SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for plot points, cameos and the ending of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” now playing in theaters.
After six years, Deadpool is finally back — and he’s not alone.
In addition to bringing back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who heroically and tragically died at the end of 2017’s “Logan,” Ryan Reynolds’ Merc With a Mouth is bringing an “Endgame”-level of cameos and references with him. Just like his previous two movies, Reynolds’ antihero breaks the fourth wall, but in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” he bulldozes through it.
A lot has changed since “Deadpool 2”: Disney acquired Fox, paving the way for Deadpool and the X-Men to officially enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and superhero movies have proliferated on the big and small screens, giving Deadpool a treasure trove of references to make. There have been a handful of X-Men cameos in the MCU so far — Patrick Stewart reprised his Professor X role in “Doctor Strange 2,” Kelsey Grammer was back as Beast in “The Marvels” and “WandaVision” had a cheeky Quicksilver nod — but “Deadpool & Wolverine” unleashes the fan service.
The first major cameo is from MCU legend Chris Evans. But instead of playing Captain America, he’s back as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, from his first superhero role in Fox’s “Fantastic Four.” Like other discarded Fox characters, Johnny finds himself in the Void, where pre-Disney-acquisition characters are abandoned. He’s joined by Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, Wesley Snipes’ Blade, Dafne Keen’s X-23 and Channing Tatum’s Gambit, who never actually appeared in one of Fox’s X-Men movies but had long been rumored for a standalone.
A few other MCU characters pop up, including Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan, the Hulk and Wunmi Mosaku’s Hunter B-15 from “Loki.” Then there are all the Deadpool and Wolverine variants: Henry Cavill cameos as Cavillrine; Reynolds’ wife Blake Lively voices Ladypool, Matthew McConaughey briefly voices Cowboy Deadpool; and Nathan Fillion is Headpool, a diembodied, floating head.
There are a ton of references to Reynolds’ and Jackman’s other projects, like “The Proposal” and “Music Man,” and the real-life, on-set drama between Reynolds and Snipes on “Blade: Trinity.” The film also repurposes old Fox and MCU footage, including a running joke about a tearful moment between Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Deadpool that reuses a “Thor: The Dark World” scene.
See all the cameos and MCU references below.