The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to be wildly popular, thanks to projects released in theaters and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. The most recent movie to arrive is Shawn Levy's Deadpool & Wolverine, which broke records at the box office. The movie featured plenty of exciting MCU cameos, but they weren't included just for kicks. And it turns out that Levy does not really enjoy when people act like Deadpool 3 cameos were for "shock and awe" only. Let's break it down.
The cast of Deadpool & Wolverine ended up including a number of surprise characters, mostly from 20th Century Fox's properties like X-Men, Blade, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil. Each of these appearances made an impact, including Channing Tatum's Gambit. During a recent conversation with The New York Times, Levy explained his approach to the cameos, saying:
I want to point out that if all we were going for was the ‘shock and awe’ moment, there were 50 other cameos we could have put in. We tried to rigorously enforce discipline in ourselves by always coming back to that central theme: Who are characters in the Marvel lore who never got to put a capstone on their legacy?
Points were made. There was a deep pool of characters to pull from for Deadpool & Wolverine, particularly given how long the X-Men movies ran in theaters. But Levy was going for quality not quantity, and wanted to honor the legacy of a handful of names from before 20th Century Fox's acquisition by Disney.
Fans spent years watching the Marvel movies in order, but those same moviegoers likely also watched the superhero projects that preceded it. And in addition to bringing back characters for one more fight in The Void, Deadpool 3's credits also paid tribute to the various individuals who made those Fox superhero movies possible. Later in that interview, Shawn Levy further explained how they assembled the motley crew of resisters to Cassandra Nova. In his words:
That led us to Elektra and Jen Garner. That led us to Wesley Snipes in a big way. With the exception of Channing as Gambit, they all connect back to that central theme of legacy and a proper ending. We knew that we wanted to have some forgotten heroes and we had a list of dozens and dozens of characters — you can imagine Britney Spears responded after Emma Roberts.
In the end it really did feel like Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds assembled the right amount of legacy characters for Deadpool 3. Fans were also treated to Chris Evans' return as the Human Torch... even if he didn't last very long.
While saw variants of some other X-Men villains in Deadpool & Wolverine, they didn't really take center stage. Although it was fun to see them fight the good guys in the epic battle at Cassandra Nova's compound (aka a dead Ant-Man).
Deadpool & Wolverine is still in theaters now, and the next MCU movie hitting theaters is Captain America: Brave New World on February 14th. For now, check the 2025 movie release dates.
