Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Deadpool 2
-
Deadpool 2 at first seems like a straightforward set-up for 20th Century Fox's upcoming X-Force movie, but thanks to a surprising (and hilarious) mid-movie twist, it also leaves us uncertain about what X-Force's membership will look like. The trailers for Deadpool 2 were largely based around the wise-cracking anti-hero recruiting a ragtag team of superpowered individuals (and Peter) for his own super-duper group. However, the majority of these characters are killed off less than fifteen minutes after they're introduced, leaving the ranks of X-Force looking considerably sparse. Really, it's down to just Deadpool and Domino.
Nonetheless, Deadpool 2 is a family movie and by the time the credits roll Wade Wilson has assembled another ragtag group of superpowered individuals (and Dopinder). Some of those characters have already been confirmed to return in X-Force, while others could potentially be part of the team. Here's everything we know about X-Force so far, and how Deadpool 2 lays the groundwork for the next X-Men spinoff movie.
- This Page: The X-Force Movie and Deadpool 2's X-Force Twist
- Page 2: Which Deadpool 2 Characters Will Be in X-Force?
An X-Force Movie Is In Development
X-Force was first announced way back in 2013, more than a year before Deadpool was officially given the green light. At the time, Kick-Ass 2 writer/director Jeff Wadlow was attached to write the script, but after that initial announcement progress was slow, with X-Force comic creator Rob Liefeld indicating in 2014 that the project had stalled and it was a "coin toss" as to whether it would get made at all. However, the success of the first Deadpool movie spurred X-Force back into development, with Ryan Reynolds saying in 2016 that it was a "priority" for Fox.
Finally, in September 2017, things started moving again when it was announced that Drew Goddard was attached to write and direct X-Force. Goddard made his feature directorial debut with horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods, a movie packed with meta-humor about the most common horror tropes, which makes him a perfect fit for any project featuring Deadpool, the king of breaking the fourth wall.
X-Force is expected to begin filming in late 2018 and so far three cast members from Deadpool 2 are confirmed to return: Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Josh Brolin as Cable, and Zazie Beetz as Domino. As for the other X-Force characters who were introduced in Deadpool 2, well...
Deadpool 2's X-Force Was A Red Herring
In Deadpool 2, Wade and his buddy Weasel recruit superheroes for a mission to rescue young mutant Russell a.k.a. Firefist (Julian Dennison) from the time-traveling cyborg Cable, who is determined to kill the kid. The applicants are Domino, Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), Vanisher (Brad Pitt) and Peter (Rob Delaney), and all of them get hired because it turns out that Deadpool isn't too picky. However, in what might be one of the greatest bait-and-switches ever pulled off in movie marketing, all of the recruits (except for Domino) are horribly killed before they can even properly start their first mission, because Deadpool ignored weather alerts about high winds and decided to have them all parachute onto the scene.
With that said, it's not out of the question that the deceased members of X-Force could return in the team-up movie. In Deadpool 2's end-credits sequence, Deadpool uses Cable's time travel device to go back in time and prevent Peter's death, and screenwriter Rhett Reese said casually in an interview with CBR that "we can always go back in time and make anybody alive." So, don't write off the possibility of X-Force's less fortunate characters returning from the grave in a future movie. As it stands, though, Deadpool 2 seems to establish a pretty clear line-up of potential characters for Goddard's film.
Page 2: Which Deadpool 2 Characters Will Be in X-Force?
Is Deadpool's Family X-Force?
Deadpool 2 might be a comedy, but it occasionally gets serious. Wade reveals that his own father walked out on him when he was a child and that he grew up in a children's home. As a result, he came to think of family as "just another 'F' word." His plans for starting a family of his own with Vanessa (Morena Baccharin) are derailed when Vanessa is killed, and throughout the first act of the movie Wade wallows in misery, shunning young Russell's attempts to make friends with him in prison. At the movie's climax, however, Deadpool takes a bullet for Russell and dies surrounded by the family he found along the way: Cable, Russell, Domino, Colossus (Stefan Kapičić), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna). Dopinder (Karan Soni) isn't there, but he does show up at the end of the movie and walks off into the metaphorical sunset with the others.
So, aside from Cable, Deadpool and Domino, which of these characters will return? An intriguing caption in the credits says "The X-Force is strong with this one" next to Kutsuna's name, which seems like set-up for Yukio to be part of the team, and Colossus certainly seems to have embraced Deadpool's way of doing things, so he may decide to leave behind the X-Men mansion and his precious rulebook and join X-Force instead... but it's not guaranteed. Basically, X-Force could include all of them, or it could include none of them; Deadpool 2 ends in such a way that the groundwork for X-Force has definitely been laid, but Goddard hasn't been locked into a particular roster.
Which New X-Force Characters Could Be Added?
Deadpool 2 introduced the most prominent members of X-Force from the comics (Shatterstar in particular has strong ties to the team, which is why it was surprising to see him killed off so soon), but there are a few key characters that Goddard could add in his movie. First of all, since she was so rudely fridged for the sake of Wade's character development in Deadpool 2, Vanessa definitely deserves to finally get her superhero powers and join the team as Copycat instead of being relegated to a girlfriend role. Another cool addition would be Tabitha Smith a.k.a. Boom-Boom, who (as the name suggests) can conjure explosive bombs out of thin air. Also in the original line-up was Maria Callasantos a.k.a. Feral, a mutant cat-lady, and Sam Guthrie a.k.a. Cannonball, who is set to make his big-screen debut in next year's New Mutants, played by Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton.
It's very unlikely that Heaton's version of Cannonball will appear in X-Force, considering that the trailer for New Mutants showed a wildly differing tone to the Deadpool movies (leaning much more into the horror genre), but perhaps Goddard could introduce a different version, as Deadpool did with Colossus. James Proudstar a.k.a. Warpath was also a founding member of the team and had only a tiny role in X-Men: Days of Future Past (played by Booboo Stewart), so it would be good to see that character return in a more substantial role. It would also be interesting to introduce Rictor, a mutant with the ability to generate earthquakes, and bring back Shatterstar, since the two characters famously broke new ground in mainstream Marvel Comics when they had a romantic dalliance.
X-Force has the benefit of having a massive list of lesser-known comic book characters to choose from, so Goddard can grab a few of his favorites and introduce them to general audiences for the first time. Honestly, it would be disappointing if the X-Force movie didn't add some new faces to the team.
-
Which new characters would you like to see in X-Force, and who are you hoping will return from Deadpool 2? Let us know in the comments!
