Cassandra wishes to kill off all the Disney universes and retain the Fox universe for herself. 

Does that mean Cassandra is a symbol of old-world fanboy resentment? Is Cassandra a hater of the Disney corporation? Does she want to revert the cinematic landscape to the way it looked before the launch of the MCU in 2008? It certainly seems that way. Cassandra is a resentful villain who hates Disney. Her motivation seems to be, then, incredibly mercenary. "Deadpool & Wolverine" seems to be rejecting anyone who hates the Disney corporate machine. 

Early in "D&W," Deadpool turns directly to the camera, tells Fox to f*** off, and that he's going to Disneyland. He then salutes the Disney-owned Captain America, and geeks out over Thor. Deadpool previously a deconstructionist wiseacre is now a corporate tool, sent to fight and erase the villains who want to keep the memory of Fox alive. 

And if that's the case, who's the villain?