There have been a handful of occasions where an actor has played more than one role within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like how Gemma Chan portrayed both Minn-Erva and Sersi, respectively in Captain Marvel and Eternals, the 21st and 26th of the Marvel movies in order. Well, we won’t be counting Josh Brolin among this group. Following his time as Infinity Saga big bad Thanos, he wasn’t brought back to reprise Cable in Deadpool and Wolverine, and the actor shared his thoughts about being left of the upcoming Marvel movie, which he wanted to participate in.
Brolin was being interviewed on The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast about Season 2 of his show Outer Range, which can be streamed with an Amazon Prime Video subscription, when host Mike DeAngelo joked about how since Deadpool and Wolverine is on the actor’s IMDB page, that must mean he’s in the movie. Brolin laughed at hearing about this entry and exclaimed he “so wanted to be in that movie,” then said this about Marvel Studios:
[Marvel] is a more complex labyrinth than ‘Outer Range’ will ever be, my friend. And I will never know where that went or what that is or what I’m involved with or what I’m not involved with —the MCU being involved now. Cable was a lot of fun. I really liked doing that role. That was a lot of fun.
Josh Brolin played Cable in 2018’s Deadpool 2, which came out at a time when 20th Century Fox was still around as a separate studio and controlled the film rights to both the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties. But following Disney’s acquisition of Fox, what we simply knew as Deadpool 3 moved forward as an MCU release that’s playing around with the Marvel multiverse, like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Loki. And yet, while familiar faces from the previous Deadpool movies like Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa, Leslie Uggams’ Blind Al and Karan Soni’s Dopinder are back in the Deadpool and Wolverine cast, Cable is nowhere to be found.
It’s unclear if Marvel Studios wanted to specifically steer clear of Josh Brolin’s Cable or if there just wasn’t room for him in the story that Ryan Reynolds wrote with Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Zeb Wells. I have trouble believing the former considering not just all those familiar Deadpool faces, but also that it’s bringing back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, albeit an incarnation from another universe. And again, if it’s ok for an actor to play more than one role in the MCU every now and then, why not have Brolin around as both Thanos and Cable? After all, just because he could have played the role once more wouldn’t have meant Marvel couldn’t cast another actor to play a different Cable down the line.
Hopefully Deadpool and Wolverine will at least mention what happened to Cable after the last movie, whether he embarked on a solo mission, returned to his original time period or Wade Wilson’s time traveling shenanigans in the Deadpool 2 end credits scenes accidentally erased him from existence. I won’t lie, if there’s absolutely no chance of ever seeing Josh Brolin as Cable again, I hope it’s that last option purely for comedy’s sake.
Feel free to stream Deadpool 2 now with your Disney+ subscription, and stick around the streaming service if you’re looking to view a project containing a different version of Cable, as X-Men ’97 Season 1 is still running on the 2024 TV schedule. Meanwhile, Deadpool and Wolverine opens July 26 as one of this summer’s biggest 2024 movie releases.
