Josh Brolin has just made his debut as time traveling cyborg Cable in Deadpool 2. That’s a cast-iron fact, right? Well, maybe not. If you subscribe to this wild yet intriguing theory, it might be that Brolin isn’t playing the classic comic book version of Cable at all. Instead, he could be playing an alternate version of another familiar character….Wolverine.
The biggest bit of evidence for this is that one version of Cable from the pages of Marvel comics has turned out to be an older, grizzled Logan. In the Ultimate Universe, Cable was reimagined as a version of Wolverine who’d travelled back from his dystopian future in order to kill his old friend Charles Xavier, who Logan claimed was responsible for many deaths.
You can immediately see the parallels here between Ultimate Cable and the character’s mission to kill Russell to avert a future tragedy in Deadpool 2. However, it’s the physical attributes of the film’s Cable that are even more similar to the Ultimate version. Just as the Merc himself points out in the movie, Brolin’s Cable is much smaller than the cybernetic behemoth from the page. The actor is 5″11, for one, rather than Cable’s traditional 7 foot stature. And which X-Men character is famous for not being that tall? Wolverine, of course.
Not only that, but Cable’s power-set in Deadpool 2 lines up a lot more with the Ultimate iteration than the mainstream one. As the son of Cyclops and Jean Grey’s clone, Cable is an Omega-level mutant with incredible psychic abilities. What’s more, the techno-virus that he’s infected with makes him ridiculously tough. DP2‘s version, on the other hand, is stabbed with a pen by a teenager (as seen during Cable’s attack on the Ice Box).
This fits the Wolverine-Cable, however, as – much like the Logan version – he’s had his healing factor removed. Furthermore, he also doesn’t really use his adamantium claws anymore, which explains why Brolin doesn’t whip them out in DP2. The movie also sidesteps the whole issue of Cable’s famous parents, which is a little odd for a film that’s happy enough to mention the continuity-busting revelation that Juggernaut’s Professor X’s brother.
It’s worth noting as well that Josh Brolin’s revealed that he’s signed up for three additional X-Men movies as Cable, which he promises will tell us much more about the character. It definitely sounds like Fox have big plans for him beyond Deadpool 2, then. But could it be that he’ll end up being revealed as the new Wolverine? Time will tell, but color us intrigued.
