Ever since Disney officially acquired FOX in 2019, fans have been waiting for Disney to confirm the inevitable – that Deadpool is part of the MCU. It took nearly two years for this to happen, with Ryan Reynolds confirming Deadpool’s arrival as he was generating hype for his then-upcoming film, Free Guy. But, while Deadpool hasn’t officially appeared in an MCU film yet, the fourth-wall-breaking mercenary could have been in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Concept artist Andrew Kim recently released some of the commissioned Shang-Chi pieces he did for Marvel Studios, all of which are based on the Golden Daggers Club, a fight club and bar in Macau founded by Xialing, Shang-Chi’s younger sister. Technically, the setting already featured a cameo with Benedict Wong’s Wong and Tim Roth’s Abomination fighting against each other for money. But, as it turns out, Andrew Kim rendered a scene featuring a fight between Proxima Midnight and Deadpool.
Had this blink-and-you-miss-it cameo happened, fans definitely would have had a couple of questions.
For example, how exactly is Proxima Midnight still alive? Thanos’ adoptive daughter already died during the events of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to appear again in Shang-Chi. Of course, her appearance in the Shang-Chi concept art suggests that this is something that Kim did for fun and perhaps attempted to pitch to Marvel Studios but failed. This also means that we’ll never know if Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool was ever meant to appear in Shang-Chi at all.
According to Reynolds last August, Deadpool 3 will start filming this year. Then, a few weeks ago, the Deadpool actor teased that he’ll have more to say about the upcoming Deadpool threequel soon, which could mean that production on the movie is starting soon. But, even if it makes the most sense for Deadpool to barge into the MCU in his movie, we wouldn’t put it past Marvel Studios to have him do a cameo or two in an upcoming film.
Case in point, some people believe that Deadpool will appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Although unlikely, it’s not impossible either – a variant of Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier is all but confirmed to appear in the Doctor Strange sequel already. As a multiversal affair, Doctor Strange 2 could help explain why Deadpool is in the MCU in the first place.
Ultimately, fans should not worry too much about Deadpool’s MCU debut – this is all a matter of when and not if.
