Deadpool 2 features a surprise appearance by characters from the X-verse — and true to Deadpool fashion, further confuses the already convoluted X-Men movie franchise timeline.
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Spoilers to follow.
A despondent Wade Wilson is recruited by metal-clad mutant Colossus of the X-Men, who hopes to see the wise-cracking mutate put his powers to good use.
At the seemingly always-empty X-Mansion — the famous Winchester school and home to Charles Xavier’s team of mutants — Colossus attempts to sell the mercenary on the idea of buying into the X-Men dream.
“Where is everyone? It’s always just you and Negasonic Teenage-longest-name-ever,” Wade says, telling the Russian X-Man “the studio could throw us a bone.”
“You can’t just dust off one of the famous X-Men? How about that putz with the giant pigeon wings? What do those do, anyway? Huh? Carry him three feet off the ground to snatch up the nearest muffin crumb?”
Behind an oblivious and ranting Wade are a conference of X-Men: Professor Xavier, Quicksilver, Nightcrawler, Storm, Cyclops, and Beast. The fuzzy blue mutant quickly reaches out and shuts the door — all entirely unnoticed by Wade.
“No, no, no, no,” Wade says in his diatribe. “I am not X-Men material at all.”
That’s certainly a bald-headed James McAvoy as the X-Men leader and Evan Peters as a silver-haired Quicksilver, who sports a Nirvana “Smiley Face” t-shirt — likely a nod to X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the sequel to Days of Future Past and Apocalypse that catches up with the younger iterations of the team sometime in the 1990s.
The gag carries over from the first Deadpool, when the Merc with a Mouth made an offhand comment about the super-group while recruiting Colossus and lesser-known mutant Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
“It’s a big house,” Deadpool said on the X-Mansion porch. “It’s funny that I only ever see two of you. It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man.”
“There’s a lot of good will to the first movie, and that’s kudos to [Deadpool director] Tim Miller and Ryan [Reynolds] and [co-screenwriters] Rhett [Reese] and Paul [Wernick],” Deadpool 2 director David Leitch told ComicBook.com of landing bigger cameos the second time around.
“People love this universe. And so having that goodwill and knocking on doors of familiar faces that I know, sort of was like a perfect balance to get a favor or two.”
The Deadpool sequel also features the return of other familiar faces well known to X-Men fans.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix, reuniting series stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Alexandra Shipp, Evan Peters, and Kodi Smit-McPhee, will also feature series newcomer Jessica Chastain. Fox releases Dark Phoenix February 14, 2019.
Deadpool 2 is now playing.