While the X-Men movie franchise is currently being stripped for parts by Disney following their recent merger with Fox, the word is that they’re happy with Deadpool and co. the way they are.
Despite the fact that the Merc with a Mouth’s penchant for graphic violence and profanity doesn’t line up with the Mouse House’s family-friendly ethos, they don’t intend to reboot the character and will continue making movies with Ryan Reynolds’ big-screen iteration. Deadpool 3 was in development at Fox, but the team-up movie X-Force was intended to be released first. So, here are 5 Characters We Want To See In X-Force (And 5 We Don’t).
Want to see: Copycat
Fans were furious when Vanessa was killed off early in Deadpool 2, criticizing it as an example of “fridging,” because Morena Baccarin was doing a great job of playing her, and she still had yet to take on her superhero alter ego Copycat.
Vanessa wasn’t characterized as a mutant in the movies, but it wouldn’t take too much narrative gymnastics to get around that. In the mid-credits scene of Deadpool 2, the Merc with a Mouth went back in time to save Vanessa’s life, so if this becomes canon, then it would be easy to get Copycat into the X-Force movie.
Don’t want to see: Bishop
In the comics, Bishop is a pretty terrific character. He’s a member of a privatized police force in the distant future who travels back in time to fight alongside the X-Men. To him, the X-Men are long-forgotten legends, which informs his relationships with them.
Bishop should join the MCU and get a fleshed-out story arc when the X-Men have joined the franchise. The only issue with bringing him into the X-Force movie is that it’s very similar to Cable’s arc from Deadpool 2. Cable didn’t come from a time where Deadpool was legendary, but that just added to the odd-couple humor.
Want to see: Cannonball
Cannonball is able to submerge himself inside an impermeable force field whilst flying at the speed of a jet plane, so he’s pretty impressive. When he left the X-Force to join the core X-Men group, Cannonball became the first-ever member of a secondary team to “graduate” into the primary team.
Cannonball is set to appear in The New Mutants, played by Charlie Heaton, but it’s unclear what Disney wants to do with that movie – make it MCU canon or bury it? – so either Heaton can reprise the role for X-Force or it can be recast. Either way, it would be great to see him alongside the rest of the team.
Don’t want to see: Marrow
Marrow made a cameo appearance as one of the other Weapon X test subjects in Deadpool, so it stands to reason that she would appear in X-Force, but it wouldn’t be wise. Marrow can grow her bones out of her skin, snap them off, and use them as knives.
This looks cool in comic book form, but if it was adapted for a live-action movie, it would look horrifying and gross. Plus, if her major ability is her healing power, then she won’t really stand out in X-Force, a movie containing a character who will cut off his own arm and then grow it back again to avoid having to answer to Charles Xavier.
Want to see: Boom Boom
The superpower of Tabitha Smith – a.k.a. Boom Boom – is a pretty obscure one: she can create yellow orbs of mental energy to give people concussions, or kill them. It’s the kind of power that Deadpool would get a kick out of, which makes her an ideal candidate to join him in the new X-Force movie.
She was one of the few mutants to retain their powers after the catastrophic “House of M” storyline, which might be on the way to the MCU – Avengers: Endgame co-writer Stephen McFeely has said, “I think ‘House of M’ would be awesome. But you’ve got to earn it.”
Don’t want to see: Caliban
Caliban is a great character in the comics, a mutant who can manipulate people’s fears and track other mutants. However, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen two different movie versions of Caliban, and they both failed to strike a significant chord with audiences (although Stephen Merchant was surprisingly great in a dramatic role in Logan).
Let’s give the big-screen iterations of Caliban a rest and let some of the other, more obscure mutants have a chance at cinematic glory. There are plenty of characters left as yet un-adapted and a lot of them have more interesting powers than Caliban.
Want to see: Warpath
With a superhuman version of pretty much every physical trait – strength, speed, stamina etc. – Warpath is one of the most awesome members of the X-Force. He started out as a villain bent on destroying the X-Men, who he blamed for the death of his brother, but he eventually changed his mind about their cause and joined the X-Force.
Already, this would make a pretty incredible character arc in a movie that will likely be full of them. Plus, he’s Native American, a racial group that gets basically no attention in Hollywood, so he would be a great character to include for representation.
Don’t want to see: Deathlok
We’ve seen a few different versions of Deathlok over the years, but the one common theme in each incarnation’s backstory is that they’re a dead human who is reanimated with cybernetic enhancement. There’s a version of the character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which gave his arc enough time to be fleshed out.
If Deathlok is coming to the silver screen, then it should be in his own movie, as was attempted by screenwriter Randall Frakes in the early ‘90s. Deathlok’s arc – one of the nine in Marvel Comics history – would take a full movie to properly depict in a fan-pleasing way.
Want to see: Peter
Rob Delaney’s Peter from Deadpool 2, the regular guy who seemed to try out for the X-Force purely to get him out of the house, should return in the X-Force movie.
He was the only new recruit that Deadpool wasn’t ambivalent towards, and the only one whose life he bothered to save when he had that capability in the mid-credits sequence, thanks to Cable’s time machine wristwatch. Peter was introduced in Deadpool 2 to show viewers that literally anyone can be a superhero. If he returns to action in X-Force, then it’ll really hammer that point home and pay off the joke in a brilliant way.
Don’t want to see: Archangel
We saw a version of Archangel in X-Men: The Last Stand, and then another one in X-Men: Apocalypse, and if those two incarnations showed us one thing, it’s that fitting a character with feathery wings into a comic book blockbuster is tough.
The alter-ego of Archangel, Warren Worthington III, is a privileged kid who is the heir to a mammoth family fortune, so he’s not instantly likable right off the bat. While Archangel has been a member of the X-Force in the comics, he doesn’t have that badass, rough-and-tumble quality that the X-Force members in Deadpool’s cinematic universe have.