Idie Okonkwo (aka Oya) is one of the Marvel Comics Universe’s last hopes for mutants. She is known as the Third Light, who is one of the Five Lights, a group of five mutants born after M-Day (the Decimation), a catastrophic event where all of the mutants in the world were stripped of their powers. The latter part is a long and complicated storyline that began when MCU published the Decimation. It’s a storyline that ended with Scarlet Witch going mad and causing almost all the mutants in the world to lose their powers. This drastically reduced the mutant population from millions to hundreds. However, all hope wasn’t lost because people were able to continue passing the X-gene on to their offspring. In true MCU fashion, mutants made a come back starting with the Five Lights.
Oya, whose first appearance was in Uncanny X-Men #528 (September 2010). She was born Idie Okonkwo in Oyo, Delta State, Nigeria. Oya has the ability to manipulate temperature, fire, and ice. She can move from extremely hot to extremely cold, and transfer these energies from one area to another, which produces various effects. Her powers began manifesting at age 14 with devastating consequences. The first manifestation of her powers came when she accidentally burned her village down. She panics when she realizes what she did, and begins to start freezing things, but her efforts are futile. X-Men Storm and Hope Summers arrive just in time to find Oya trapped in a shed (they found her through cerebro), trying to hold off a military group that was trying to kill her.
Oya, who is deeply religious, views herself as a monster and feels like she is an abomination, but Storm comforts her. Storm, as many of us know, comes from a long line of Kenyan women, on her mother’s side, who are revered as goddesses, but her life wasn’t always sweet. Storm’s parents were killed, which caused her to live the life of a drifter and a petty thief. We know it worked out for Storm, so she paid it forward and took Oya under her wing.
Both women are unique in that they represent African religious and folkloric goddess imagery related to Oya, the Yoruba Orisha. In Yoruba, Oya is a female warrior goddess who presides over winds, violent storms, death and rebirth. Get it?
Anyway, Oya ends up enrolling in the Jean Grey School for Higher Learner and aligns herself with the X-Men. She eventually develops a close bond with Wolverine and tells him that she has made peace with being a monster. That’s a harsh way to put it, but an Oya at peace is better than an Oya in turmoil, literally and metaphorically. Oya is part of the New X-Men roster, so we can expect to see more of her. If you could cast her in a movie, what actress would you choose?
