Director Shawn Levy shared an official image of the Resistance “Avengers.”
[Warning: This article contains Deadpool & Wolverine spoilers.] The mind behind the Merc with the Mouth’s third installment can finally talk about those surprise Deadpool & Wolverine cameos. Director Shawn Levy had been teasing that the Marvel Studios movie — which officially lifted its spoiler embargo with footage offering a glimpse at characters who were otherwise kept out of the marketing — contains a “multitude of character cameos.” The most unexpected: former Superman star Henry Cavill’s cigar-chomping “Cavillrine” and Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm/Human Torch from the Fox-made Fantastic Four movies.
Now that the secret is out, Levy took to social media to share a behind-the-scenes cast photo. “If there’s a director Heaven, I think I found it,” Levy captioned the image, which features the director posed with Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Channing Tatum, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Garner, and Dafne Keen.
When Wade Wilson (Reynolds) and a Logan/Wolverine variant (Jackman) find themselves trapped in the Void — the “metaphysical junkyard” where the Time Variance Authority dumps multiverse castoffs, including Professor X’s evil twin sister, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) — they join a resistance based in the borderlands. The team includes such heroes as Blade (Snipes), Elektra (Garner), X-23 (Keen), and Gambit (Tatum), the last-surviving members of a motley Resistance cobbled together from abandoned franchises. (Characters mentioned as having been killed off-screen: Daredevil, The Punisher, Quicksilver, and Magneto.)
“Everybody we asked said yes and somehow made the time,” Levy told EW. “Jen, Channing, Dafne, and Wesley, they flew to England a week before shooting on their own volition and desire because they wanted to learn and do the choreography of the action themselves. They came a week early right away showing a level of enthusiasm that is not at all the norm for someone who’s just doing a so-called cameo.”
“Then the day before they shot, the actors’ strike happened, so they all had to ship home,” Levy continued. “They all came back months later with that same enthusiasm. That right there says everything people need to know about the spirit that went into making this movie.”
Outside of the Void, the Deadpool Corps introduced masked Deadpool variants played by Reynolds’ family — Lady Deadpool (Blake Lively), Kidpool (Inez Reynolds), and Babypool (Olin Reynolds) — as well as the gun-toting Cowboy Deadpool (Matthew McConaughey), and the zombified Headpool (voiced by Nathan Fillion). Jon Favreau, who played Happy Hogan in such films as Iron Man, The Avengers, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, appeared when Wade jumped to the Sacred Timeline of the MCU, which is one of the realities under the supervision of the TVA’s B-15 (Loki‘s Wunmi Mosaku).
Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing only in theaters.
