Deadpool & Wolverine villains explained: Cassandra Nova, Sabretooth & more

Deadpool and Wolverine’s array of villains in the superhero movie has new characters, old foes, and some rumored surprises. Time for a spoiler-free rundown of the big bads and their histories.

The Deadpool 3 villains include Cassandra Nova, who we’ve never seen on screen before, Sabretooth, who Wolverine will argue we’ve seen too much of, and the Time Variance Authority, most recently seen in Loki Season 2.

If pulling Logan back from the existential brink wasn’t enough of a task for Deadpool, plenty of bad people stand in the way of saving his friends.

That’s cool, though; Deadpool and Wolverine is the best Marvel movie in a hot minute, so it needed good villains.

Cassandra Nova

Cassandra Nova is the main Deadpool 3 villain. She’s from the Astral Plane, can possess bodies, regrow her own, and has a vendetta against Charles Xavier in the comics.

On page, she used Charles’ body to form her own before trying to kill him in the womb. He struck back psychically, but enough of her survived to regrow her physical form. Cassandra is intent on destroying Charles and everything he loves from there on out.

Adult Cassandra even used Sentinels to destroy the mutant haven Genosha, murdering half of the mutant population.

Other greatest hits include her successfully swapping bodies with Charles, with Emma Frost snapping his neck, thinking it was her, and outing the X-Men to humans.

She is eventually defeated when Jean Grey performs some Cerebro magic using Charles’ memories to reverse the body swap. Cassandra was shunted out of the professor and tricked by Frost (common Emma W) into a body with an erased mind.

Emma Corrin (The Crown) portrays her in Deadpool 3.

The TVA

A version of the TVA was shown in the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer. While we know the undercover organization from Loki, the trailer doesn’t reveal if it’s a different iteration. Are they really villains? Depends on the day, really.

Their bureaucracy likely doesn’t inspire Wade much, so they’re a villain to his crash course in dimension hopping.

It’s led by Matthew MacFayden’s Paradox, who seems to be a reimagined Mr. Paradox, a TVA judge in the comics.

The TVA was dedicated to clipping branches of the sacred timeline to ensure the multiverse’s stability. This largely went to hell in Loki Season 2 after Sylvie said ‘no thanks’.

A lot happens with the broken Temporal Loom (these are real words, promise) and Loki becoming He Who Remains, but there’s no connection to Deadpool 3 baked into the Loki Season 2 finale.

It makes sense it would be in the new movie though, as the TVA oversees the kind of mission Wade and Logan are embarking on. The agents like to have their mitts on these sorts of things.

Sabretooth

Sabretooth has oscillated between a Wolverine ally and a sworn enemy for decades. He was in the original X-Men film alongside Hugh Jackman in 2000. Liev Schreiber later took over the role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which dived into Logan’s storied past.

A clip released on 28 June, 2024, confirmed the original Sabretooth actor Tyler Mane would return in Deadpool 3. Whether the pair find common ground or are back at each other’s throats again depends on where the multiverse chips fall.

The Sabretooth from the original X-Men films was alive the last time we got an update if you’re wondering what happened to him.

Victor Creed first appeared in Iron Fist #14 in May 1977. Random, granted, but comic book characters evolve in wildly different ways than what creators (Chris Claremont and John Byrne in this case) initially imagined.

The one true Deadpool and Wolverine villain is, of course, Logan’s tragic backstory. For more, read about the Deadpool Corps, how to watch Deadpool & Wolverine and the first two movies, and the Deadpool & Wolverine post-credits scene.