Both TV and film are pretty crossover-obsessed lately. The idea of seeing major characters from different movies and franchises team up and interact is something that fans go bananas over. Marvel has been able to do this famously with the Avengers films, as well as their television enterprises. After the massive critical and financial success of the R-rated superhero romp Deadpool, and it’s inclusion of two members of the X-Men, fans have been wondering if we’ll be able to see the merc with the mouth in an upcoming X-Men film.
The two writers of Deadpool, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, recently spoke to Indie Wire about the challenges facing Deadpool’s debut, or lack thereof, in an X-Men movie. They said the following:
The second issue at hand is the ‘X-Men’ universe timeline. ‘The X-Men’ series is currently set in the 1980s, ‘Deadpool,’ is set three decades later in our present day. It’s a timeline that will eventually catch up I would imagine. But [‘X-Men’ producer] Simon [Kingberg’s] more the keeper of that universe and maybe we’ll see more X-Men playing in Deadpool’s sandbox and probably Deadpool playing in their sandbox at some point.
As disappointing as this is, it makes complete sense. After Days of Future Past, the original X-Men timeline essentially faded away into Wolverine’s memory. Now that X-Men: Apocalypse is following the First Class group, it would be seemingly impossible for Deadpool to somehow interact with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and James McAvoy’s Professor X.
But there is a glimmer of hope here. As we know from Deadpool’s post-credits scene, X-Man Cable will be making an appearance in the upcoming sequel. While said sequel is still in the early stages of development, Cable’s eventual appearance has fans freaking out about the on-screen debut of Cable and Deadpool’s unlikely friendship. And the introduction of Cable might be the missing piece to get Deadpool into an X-Men movie.
Cable’s entire history in the Marvel universe is dependent on time travel. Cable aka Nathan Summers is the child of Scott Summers and the clone of Jean Grey. He is sent to the future as a child, where he ages in the midst of an apocalyptic world. Eventually, Cable makes his way back in time and teams up with the X-Men, meeting his father before he is even conceived.
Because there is so much time traveling and craziness around Cable’s backstory, it’s perfectly possible that he may possess a device which will allow him to travel through space and time in Deadpool 2 or afterward. So, if Cable and Deadpool turn into a regular dynamic duo, they could presumably travel back in time and meet up with the current timeline of the X-Men franchise. Of course, this is all speculation at the moment.
But we have both Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Apocalypse to look forward to.
