Warning: slight SPOILERS for Deadpool & Wolverine await inside. If you haven’t caught the latest MCU adventure just yet, you’ve been warned.
It’s an undeniable fact that the market for 2024 movies has had some early favorites to call its champions. Looking at Deadpool & Wolverine’s insane second weekend box office, director Shawn Levy’s love letter to pre-MCU thrills has become one of those success stories, and at a pretty quick pace. Occurring after years of speculation reported through every phase of production, it’s tough to sort out what was truly considered and what was never even a thought.
Thanks to a recent interview that Mr. Levy did for Happy Sad Confused’s Spoiler Special focused on Deadpool 3, we now know one cameo that falls into that second bucket. Unfortunately for all of you Patrick Stewart fans, Professor Charles Xavier didn’t even cross the minds of the team behind Marvel Studios’ current mega hit. The reason why is pretty solid though, as Shawn Levy laid out the truth for Josh Horowitz as follows:
Never even discussed. [He was] studied. Studied by Emma Corrin, big time, because the Cassandra siblinghood to Professor X is really interesting to us. But, no, never discussed. Never considered.
I think it’s time to ask a really important question at this moment in the discussion: is it really that disappointing that Patrick Stewart wasn’t in Deadpool & Wolverine? I mean, despite Stewart’s cagey answers to Deadpool 3 rumors, it’s not like we haven’t seen the OG Professor X back on screen since his fond farewell in Logan. Remember, he played a variant of the telepath in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Naturally this discussion just opens the floor to further comments on the Deadpool 3 cameos that did land in Marvel Studios’ first R-rated foray. And while rumors like Jennifer Garner returning to play her Daredevil/Elektra character did turn out to be accurate, there were some other tasty gems that were omitted from consideration.
The Real Steel director further confirmed why Michael B. Jordan wasn’t considered for a Deadpool & Wolverine comeback, as well as the fact that co-writer Zeb Wells was the person behind making sure Tyler Mane’s Sabretooth from the original X-Men movie trilogy was the variant used in The Void that Cassandra Nova reigned over with an iron mind.
While we’re on the subject, here’s a couple of the other cameos that weren’t on the board, per Shawn Levy’s own recollections:
I read a lot about Storm. I read a lot about Anna Paquin coming back. I mean, I read everything. The internet has been a delightful smokescreen for the truth.
As privacy continues to be paramount on a Marvel Studios set, Mr. Levy’s last remark plays even better with the crowd who’d expect those sorts of stories to be shot down early and often. Now that the truth is out, we can all take a moment to laugh at what wasn’t true and revel over what came to be. That will naturally be interrupted by returning to the various rumors that have tipped Shawn Levy as a future MCU director across various projects.
Of course, if you’ve somehow haven’t seen Deadpool & Wolverine in theaters, you can still enjoy that particular cinematic adventure as we speak. And if you want to tip your hat to the pre-MCU era, then you can dive into movies like X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool, courtesy of the multiverse available through a Disney+ subscription.
