Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.
Robert Downey Jr. nearly made an appearance as Tony Stark in Deadpool & Wolverine’s long list of cameos, but a last-minute decision from Marvel saw his part pulled.
Details on what could have been come from an interview IndieWire conducted with the film’s co-writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The screenwriting duo says that not only was the Deadpool team hoping to include Downey in an early scene that saw Wade Wilson auditioning for the Avengers, but they even had lines written for the actor, too. The scene is still included in the movie, though only Happy Hogan actor Jon Favreau is there to give Wade the bad news.
“Ryan Reynolds wrote the scene with both of them, so in the hopes we could get Downey,” Reese explained. “But he also wanted Favreau, because they’re a great combo, and they were all in the scene together.”
Reese continued to explain what Downey’s return as Tony Stark would’ve looked like: “It was a version of what you saw in the sense that he rejected Wade. He just said he wasn’t a team player or whatever and questioned his team-player abilities. So it was actually pretty close to the scene that you saw. It just had two guys instead of one. And then Jon [Favreau] was, graciously, connected to it from the start. It worked out great.”
Downey went as far as to read the scenes the Deadpool & Wolverine team had written for him but ended up passing on the role. Despite the high hopes that a cameo was doable, Marvel had one secret that made it tough to pull off: Doctor Doom. During the Marvel Studios SDCC 2024 panel last month, the company announced that Downey would return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) not as Tony Stark but as legendary comic book villain Victor Von Doom. Multiverse shenanigans aside, the casting choice made another appearance as Iron Man confusing and difficult to pull off.
“I mean, look, we would’ve loved to have Downey,” Reese continues. “But, at the same time, I think Marvel had this ace in their hole, which is he’s about to come back in this different character. So, to have him be Tony Stark? Knowing that Doctor Doom was coming on the heels of that? It just didn’t make sense.”
Wernick says the team didn’t actually know that Downey would be playing Doctor Doom when work on Deadpool & Wolverine was underway. Meanwhile, another idea that got left on the cutting room floor would’ve seen the Avengers teaming up to let Deadpool know that he lacks to team skills to fight alongside them.
“We haven’t told anybody this, but there was a version of that scene very, very early on that wasn’t written, but was conceived, that had all the Avengers in the room,” Wernick says. “And Wade was rejected and then he dressed all the Avengers down in a way only Deadpool could do.”
One gag that might’ve been included should the Avengers have shown up would’ve seen Deadpool’s friend Peter casually lifting Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, in the background. In theory, the scene would’ve included all major Avengers, but scheduling concerns kept the team from pursuing the idea.
Although these MCU fan-service moments never made it to the screen, plenty of other major cameos did. Some highlights saw Wesley Snipes’ Blade, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, and Channing Tatum’s Gambit show up to avenge their friend Johnny (a.k.a. Chris Evans’ Human Torch). We liked what Deadpool & Wolverine had to offer, giving it a 7/10 in our review. We said, “Deadpool & Wolverine is a hilarious superhero buddy comedy full of surprising, self-referential MCU humor and unsurprising plot and pacing problems.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
