Josh Brolin’s take on Cable in Deadpool 2 was widely praised. Acting as a much-needed straight man to Ryan Reynolds’ wise-crackin’ goofball Merc, the two eventually made up and went on to become best buds when Cable decided to stay in the present day. Hopefully we can get to see the pair hanging out again in X-Force or Deadpool 3, assuming that the Fox/Disney merger doesn’t put the brakes on the project (though right now things look good), but it turns out that Cable nearly wasn’t in Deadpool 2 at all. And that’s because Bryan Singer wanted to use and kill him off in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Speaking in an interview with Screen Rant, Cable and Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld explained that Singer sent him a draft of the script – and Liefeld didn’t like what he saw.
“He was originally in Days of Future Past in the Bishop role and he got killed. And then there was a note that came back that said he’s kind of too big of a character to do this with, and poor Bishop got slaughtered instead. But I swear to you… So, summer 2012, I was like, you can’t, you can’t have Cable. Like, as much as I want to see him, fans will freaking go nuts if they see him and you kill him immediately. He’s too big.”
I think it’s safe to say that Liefeld called it right. After all, if you’re going to use Cable, it’d be remiss to pass up exploring his hilariously twisted backstory (he’s the son of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey, but he’s also from the future and infected with a weird techno organic virus). I’d like to think any film with him will tackle this backstory in some way, but if you bump him off in his first appearance, it just feels like wasted potential
While Bishop is far from the worst X-Man you could call up for redshirt duty, he makes a decent stand-in for Cable. Like him, he’s travelled from a dystopian future and he’s also got a vaguely similar personality. So, if Singer had gotten his way and been able to kill off Cable in X-Men: Days of Future Past, we may well have seen Bishop in Deadpool 2.
Funny how things work out sometimes, eh?