Deadpool & Wolverine And X-Men ‘97 Are Already Connected

In case you’re out of the loop on this new MCU Big Bad, I’ve previously written a brief primer on who–and what–Cassandra Nova is. The short version is that she’s the bald woman in the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer who is keeping Wolverine from slashing her without breaking a sweat. We don’t yet know what horrors she will unleash in that film, but in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men comics, she was the architect of an attack on Genosha very similar to what we saw in X-Men ‘97.

Both the comic and the later cartoon have Genosha getting destroyed by immensely powerful Sentinels, an attack that has one weird thing in common: the need for Trask family DNA. In the original comics, Cassandra Nova had to steal the DNA from Donald Trask III because he is the last living relative of Bolivar Trask. Bolivar is the man who created the Sentinels, and since he was dead in the comics, Nova had to convince Donald to send the robots to attack Genosha shortly before she stole all of his DNA (so she could give the Sentinels orders herself) and killed him.

It’s entirely possible we’ll see Cassandra Nova do a version of this evil act in Deadpool & Wolverine, but she has so far been physically absent from X-Men ‘97. The episode “Bright Eyes” confirms she was part of the show in spirit; however, when Bolivar Trask (who is alive in this continuity, though a little less so by the time the credits roll) reveals Mr. Sinister used Trask’s DNA to launch the Sentinels that destroyed Genosha. The basics are the same: a genocidal supervillain, the desire to destroy Genosha, and the need to borrow Trask family DNA to put it all off.

There is, of course, a chance that all of this is just a coincidence and that any connections between Deadpool & Wolverine and X-Men ‘97 are purely coincidental. However, I can’t help but feel this particular connection is quite intentional. If nothing else, it could be Marvel’s concerted effort to appeal to comic fans by double-dipping into Morrison’s New X-Men, one of the finest runs in that comic’s long history.

It’s also possible that the Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine will be linked to the X-Men ‘97 cartoon in future episodes. For example, the upcoming film will involve the Time Variance Authority and the usual multiversal shenanigans, including Deadpool plucking Wolverine from a reality we have never seen before. How cool would it be if the film confirmed (perhaps as part of a mid-credits reveal) that Cassandra Nova was part of the X-Men ‘97 universe or, crazier still, that this has been Deadpool’s universe all along?

That might seem crazy since we saw James McAvoy’s Xavier and a very different group of X-Men in Deadpool 2, but in the first film, Deadpool seemed aware that the professor had been played by two different people and that there were multiple timelines. That was mostly meant as a joke, of course, but Deadpool & Wolverine could introduce some sort of timeline interference that puts Deadpool (and perhaps his friends) in the X-Men ‘97 universe. It would be great to see Ryan Reynold’s Merc With a Mouth, if nothing else, because he could lighten up one of the bleakest (and best) superhero series ever made.