Let’s Talk About Those Insane “Deadpool & Wolverine” Cameos

Deadpool & Wolverine is a bonafide blockbuster. The Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman two-hander pulled past the $200 million mark in its domestic opening, a shocking haul for an R-rated film. In fact, Deadpool & Wolverine bested the previous champion of the R-rated opening weekend, the first Deadpool, which pulled in $133.7 million in 2016. Nobody breaks the fourth wall harder or with more F-bombs than Ryan Reynolds’ potty-mouthed antihero.

Reynolds now has three successful outings to show for rejiggering and rebooting the character (he played a version of Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but that was an entirely different, far less funny iteration), but it was a stroke of genius to bring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine on board. Despite dying at the end of 2017’s Logan—which Reynolds and his Deadpool & Wolverine co-writers Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells make great hay about—Jackman’s Logan, well, an iteration of Logan, is hauled from his sad sack universe where he’s a pariah and far from a hero into Deadpool’s storyline to help him save his own world. Their journey, which includes fighting each other in comically brutal fashion before finally taking their aggression out on bad guys, zig-zags across Marvel history and pulls in some well-known faces from previous franchises, some from more than two decades ago, for what was a consistently surprising parade of cameos.

Let’s have a look at the biggest cameos of them all:

Jon Favreau: Favreau’s Happy Hogan is one of the first cameos we get in a flashback scene when Deadpool applies to join the Avengers and is gently but thoroughly rebuffed.

Henry Cavill: In an early, delightful surprise, Cavill turns up as a Wolverine variant, the Cavillrine. He looks very, very right in the role. Cavill was, of course, Superman during Zack Snyder’s run with DC.

Chris Evans: But not as Captain America, mind you; instead, Deadpool and Wolverine come across Evans’ version of Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, from his very first outing as a superhero in Fox’s Fantastic Four. Deadpool and Wolverine find Johnny in the Void, where a slew of pre-Disney acquisition characters are marooned. (The Void is where the Time Variance Authority drops anyone it deems a threat to the Sacred Timeline, which is why the villain Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin, is there). In the upcoming The Fantastic Four, the Human Torch will be played by Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn.

Tyler Mane: Mane reprises his role from 2000’s X-Men as Sabretooth, Wolverine’s arch nemesis and usually an equal match in a fight. However, when they face off early on in Deadpool & Wolverine, Wolverine decapitates him with a single stroke.

Ray Park: Park returns as Toad, another character from 2000’s X-Men, and alongside Sabretooth is one of Cassandra Nova’s henchmen.

Jennifer Garner: Garner reprises her role of Elektra, the expert warrior and assassin who she played in 2003’s Daredevil, opposite Ben Affleck’s blind superhero, and again in 2005’s Elektra. When Deadpool “pays his respects” to the Marvel characters who apparently haven’t survived in the Void, including Elektra’s former partner in fighting crime, Daredevil, Garner’s Elektra quips, “Oh, it’s fine.”

Wesley Snipes: Snipes reprising his role of Blade was, for us, the biggest surprise of them all. Snipes first played the character in 1998’s Blade and its two subsequent sequels, including 2004’s Blade: Trinity, where he shared the screen with Ryan Reynolds (who played Hannibal King), and the two weren’t, shall we say, best buds back then. Marvel is in the process of rebooting the character with Mahershala Ali, but that’s been slow going, and Snipes even got in a joke about it: “There’s only one Blade. There’s only ever gonna be one Blade.”

Channing Tatum: Okay, perhaps Channing Tatum as Gambit was an even bigger surprise than seeing Snipes, but that’s only because, despite Tatum’s efforts to make that happen, we’ve never actually gotten to see Tatum in the role of the mutant. Deadpool gets in a lot of jokes about having no idea what the Cajun cardsharp is saying.

Dafne Keen: Keen reprises her role as Laura, or X-23, the young mutant that Wolverine sacrifices himself for in Logan. She plays a huge role in this film, as she eventually convinces Logan to stop being a mope and help Deadpool and the rest of the team take on Cassandra Nova.

Blake Lively: As she hinted, Blake Lively is, in fact, Ladypool, voicing the character.

Matthew McConaughey: He briefly voices Cowboy Deadpool, or the Deadpool Kid, the western gun-slinger variant from Earth-1108.

Ryan Reynolds: Yup, Reynolds also played one of the Deadpool variants, Nicepool, whose puppy Dogpool is the apple to the regular, raunchy, rude Deadpool’s eye. Nicepool has long, flowing locks, drives a Honda Odyssey, and is very helpful, calm, and sure enough, Kind. But, alas, he doesn’t have Deadpool’s regenerative abilities, and this proves to be a problem.

Wunmi Mosaku: Mosaku’s Hunter B-15 from Loki appears at the film’s end, helping Deadpool and Wolverine tidy up loose ends after they foil Mr. Paradox’s plot. A romance brews between her and Rob Delaney’s Peterpool.

For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:

Ryan Reynolds & Hugh Jackman Surprise Comic-Con Fans With “Deadpool & Wolverine” Screening

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Critical Reaction: Killer Chemistry Equals Bloody Good Fun

Who’s Playing Lady Deadpool in “Deadpool & Wolverine”?

First Reactions to “Deadpool & Wolverine” Say the Chemistry is Explosive in MCU Game Changer

Featured image: (L-R): Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.