There were hard-to-believe rumblings for a while that Robert Downey Jr. might appear in Deadpool & Wolverine and, just yesterday, we shared details on what that cameo was going to look like.
IndieWire recently caught up with writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and asked about those supposed plans for Downey (who was recently announced as the MCU's Doctor Doom) to appear in the R-Rated threequel's post-credits scene as Tony Stark. Not only did they confirm that was the case, but the duo also laid out the entire scrapped sequence in detail.
After Reese confirmed "Ryan Reynolds read the scene with [Downey and Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan]," Wernick admitted they were kept in the dark about Marvel Studios' Doom plans when the Iron Man actor ultimately declined to appear (a decision which now makes far more sense).
As for what the stinger looked like, Reese explained, "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."
Adds Wernick, "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. And Wade was rejected and then he dressed all the Avengers down in a way only Deadpool could do."
"That’s a little bit of a scoop," Reese noted, "but he was going to get mad and basically attack each one of them in a vicious kind of way."
Pushed for details on how the Merc with the Mouth was going to attack Tony and Happy, Reese recalls that Deadpool "was definitely going to try to pick up Thor’s Hammer," though it would be Rob Delaney's Peter who "casually" picked up Mjolnir according to Wernick.
"Peter casually picked up Thor’s Hammer in the background. That was the joke," Reese remembers. "Originally, Peter accompanied him there. There were never screenplay pages, but it was the idea of the scene. I remember pitching that he was going to try to get Captain America to swear."
It sounds like a star-studded, thoroughly bonkers scene but nothing was ever shot so this won't be included on the Blu-ray when Deadpool & Wolverine wraps up its theatrical run.
On a side note, Captain America, The Vision, and Jane Foster remain the only MCU characters to wield Mjolnir outside of Thor and we're sure many of you will argue whether Peter is a worthy addition to that list, even if it was just meant as a joke!
Regardless, there are no hard feelings about Downey passing on Deadpool & Wolverine as Reese later acknowledged, "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."
Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters.