Is Peter Alive After Deadpool 2?

Warning! SPOILERS for Deadpool 2 ahead!

Deadpool 2 assembles the mutant team, X-Force for the first time ever on the big screen - and then kills each and every one of them (minus Deadpool and the incredibly lucky Domino) roughly five minutes after they're introduced. It's shocking and incredibly gory, but as disappointing as it may be to see characters like Shatterstar and Bedlum killed so quickly, it's absolutely devastating to see sweet and innocent Peter survive his parachute landing only to be painfully dissolved to death by acidic bile moments later.

Peter is a character conceived for and introduced in Deadpool 2, and though he has no powers and is nothing more than a regular guy who just saw the ad, quickly became popular in the lead up to the film's release. He dominated the marketing, getting his own Twitter account and LinkedIn page. The buzz surrounding Peter's role in Deadpool 2 grew so strong that the film's writers even pitched for Peter to get his own X-Force spinoff!

His shocking death in seemed to undo all of this, but then Deadpool 2's mid-credit scenes revealed that Peter might still be alive! The stinger has Deadpool using Cable's repaired time-travel device to correct the timeline and save two people: his fiancée, Vanessa, who he saves from being gunned down early on in the film, and Peter, urging him to just walk away after the X-Force landing disaster, go home and live his life. While these scenes are played for laughs and are not technically a part of the film, Deadpool 2's screenwriters have since confirmed that they are canon. So Vanessa and Peter both live! Just don't try and work out how Wade's reversing of these deaths affects the film's timeline of events.

For those looking for further confirmation that Peter is doing just fine and dandy following his brush with superhero stardom, he recently updated his Twitter account with the good news:

So what's next for Peter? Well, though it hasn't been officially announced, there's a good chance there will be a Deadpool 3 at some point in the future; in which case, Peter would almost certainly appear, even if it was Wade just checking in with his sugar bear. Before then, however, an X-Force film is already in the works from writer/director Drew Goddard. X-Force might begin filming as early as this year, and though it's expected to include Deadpool, Domino, and Cable, it may not be a film in the exact same vein as the Deadpool films. That is to say, Goddard's X-Force may not be as absurd and outlandish as the Deadpool films, where it makes perfect sense for a normal dude to answer a help wanted ad and land a gig with a superhero team.

Then again, there's a fan theory which suggests that Peter is actually Peter Wisdom - a mutant from Warren Ellis and artist Ken Lashley's Excalibur who has the ability to generate "hot knives" of pure thermal energy on his fingertips. And while it'd be ludicrous for Peter to have kept such abilities a secret from Deadpool, it would be a hilarious reveal that would also make Peter a better fit for a real X-Force team. Who knows? Maybe Wade's changing of the timeline somehow enables Peter to get superpowers? Peter has already proved himself a hero, valiantly trying to save his teammate, Zeitgeist.

Whatever is next in store for Peter, it's a safe bet that his mid-credit survival isn't the last we've seen of him. At the very least, there's sure to be more Peter (along with more of everything else they couldn't squeeze into the film) on Deadpool 2's home release.