“Geek goddess” and The Newsroom actress Olivia Munn has been cast as Betsy “Psylocke” Braddock in the forthcoming X-Men: Apocalypse, director Bryan Singer announced via Instagram.
Munn has previously appeared as a host on Attack of the Show! and had minor roles on Chuck and in Iron Man 2.
Psylocke was created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe in 1976 for Captain Britain and later integrated more fully into the X-Men universe. She’s a model with powerful psychic powers and advanced martial arts training.
Psylocke has had a long and complicated history with the X-Men. She was originally introduced as a British (and, at the time, Caucasian) telepathic mutant who joined the team in the late ’80s, back when the X-Men were pretending to be dead to the world at large and living in the Australian outback (it’s a long story)/ Then in the early ’90s, she was given a badass makeover as her mind fused with that of a Japanese ninja named Kwannon. This version proved far more popular than the shy, pixie-ish original iteration of the character, and is the version that is still in use in the comics.
Technically Psylocke has already appeared in the X-Men film series. There was a cameo appearance from an Asian woman with purple hair credited as being Psylocke in X-Men: The Last Stand, although she’s never called that by name in the movie…. but I think we can just all agree to ignore that version. Right now, the number of mutants in Apocalypse is gearing up to match those in X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’ll be interesting to see if many of these new characters will have parts similar in size to the future X-Men from that film, like Warpath and Sunspot, who basically had a cool action scene but not much else. Although…. if they were to add Rogue, Colossus, and Ice-Man at this point, they could find a way to recreate that iconic Jim Lee cover of X-Men #1 from 1991 in the movie, and that would be pretty dope.
Apocalypse takes place a decade after Days of Future Past and is a seamless next step in the story. The altering of time has unleashed a new and uniquely powerful enemy. Charles/Professor X, Erik/Magneto, Raven/Mystique, and Hank/Beast are joined by young Cyclops, Storm, Jean and others as the X-Men must fight their most formidable foe yet – an ancient unrelenting force determined to cause an apocalypse unlike any in human history.
The film is due in theaters on May 27, 2016.