It always felt like Deadpool would be back the second Deadpool & Wolverine blew the roof off the box office, but Ryan Reynolds has now made it official in his own words. The more interesting part is that he’s not talking like someone who’s gearing up for a straightforward Deadpool 4. If anything, Reynolds sounds like he’s trying to avoid that entirely. After years of building the character around solo chaos, he now seems to think Wade Wilson works better when he’s bouncing off other people instead of dominating the whole movie. That’s a pretty big shift for one of Marvel’s most stubbornly self-centered antiheroes.

In a recent interview, Reynolds confirmed he’s actively working on more Deadpool material, saying, “I have some stuff kind of written.” But he also made it clear the next outing wouldn’t center on Wade the way the previous movies did, adding, “I think he’s a supporting character. He’s a guy that is great in a group.” In a related write-up, that idea was phrased even more bluntly, with Reynolds saying he does not think he is “ever going to center him again.”

Will Deadpool Join The X-Men?

That lines up pretty neatly with reports from last year that Reynolds was developing a new Deadpool project involving “three or four” X-Men characters, and that it was separate from Marvel Studios’ main X-Men reboot plans. Nothing official has confirmed that it’s an X-Force movie, and the more specific online rumors should still be treated as just that, rumors. But Reynolds’ “supporting character” comment definitely makes the ensemble idea feel a lot more plausible than it did before.

There’s also a pretty clear creative logic to it. Reynolds has said before that if Deadpool becomes an Avenger or a full X-Man, that’s basically the end of the joke, because the whole point is that he’s an outsider — “If [Deadpool] becomes an Avenger or an X-Man, we’re at the end. That’s wish fulfilment, and we can’t give him that.” — Keeping him slightly to the side of the main action, even inside a team-up movie, preserves that energy while still letting Marvel use him in bigger ways. After the huge success of Deadpool & Wolverine, that may be the smartest path forward: more Deadpool, just not necessarily more Deadpool all by himself.

Deadpool is streaming now on Disney+.

via Collider