New Deadpool 3 Set Photos Reveal First Look at New Costume
Images from Deadpool 3 give us the first look at the costume Ryan Reynolds will be wearing in his MCU debut.
Ever since Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2019, we’ve known that Deadpool would be coming to the MCU. But that arrival raised many questions about integrating the famously crass anti-hero into the decidedly PG-13 MCU, which only just had its first f-bomb in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Deadpool fans feared that Kevin Feige would tame the Merc With a Mouth, diminishing the subversive joy of the 2016 hit and its 2018 sequel.
But if the first photos from Deadpool 3 are any indication, fans have little to worry about. A report from Mirror included pictures of Ryan Reynolds shooting a car crash scene for the film. In it, we see Reynolds wearing his Deadpool costume, which features very few changes from the outfit donned in his R-rated Fox movies. Although some gold highlights have been added to the black areas on the costume, the overall design remains the same, suggesting that Deadpool will be just as armed as he was in his previous movies.
That said, the biggest change to the costume may be the most worrying. Where Deadpool and its sequel had a largely muted color palette, the red of the suit in the set photos is surprisingly bright, almost on-par with the coloring in the comics.
That color change may indicate a distinction between the MCU and the 20th Century Fox universe where Deadpool debuted. When the latter continuity began with 2000’s X-Men, Blade had been the only big-screen Marvel hit and Spider-Man, with his red and blue costume, was still a few years away. That film not only dressed its heroes in black leather but even joked about the impracticality of comic’s accurate X-Men togs. By the time Deadpool hit screens, the X-Men were wearing yellow and dark blue costumes but were still not as colorful as the bright outfits worn by Captain America and the Avengers.
The photos also give us little more information about the plot of Deadpool 3 and its connection to the character’s old and new cinematic homes. Disney has been slow to introduce the X-Men into its world, only making mention of Kamala Khan’s mutation in Ms. Marvel and using an alternate version of Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Deadpool may only be mutant adjacent, but he’s bringing along Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, marking the first time the Canucklehead appears in the MCU.
Rumors have suggested that Deadpool 3 involves Wade Wilson getting recruited by the TVA to visit the House of M reality, in which the Scarlet Witch has made mutants, including characters from the Fox movies, the rulers of the Earth. The mission teams him with Wolverine — who Jackman has assured us is a younger version of the character who died at the end of Logan — and eventually ends with Deadpool fully ensconced in the MCU.
The photos neither confirm nor deny those rumors, but they do confirm some continuity between the two superhero realities. But if the movie truly wanted to shock fans, they’d give us the costume we really want to see: the comics accurate Wolverine suit teased in a deleted scene from The Wolverine.
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Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!