Ryan Reynolds Wants Hugh Jackman To Play Himself In X-Force

Though Ryan Reynolds seems to have more or less given up on his dream of seeing Wolverine reunite with his old acquaintance Deadpool, recent statements made at the San Diego Comic Con suggest that he’s still holding out hope that they can at least get a character who looks exactly like Logan for the planned X-Force movie. The man in question would be a new addition to the X-Men saga, and he likely wouldn’t even be a mutant, but rather a famed actor who goes by the name of Hugh Jackman. No points for guessing who would play him.

Ever since Wade Wilson traded blows with the adamantium-clawed hero in the much-maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Deadpool movies have consistently displayed something of a one-sided crush on this most famed of X-Men. As you no doubt know, the Merc with a Mouth’s first solo effort contained multiple nods to the character, including a paper Wolverine face mask, a People Magazine cover naming Jackman as the “Sexiest Man Alive,” and a crude reference to the lengths Wade had to go to in order to get his own movie.

Deadpool 2 doubled down on this fixation from the word go, with its opening lines serving as a bitter tirade against last year’s Logan. But it’s in the film’s post-credits sequence where things truly go full circle, as Wade travels back in time to X-Men Origins to kill the less-favored version of himself, before finally telling Wolverine that he loves him. The sequel’s extended Super Duper Cut then goes one further by having Deadpool deliver the potentially misleading line, “One day your old pal Wade’s gonna ask you to get back in the saddle again. When he does, say yes.”

All that being said, Logan was widely embraced as a fitting send-off for the character, and much of the viewing public may be as disinterested as Jackman in seeing Wolverine come back from the dead. The actor playing himself, however, could be a workable loophole, and with this being the type of franchise to bring in a star as huge as Brad Pitt to play a guy who can’t be seen or heard, some audience-trolling meta-humor like this would fit right in. What Hugh Jackman has to say about all this remains to be seen, but if he does agree to be a part of X-Force, there’s a good chance that his cameo will be kept a secret up until the day of release.