Irina Spalko

"Imagine. To peer across the world and know the enemy's secrets. To place our thoughts into the minds of your leaders. Make your teachers teach the true version of history, your soldiers attack on our command. We'll be everywhere at once, more powerful than a whisper, invading your dreams, thinking your thoughts for you while you sleep. We will change you, Dr. Jones, all of you, from the inside. We will turn you into us. And the best part? You won't even know it's happening."

- Spalko to Indiana Jones, talking about the power of the Crystal Skull.

Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko is the main antagonist of the 2008 action-adventure film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. She is a highly skilled Soviet Agent who as a part of her mendate to acquire artifacts.

She is portrayed by the two-time Academy Award winning actress Cate Blanchett, who also portrayed Lady Tremaine in Disney's 2015 adaptation of Cinderella, Marissa Wiegler in Hanna, Penelope in Family Guy and Hela in the Marvel film Thor: Ragnarok.

History
A Soviet agent born in a small mountain village in the eastern regions of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, she was believed by those in her village to be a witch as her apparent psychic powers began to manifest themselves through animal control.

An impressed Joseph Stalin inducted her into researching psychic warfare, awarding her with the Order of Lenin three times. She is skilled in fencing and hand-to-hand combat and is Indiana's main antagonist as she brings the crystal skull to Akator to utilize the power there for her country's militant purposes. Ironically, her desire for knowledge proved her undoing when the crystal skull entity grants her desire to know everything, and an alien figure emerges and indicates that Spalko is too dangerous to remain alive. Her mind overloads and she disintegrates as her scattered essence is teleported to another dimension.

Trivia

 * She is one of two main antagonists of the film series who isn't a Nazi (the other being Mola Ram from Temple of Doom).
 * She is the first female main Indiana Jones villain.

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Irina Spalko