From a legally questionable character appearing in the first movie to having the entire Days of Future Past X-Men team making a fleeting appearance in the second, Deadpool clearly likes oddball cameos. Compared to other tricks these movies pull, having cameos is almost a break from the crazy antics. But there’s one big, obvious cameo that’s missing so far: Wolverine.
This should be easy: Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman both love teasing a potential cameo, but there’s more to getting it to happen. Even leaving aside production schedules and actor availability, a Wolverine cameo wouldn’t sit well with many fans. After Wolverine’s story was brought to a great conclusion in Logan, having him appear again in a more humorous, irreverent part in Deadpool 3 wouldn’t feel right. But what if Hugh Jackman appeared in the movie not as Wolverine, but as.. himself?
This isn’t exactly a new idea -- the writers talked about doing this before, and it works so well for the world of Deadpool that they’d almost be foolish not to do it. They’ve even referenced Hugh Jackman himself, with Wade wearing a mask of his face in one scene in the first movie. Actually having him in the film, though, opens a lot more opportunities.
To give just one example, they could have Wade get confused about which reality he’s in and have him think that Jackman is Wolverine. Though it’d be similar to the X-Force gag in Deadpool 2, having Jackman gruesomely killed in battle because Wade thinks he’s Wolverine is almost too good of a setup not to use. Wade keeps trying to convince Jackman that he’s Wolverine, maybe even making and giving him claws to fight with, only to die gruesomely. It doesn’t have to play out the same as in Deadpool 2, but it’s a starting point for how his role could play out.
In addition to the joke potential, this also avoids messing with bringing the mutants into the Marvel Cinematic universe. You don’t want to bring in Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, just to cast someone else in the same role later in the “real” X-Men movies. Jackman can have his cameo while Wade plays with the fourth wall for a while, and they can just keep going ahead into the real MCU X-Men later on.
Even better, Marvel could use this to pass the torch to the new Wolverine. If Marvel Studios has the mutants side of the MCU figured out in time, it could even have Jackman and the new Wolverine in the same scene. This lets them pass the role on from, if not old Wolverine to new Wolverine, then from old Wolverine actor to new Wolverine actor.
It wouldn't have to stop with just Hugh Jackman, either. Patrick Stewart has shown interest in a Deadpool cameo, so why not handle that the same way? Or to go even further, Marvel can play with actors already in the MCU. Who wants to see Terrence Howard and Don Cheadle both appear in a scene about who’s the better War Machine? Opportunities like this don’t come along that often. Thor: Ragnarok came close with the Matt Damon cameo, but other than that, the MCU has stayed pretty much in its own reality. Deadpool throws out all reality and embraces the ridiculousness like few other superhero properties, so why not just keep going as ridiculously as possible?
While it’s still far from a foregone conclusion that it’ll happen, fans and the actors seem to want a Hugh Jackman cameo in the Deadpool movies. Logan may have definitively ended this version of Wolverine, but no one said that Jackman has to be playing Wolverine if he appears in another Marvel Universe film. In a franchise so in love with breaking the fourth wall and other metafiction, having Hugh Jackman the actor, rather than Wolverine the character, seems like the perfect move.