With 20th Century Fox now defunct and having been swallowed whole by the Disney machine, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Deadpool 3 has the chance to finally answer one of the Merc with a Mouth’s longest-running unsolved mysteries.
Having been developing the project since before he even debuted as Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine – a role he admitted he only took so the part wasn’t cast with another actor – Ryan Reynolds ended up persevering with his plans to headline a solo movie for almost an entire decade before it finally came to fruition.
Of course, when Deadpool won rave reviews and became the highest-grossing R-rated release in the history of cinema – a feat that was then matched by the sequel – it left everybody wondering why it took the leaking of test footage to finally force Fox’s hand and make the project a reality. To this day, nobody knows for sure who the culprit was, but an inspired suggestion on Reddit has offered a solution.
Based on set photos, we know Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine will do battle in front of a crumbling 20th Century Fox logo, and what would be more self-aware, fourth wall-breaking, and meta than having the title hero finally reveal precisely who surreptitiously uploaded the test footage, which in turn snowballed into a multi-billion dollar series?
The prime suspect has always been Reynolds himself, something he’s alluded to more than once, but it would be a hell of a full circle moment for him to confirm it once and for all in Deadpool 3.