Free Guy Delivers The Cameo Marvel Fans Wanted In Deadpool

Free Guy featured the Marvel cameo that fans desperately wanted to see in Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds is best known for his superhero role as Wade Wilson, but while audiences wait for the Merc-with-a-Mouth’s next outing, the actor has been busy starring in non-superhero roles. One of his latest projects was Free Guy which was chock-full of surprise cameos, including one from another fan-favorite Marvel actor, Hugh Jackman.

Directed by Shawn Levy, with the screenplay written by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn, Free Guy follows Guy (Reynolds), a seemingly innocuous bank teller who eventually realizes that he’s actually a non-playable character (NPC) in a popular online game called Free City. He teams up with real-life video game programmers Millie (Jodie Comer) who enters the virtual reality as Molotovgirl to keep the world from being deleted by the narcissistic CEO of the game company, Antwan (Taika Waiti), aided by her former business partner, Keyes (Joe Keery). Aside from Free Guy‘s primary cast, it also featured a long list of celebrity cameos or voice roles including Chris Evans, Channing Tatum, Alek Trebek, Dwayne Johnson, and John Krasinski.

That being said, Evans wasn’t the only Marvel actor who appeared in the movie. Hugh Jackman was also in Free Guy, albeit in a less explicit way. The beloved X-Men star provided the voice for the masked avatar that Molotovgirl encounters and kills in an alleyway in her first introduction into the movie. Jackman didn’t physically film the scene. Instead, he simply sent a voice memo to Levy, whom he previously worked with on Real Steel. With his Free Guy appearance, movie fans finally got the Hugh Jackman cameo in a Ryan Reynolds movie that they longed to see in Deadpool. After their initial team-up in the critically-panned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds had a second chance to play Wade properly through 2016’s Deadpool. During the project’s production, people were clamoring for Jackman’s Wolverine to show up even just for a brief cameo, but that didn’t happen. 

There were similar calls for the Australian actor to pop up in Deadpool 2. But by the time the film started production, Jackman has already retired the role in James Mangold’s critically-acclaimed Logan. Considering how well done the 2017 post-apocalyptic neo-noir was, the actor has been understandably hesitant about revisiting the role. In fact, even after Marvel Studios regained all the rights to the mutants, Jackman has remained adamant about his decision to retire from the role of Wolverine, even with the opportunity to potentially appear in the MCU. Despite that, the Deadpool franchise wasn’t without any Jackman references. There was a string of fun, some even deep-cut, Easter eggs for both the actor and his Marvel character peppered in both the original Deadpool and its sequel.

While the specific details are still being kept tightly under wraps, Deadpool 3 is now officially in the works over at Marvel Studios. This means that clamor for a Jackman appearance will inevitably begin again. However, after the first two Deadpool films, the chances of it finally coming to fruition are slim to none. But perhaps Reynolds and Marvel Studios could borrow a page from Free Guy‘s book and settle on just a voice cameo instead. That way, it isn’t that too much of a hassle for Jackman, and given his great relationship with the people making the movie, he’d presumably be more inclined to participate. 

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