One of my favorite jokes in Deadpool was when the Merc complained that the studio didn’t have the budget to afford an appearance from the big name X-Men, and that they’d have to make do with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. Well, with the film succeeding beyond 21st Century Fox’s wildest dreams, Deadpool 2 got double the budget of the original.
Does this mean that they can finally get some of the most recognizable mutants on screen alongside Wade Wilson, though? Yes, they most definitely can!
In an early scene, Deadpool’s brought back to Charles Xavier’s mansion by Colossus, where he sees Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio. Once more he complains that there’s never any famous mutants hanging out at the mansion when he’s there, only for the camera to cut to a new angle to reveal Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) having a meeting. Beast gets up and quietly closes the door, with Wade never even realizing that they’re there.
Incidentally, this small scene was actually shot by Simon Kinberg while making X-Men: Dark Phoenix and green-screened into Deadpool 2. How’s that for some trivia?
It’s a great joke in a film stuffed full of cool moments and also neatly demolishes the argument that the Deadpool movies are so tonally different from the rest of the X-Universe so as to constitute its own sub-universe strand. It also opens up the possibilities of further cameos from prominent mutants in X-Force.
Still, while a great gag on its own, I’d have loved to see DP meeting with McAvoy’s Charles Xavier, and what it’d be like for the world’s most powerful psychic to read Deadpool‘s scrambled mind. Oh well, it’s looking like Ryan Reynolds is going to be in costume for a few films yet, so perhaps we’ll get the chance sooner than we think.