By Charles Pulliam-Moore, a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.After years of Fox’s live-action X-Men movie franchise (RIP) being violently allergic to the idea of letting Marvel’s mutants be seen wearing anything but boring black getups vaguely inspired by Frank Quitely’s New X-Men designs, Deadpool 3 seems ready to switch things up.Following last week’s surprising announcement that Jennifer Garner has signed on to Deadpool 3 to reprise her role as Greek assassin Elektra Natchios, Ryan Reynolds — who’s currently filming on set — took to his Instagram account today to post a photo of himself and co-star Hugh Jackman in-costume as Deadpool and a very animated-looking Wolverine. Reynolds and Jackman have been teasing how Deadpool 3 — in addition to folding their characters into the MCU — will introduce newer takes on them both, and the photo suggests that “new” in this case is going to involve a throwback to the ’90s X-Men cartoon series that prominently featured Wolverine’s blue and yellow costume.Riffs of the theme song from that same X-Men series recently popped up in Disney Plus’ live-action Ms. Marvel series of all places, and Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier made the briefest appearance in The Multiverse of Madness — both of which seemingly pointed to mutants’ impending arrival in the MCU. Marvel also recently announced that X-Men ’97, a series exploring “new stories in the iconic ’90s timeline of the original series,” is coming to Disney Plus. It’s interesting but not altogether surprising that Disney appears to be leaning into brightly colored nostalgia as it picks select pieces of the Marvel-branded IP it bought back from Fox back in 2017. But all this blatant playing to children of the ’90s begs the question of just who all else Deadpool 3 might end up bringing back — the Fantastic Four movies come to mind — when it hits theaters on May 3rd, 2024. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily.The Verge is a vox media network© 2023 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved
