An all-female movie, this The Wolverine, at least until now. Another character revealed by the trailer is Viper, the lethal leader of Hydra… and it seems that she’ll be able to change her skin like an actual viper. Plus, director confirmed that she’ll be immune to poison and toxins. Quite a foe. The character already appeared in 1998 tv movie Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D played by Sandra Hess. In this version, she was the fusion between two different characters in the comics: the Viper, and Andrea Von Strucker, the mutant daughter of Baron Strucker, a villainess able to kill with her poisonous kiss. Let’s hope that Svetlana Khodchenkova‘s portrayal will be more faithful to the original. At least, a less dumb one.
The Viper’s real name is Ophelia Sarkissian, and she was born in the 1920s, in Eastern Europe (most likely Hungary). She grew up as an orphan, trying her best to stay alive. She was selected with other twelve orphaned girls by terrorist organization Hydra, and was brutally trained by the legendary agent Kraken; at the end of her training, Ophelia had become a ruthless human weapon, and she killed all the other orphans in order to get the title of Madame Hydra. During her youth, she 
met Chthon, one of the Elder Gods, who saw some potential in the young woman and granted her a slowed aging. In Madripoor, she became a pupil of the elder spy Seraph, and operated in the island with her, until they ended up saving another pupil of Seraph’, the adventurer Logan, who would have later become Wolverine. The two women saved Logan from his nemesis, Sabretooth, but Seraph lost her life, making Wolverine swear an oath of loyalty to Ophelia. Knowing she would have needed the Canadian mutant’s services in the future, the woman came back to Europe, just in time to see the beginning of the Second World War. As one of Hydra’s leaders, Ophelia led a number of agents in operations aimed to grant the Third Reich‘s victory, but she often clashed with Captain America and Nick Fury, the future director of S.H.I.E.L.D., who foiled most of her operations. During the war, Ophelia had the right side of her face scarred, and from that moment she tried to hide her disfigured aspect with her long hair; in modern times, she managed to use plastic surgery to come back to her original beauty. When the war ended, and the Third Reich lost, Madame Hydra left Europe and moved to the United States, taking control of Hydra operations in New York. She acted mostly in the shadows, until, in the 1960s, Captain America was found frozen in ice and brought back to life: the two old enemies started fighting each other like in the old times, and Hydra lost its grip over New York in a few years.
Seeking for personal power, Ophelia left Hydra, and started a criminal career on her own. She helped Jordan Stryke, a powerful supervillain known as the Viper, escape from his prison in Virginia, but when the two finally broke out, she executed him, taking for herself his name. Introducing herself with Stryke’s head, the new Viper took control of the villain’s team, the Serpent Squad, and brought it back to action. Along with the Squad, the Viper took control of the powerful artifact known as the Serpent Crown, a weapon forged millennia before Christ by the Serpent Men, a race created by the snake-god Set. Viper used the Crown to break the will of Hugh Jones, President of Roxxon Oil, one of the most powerful multinationals in America. Captain America intervened 
once again and stopped Viper from her plan, which included taking control of many other leaders of economy and politics. After some battles with Nomad and Namor the Sub-Mariner, Viper abandoned the Serpent Squad, and created a personal terrorist cell. She hired the Japanese mutant Silver Samurai as her personal bodyguard, and she eventually fell in love with him, even if the two of them could never start a real relationship (at some point, she was forced by her superiors, using the debt of honor that bond him to her, to marry Wolverine instead, a man she despised). After a failed attempt to take control of the Yashida Clan, a powerful criminal organization whose leader, Lord Shingen, had died because of the intervention of Wolverine and the other X-Men, Viper came back to the US, but in San Francisco her will was taken over by her old ally, the god Chthon, who used her as a pawn to destroy Jessica Drew, the superheroine Spider-Woman. Chthon wanted to use Jessica as a vessel to come to our world, and brainwashed Viper to make her think she was Meriem Drew, Spider-Woman’s long time dead mother. For the occasion, he also granted Viper a special eye, a black orb through which she could send anyone to Chthon’s dimension; she used it on Spider-Woman, but, realizing she had been used, she rebelled to her former ally, and defeated him teaming up with Spider-Woman. After that event, she came back to her usual criminal life, coming back to Hydra and becoming its leader, often clashing with the others pretenders to the title, including the Red Skull.
Ophelia Sarkissian is a woman who only knew murder and betrayal since her childhood: raised to be a natural born killer, she doesn’t have a real perception of good and evil, and is only capable of seeking her own objectives, using every means possible. As the Viper, she doesn’t have any superhuman power (apart from an incredibly slow aging), but she has reached the peak of human capabilities regarding her strength, speed, agility, reflexes and durability; she is also one of the best martial artist in the world, an experienced swordswoman and an infallible markswoman. Via a controlled exposure, she has also rendered herself immune to any known toxin, poison or venom. Cold, determined, with a brilliant mind and a deranged morality, the Viper is one of the most formidable threats the world has ever known.
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