Heading into Saturday’s Deadpool 2 panel at Comic-Con, the burning question was whether studio distributor Fox would use its self-congratulatory Hall H engagement to announce future plans for the “Merc with a mouth” vis a vis other X-Men offshoots — a planned X-Force movie or reveal any sneak peek footage from the studio’s upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants, which have undergone significant reshoots and delays. With Deadpool multi-hyphenate Ryan Reynolds receiving a hero’s welcome in the hall, appearing alongside director David Leitch, co-stars Zazie Beetz, Brianna Hildebrand and Stefan Kapicic, and co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to celebrate the film’s $729 million worldwide box-office haul, alas, nary a mention of any other X-Man was made aside from Reynolds joking that he had a vision board of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in various states of repose in his home. (A placard for the Vanisher, the invisible character portrayed in cameo by Brad Pitt in Deadpool 2, was also jokingly placed in front of an unoccupied microphone on the stage.)
Instead, the group took the opportunity to thank fans and hype the film’s DVD, which is filled with bloopers, deleted and alternate scenes and is titled, according to Reynolds, the Deadpool 2: The Super Duper Thunder Fuck Edition. “Everything on this movie was done on committees,” Reynolds said. “You sit around and think ‘What’s going to work? What’s not going to work?’ We do so many alts, so many alternate takes, it’s one of the few times I can’t wait for a DVD because every joke is different. You can basically make a different film. Some of those changes are for time. Some is for content. Some is just too fucking nuts to show. We’d go to hell and get in trouble with our moms.”
The panel also screened several alt-takes included on the DVD and one fairly shocking deleted scene that closed out the event. In an expanded version of the film’s post-credit sequence in which Deadpool takes Cable’s time travel device and sets off to “close out the timeline” by righting previous wrongs such as saving his girlfriend Vanessa from an assassin’s bullet and murdering “Ryan Reynolds” as he reads the script for Warner Bros.’ 2011 Green Lantern, Deadpool shows up in a neonatal hospital ward. He approaches an old time-y incubator and says, “This is a toughie.” Seeing the baby inside he remarks, “Oh, you’re practicing the hate salute.” Then: “This is so hard, oh, I’m going to hell. We’ve got to do it — this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy!”
Although clearly conflicted, the character reaches down and from the baby’s POV we see his hands outstretched to strangle the child. The camera cuts to a name card on the exterior of the incubator that reads: “A. Hitler.”
