Lady Deathstrike (X-Men Movies)

Note: ''This article contains the movie version of Lady Deathstrike. If you want to see the mainstream version, click here.''

"What are you doing in here?"

- Lady Deathstrike

Yuriko Oyama, better known as Lady Deathstrike, is the secondary antagonist in the 2003 superhero film X2: X-Men United. She is Colonel William Stryker's personal assistant and has powers similar to Wolverine.

She is portrayed by Kelly Hu.

X2: X-Men United: The Movie Prequel: Nightcrawler
Yuriko was selected and put through the adamantium augmentation process due to her extendable claws. Following this, she was placed in the same cell as Kurt Wagner. When Kurt was comforting her, she began writhing in pain and her claws started to come out. Answering a call for help from Kurt, a few guards arrived, wondering why her claws hadn't been removed and had gotten coated in adamantium instead. After calming down, Yuriko fell asleep with Kurt assuring her that they would somehow escape.

X2: X-Men United
After being experimented on, she became William Stryker's assistant after he used the Mind Control Serum on her. Lady Deathstrike accompanied Skyler to the white house to investigate the mutant attack that had just transpired. Stryker introduces Senator Kelly (who is really Mystique in disguise) to his personal assistant, Yuriko Oyama, and Kelly comments on her strong handshake. He then asks Stryker if it's possible to arrange a visit at Erik Lensherr's prison. Stryker says it is not possible, as he's the enemy in this conflict. Kelly isn't happy with the word "conflict" and asks Stryker if he really wants to turn it into some kind of war. Stryker says that this already is a war and leaves with Yuriko.

While Mystique is looking for information on how to gain access to Magneto' plastic prison an scones across plans about Dark Cerebro, the real Yuriko Oyama comes down the stairs, and metal movements can be heard with every step she makes. Mystique hears Yuriko passing the palm reader, and the latter enters the room, but it's empty. Yuriko sits at the computer, not suspecting a thing, until she sees the cleaning guy taking out the garbage. She asks him what he's doing in the office, and he tells her he's only taking out the garbage. Yuriko suspects nothing, unaware that it was Mystique in disguise.

Afterwards, when Cyclops accompanies Professor X to Magneto's plastic prison, and waits for him, Lady Deathstrike enters the plastic hall where Scott is in and fires at him with a plastic gun. Scott shoots an optic blast at her and then beats the two guards. He runs to blast the door to the cell and free the Professor, but Yuriko gets back up and leaps at him with her metallic-sounding body, knocking him out. She takes both Summers and Xavier to William Stryker's facility at Alkali Lake.

At Alkali Lake, Canada, a restrained Xavier wakes up to find William Stryker sitting in front of him and Yuriko Oyama standing by the wall. While Stryker was interrogating Professor X, the effects of the serum wore off, and a confused Yuriko looked around, wondering what's going on. Xavier sees Lady Deathstrike and tells Stryker that for someone who hates mutants, he hangs out with them a lot. Stryker shows him that Yuriko has a controlling device on her back to keep her under control as he rallied the mind control serum. Xavier suddenly realizes that Stryker arranged the attack on the President, and Stryker congratulates him on figuring it out without reading his mind. Yuriko then leaves the room.

After the X-Men successfully infiltrate the Alkali Lake faculty, while walking to the hallways, Stryker and Lady Deathstrike look at the water pressure meters, and the Colonel panics.

When Wolverine runs off on his own to look for Stryker, he comes across an adamantium smelting room, where he sees x-rays for Lady Deathstrike's adamantium skeleton. Stryker and Lady Deathstryke enter, and Stryker starts explaining to him about how he has to keep the adamantium hot and liquid because once it cools it's indestructible. Stryker leaves and tells Wolverine that he used to think he was one of a kind – he was wrong.

Logan runs after him, but Yuriko blocks his exit and tosses him across the room. He pops his claws, and then watches in shock as she pulls out adamantium claws of her own – five, one from each fingertip. She leaps at him and slices him across the face, and they start battling, slicing each other, with her having the upper hand. When she throws him at a wall and runs to him, he surprises her and brings his claws to her stomach, earning him the opportunity to for a few more strikes before she can respond. She has a healing factor just as good as his own, though, and recovers quickly. Again she tosses him across the room and stabs him in the back several times before tossing him on an iron net platform hanging above the tube. She stands below him and keeps stabbing him through the net in the back and neck until he uses his claws to cut the poles the platform is hanged from, and it falls on her, locking her in the tube.

Wolverine is still recovering from his injuries, when Lady Deathstryke suddenly jumps at him from below and stabs him again. He sees the needles by the adamantium and manages to grab one of them and inject her with molten, liquefied adamantium metal. She immediately stops moving, and, while she was impaled by Wolverine, she broke free of Stryker's control, but there was now nothing she could do to save herself. Wolverine watches in horror as adamantium starts leaking from her eyes, nose and ears, until she fell backwards into the water tank with a thud, as the metal hardened in her body.

X-Men: Days of Future Past
Presumably from data in Stryker's Computer, Yuriko's abilities could be utilized by the Mark X Sentinels sometime in the future, as shown when one of them impaled Sunspot by extending their fingers.

Due to Wolverine traveling back in time to January 1973, and preventing Bolivar Trask from being assassinated by Mystique, and changing the significant events after that point, Yuriko most likely never met Stryker, became brainswashed by him, and underwent the adamantium augmentation process. In addition, since she was never brainwashed, she never became an enemy of the X-Men, and thus she likely never battled Wolverine.

Trivia

 * Wolverine once stated that Lady Deathstrike was his only link to his past.
 * She wears a gray suit in the film for a period of time (a look later used by Ultimate Lady Deathstrike) before wearing a leather suit during the remainder of the film.
 * In the previous versions of the script for X2: X-Men United, Lady Deathstrike's role was originally Sabretooth's, but that was changed to Anne Reynolds.
 * In the comics, Lady Deathstrike is not a mutant, but a cyborg, who modified her own body in order to gain her revenge on Wolverine. Though in the movie, she is a woman with adamantium claws.
 * Yuriko Oyama was turned into a cyborg by the X-Men villain Spiral.
 * She is the only one besides Wolverine who survived the adamantium bonding process.
 * Bryan Singer decided to add Lady Deathstrike to the second X-Men film, wanting "another kickass mutant".
 * Lady Deathstrike only spoke one line in the film.
 * Kelly Hu wanted to reprise her role in X-Men: The Last Stand, indicating the she survived the fluid adamantium injection by Wolverine, but after Bryan Singer left the project, she decided against doing so, and the character remained deceased.
 * The title of "Lady" was not used in her name for the movie.
 * Although she is portrayed as a villain in the film, her actual orientation is unclear as she was under the effects of mind control.