Nobody knows quite how Deadpool ended up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or rather EVERYONE knows how the merc with a mouth made it to Marvel on a corporate level – Disney bought 20th Century Fox – but we are yet to find out how the writing room crew are going to wrestle this one out in creative terms. Does Ryan Reynolds’s mischievous hero simply arrive fully formed from an alternate reality where everyone swears a lot more than they did in Thor: Ragnarok, and there is considerably more nudity, breaking of the fourth wall and hardcore violence? Will our chimichanga-munching antihero be forced to tone it all down a bit in the forthcoming Deadpool 3 alongside the returning Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? Or will he only need to behave himself once he’s inevitably involved in an ensemble movie alongside the rest of the Avengers?
Fans are naturally fascinated by the prospect of Deadpool’s fellow X-Men also crossing the Rubicon from Fox to Marvel Studios. We’ve already seen Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, though the one-time sorcerer supreme had to venture into an alternate reality to meet him, so there’s no guarantee Charles Xavier even exists in the MCU. The fact that Marvel went for Jackman over the option of recasting the role, even though the Australian actor had ostensibly retired after his “final” turn in 2017’s stripped back and furiously noirish Logan, suggests Kevin Feige and his team are open to cherry picking the more famous names from the Fox era. And there are constant rumours in the murkier corners of the geekosphere suggesting that various other Fox alumni might also be ripe for a comeback.
