Ryan Reynolds Almost Killed Off Deadpool (& Maybe He Should Have)

‘Til he’s 90? Former Green Lantern actor Ryan Reynolds will-powered Deadpool into existence in 2016, having played the Merc Without a Mouth in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine before effectively rebooting the character in his own R-rated, comic-accurate movie seven years later. Reynolds’ Merc With a Mouth then killed off the Origins Deadpool while “cleaning up the timelines” using Cable’s (Josh Brolin) time-travel device in 2018’s Deadpool 2, and he nearly killed off the Fox X-Men movies-verse — Earth-10005 — in last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

Time Variance Authority Agent Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) planned to accelerate the end of Deadpool’s home universe, which was withering out of existence with the death of its anchor being: Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine from 2017’s Logan. Wade Wilson then found his own comic-accurate Wolverine to help save his timeline, and stopped the X-Man from sacrificing himself to destroy the Time-Ripper… by making his own noble sacrifice. But in the end, the best bubs survived due to their healing factors (and the power of Madonna).

RELATED: Hugh Jackman Has Surprising Answer About Wolverine Return in Avengers: Doomsday

As it turns out, Reynolds considered having the Regenerating Degenerate die after teasing his death in the climaxes of Deadpool 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

“There is always a thought of killing Deadpool,” Reynolds told Scott Mendelson on The Box Office Podcast. “The last one again, it’s like listening to the movie. Me and [editors] Shane Reid, Dean Zimmerman, and [director] Sean Levy must have reworked that third act for 45 days. It was [composer] Rob Simonson who really helped us get there by blending, scoring, needle drop and all these things that gave you that feeling.”

But Disney, which acquired the Deadpool rights alongside the formerly Fox-controlled X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises in its acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019, didn’t want to kill off Deadpool in the same film that brought him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Studios, of course, are like, ‘It’d be fun to play around with this guy in the future,’” the star and writer-producer added. “Because he’s a cheat code. You can say things that everyone might be thinking and it gets you out of trouble, so [he’s] kind of valuable for that reason. But I also love playing him, and I never feel freer; it’s like clown work. It’s all my body, voice, micro facial expressions under the mask.”

Marvel Studios has yet to announce whether Reynolds and Jackman will return as Deadpool and Wolverine in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday and/or 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, which has confirmed nearly 30 actors, including Channing Tatum (Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Gambit) and Patrick Stewart (Professor Charles Xavier), Ian McKellen (Magneto), James Marsden (Cyclops), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Alan Cumming (Nightcralwer), and Kelsey Grammer (Beast) from Fox’s X-Men movies.

Avengers: Doomsday is now slated to open in theaters on December 18, 2026, followed by Avengers: Secret Wars on Dec. 17, 2027.