(Note: This post, while very good, contains spoilers for “Deadpool 2.” Read at your own risk.)
Since the failure of the Deadpool character in Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” in 2009, the self-aware and self-referential anti-hero has been seemingly relegated to the B team of Fox’s superhero assets.
There’s a running gag from the first film that carries over to “Deadpool 2” that the studio couldn’t — or wouldn’t — spring to include more popular characters from the X-Men universe in the film.
In the first “Deadpool,” while talking to X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Deadpool says, “It’s funny that I only ever see two of you. It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man.”
In “Deadpool 2,” as is the curse and joy of sequels, the filmmakers double down on the gag and outdid the original reference.
In an early scene after Deadpool has blown himself to bits following the death of his fridged girlfriend played by Morena Baccarin, Colossus takes Deadpool/Wade Wilson to X-Mansion. That is, of course, X-Men home base.
As Wade rides around the mansion in Professor X’s wheelchair — an Easter egg that gets a laugh in and of itself — he makes another reference to the scarcity of significant X-Men characters the studio forked over for “Deadpool 2.”
If you blinked, you might have missed it because it’s in that split-second when he rides by an open door, and in the room is a host of X-Men from the studio’s other movies. It’s a quick glimpse and you may have to squint to catch them all, but at the very least we see Evan Peters’ Quicksilver, James McAvoy as Professor Xavier, Beast and Cyclops.
They give a quick exasperated look as Wade rants and complains, and then Beast shuts the door.