Deadpool 3 Confirms More X-Men Characters for the Marvel Cinematic Universe

It looks like Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine aren’t the only X-Men characters making the jump from the 20th Century Fox’s X-Men continuity over to the Mouse House when Deadpool 3 hits cinemas next year. As broken by Deadline, the duo is going to be joined by some other familiar faces, at least from the pocket of Deadpool films.

Morena Baccarin and Stefan Kapicic are both slated to reprise their roles as Vanessa and Colossus after playing those characters in Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018). The news isn’t entirely surprising, especially since Baccarin’s Vanessa was such a fan favorite in the first movie (although she got sidelined for most of the second one), and Kapicic’s vocal performance of the all-CGI Colossus stole entire sequences in both Deadpool movies. The characters’ return though indicates that continuity lines will continue to blur in the MCU.

While Vanessa is technically a mutant in X-Men-adjacent Marvel Comics, first appearing as a character with the codename Copycat in X-Force #19 (1993), she is a relatively obscure one who hasn’t displayed any mutant attributes (yet) in the Deadpool movies. However, Colossus is one of the most popular X-characters ever created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, which is saying something since he first appeared in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) alongside newcomers Storm and Nightcrawler (Wein also co-created Wolverine one year earlier). Curiously, he was nonetheless always underused in the X-Men films directed by Bryan Singer and Brett Rather in the 2000s.

Deadpool changed this, however, by recasting Colossus with Kapicic’s hopelessly earnest voice, turning him into a popular foil for Reynolds’ relentlessly sarcastic lead. He also marked the gateway for Reynolds’ superhero to party with the mainline Fox films, inviting Deadpool multiples times to the X-Mansion of the mainline Fox films, which even included cameos from the X-Men: Apocalypse cast in Deadpool 2. In other words, he’s as much part of the convoluted Fox continuity as Jackman’s Wolverine, who is also appearing in Deadpool 3 despite the character dying in 2017’s Logan.

Of course Disney’s Marvel Studios has already introduced the concept of the multiverse to explain how they can cherrypick any characters or castings they’d like from other studios’ legacies. It’s how Spider-Man: No Way Home wound up with the sight of Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield all playing Spider-Man at the same time in the same scene (a picture worth $2 billion, as it turned out). Similarly, Patrick Stewart reprised the role of Charles Xavier in last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, albeit that was suggested to be a different Xavier from the one he played in the Fox films (where he also was killed off in Logan).

Still, given the fact Marvel Studios seems intent on rebooting the X-Men franchise at some point down the line, the choice of putting more and more Fox versions of the characters into what is essentially the first MCU X-Men movie is a curious one. It also remains to be seen if Brianna Hildebrand will return as the awesomely named Negasonic Teenage Warhead after appearing in the past two Deadpool movies. They could also have some fun if Josh Brolin reprised his role as Cable, if even in a cameo, after playing big bad Thanos in Marvel’s Avengers movies.

Deadpool 3 releases Nov. 8, 2024.