Things do not turn out well for the X-Force on their first mission in Deadpool 2. In a hilarious/infuriating (delete as per your reaction) twist, these characters that were expected to carry into their own movie were killed off as soon as they jumped off the plane, dying in a variety of gruesome ways. R.I.P. Bedlam, Shatterstar, Zeitgeist and Vanisher… We hardly knew ya.
At the end of the sequel, though, DP gets the chance to use Cable’s time-travel device to go back and save the people that died on his watch during the movie. After rescuing his fiancee Vanessa, he goes on to save all of the X-Forcers – no, wait, that’s not right. He actually only saves Peter, the chipper, regular guy on the team, and leaves the others to meet their grisly fates.
Fans have theorized that perhaps the rest of the group were saved off-screen, but some new comments from Deadpool 2 star Ryan Reynolds seemingly confirm that the other members won’t be back any time soon. The actor explained recently on the Empire Film Podcast that he got a kick out of the Merc’s warped decision to save the one useless member of the team and not his elite squad of super-powered mutants.
“So I love that he just completely ignores this marquee cast that he could’ve saved of useful and wonderful superheroes, but instead went back and saved [Peter].”
To Reynolds, though, there’s actually a deeper reason for why the character saved Peter over all the others. And that’s that he thinks Deadpool felt bad for breaking his promise to keep his new pal safe and so was compelled to travel back and rescue him.
“Well here’s the thing though, I always felt that it was important to save Peter, just because in the helicopter before we jump, I say to him ‘I’d never let anything happen to you, sugar bear. I’m just saying this to impress the other guys.’ And we all jump out of the thing. So I felt like that was a promise that Wade made early on in the movie, and it was nagging him, so he went back and got Peter.”
Though this version of the group perished, we haven’t seen the last of X-Force. The team’s self-titled movie is currently in the works, with Drew Goddard attached to write and direct. The exact line-up of the new squad has yet to be finalized, but we do know that, following his resurrection in Deadpool 2, Peter will indeed be back to bring more of his unique perspective in the spinoff.
