Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for Deadpool 2

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Deadpool 2 is a family film, which means it’s all about the Merc With a Mouth bringing together a ragtag group of heroes to form his own super-team: X-Force! Per Deadpool’s vision, this team will be “forward-thinking, gender-neutral, and young enough to carry a franchise for ten to twelve years.” Around the midpoint of the movie, Weasel goes on LinkedIn and gathers together some promising and not-so-promising applicants, all of whom make it onto the team (because it turns out Deadpool isn’t actually that picky).

The newly-formed X-Force grab a helicopter ride ready to sky-dive into their first mission… and then almost all of them are horribly killed before or shortly after they make it to the ground. Maybe Deadpool should have taken that wind advisory a bit more seriously.

X-Force’s disastrous first mission is easily one of the best and funniest scenes in the movie, made all the better by how well it was kept secret. The trailers for Deadpool 2 even included shots of Bedlam and Shatterstar fighting bad guys (which they never actually get around to doing), so that fans would assume that they all land safely. Instead, we get an escalating series of gory disasters, a Brad Pitt cameo, and undeniable proof that luck really is a superpower.

  • This Page: X-Force Team Members & Their First Mission Page 2: Will the Original X-Force Line-Up Stay Dead?

X-Force in Deadpool 2’s Marketing

The X-Force twist works so well because the team had been built up so much in the marketing. In fact, fans who have been closely following all the latest Deadpool-related news will know that an X-Force movie is already in development, with Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) writing and directing. Everyone was expecting Deadpool 2 to introduce the team and give them their first adventure, before launching them into their own franchise.

The line-up of characters included quite a few D-listers, but that’s fitting for a movie franchise where the smaller budgets are a running joke. Domino and Cable, both of whom are intrinsically tied to X-Force in the comics, were the most heavily promoted new characters in Deadpool 2’s trailers. Curiously, however, there were no big announcements for the other members of the team until the final trailer, which introduced all of them by name (excluding Vanisher).

In hindsight, the fact that Deadpool 2’s marketing didn’t focus too much on X-Force makes a lot of sense - after all, they have so little screen time that there wasn’t actually a lot of footage that could be included in the trailers. Nonetheless, both the pre-movie hype and the movie itself give X-Force enough build-up that their downfall is as unexpected as it is hilarious.

X-Force’s First Mission

Deadpool decides that they will sky-dive onto the convoy as it passes through Vancouver - seemingly for no other reason than to look cool and make an entrance. After all, Deadpool 2 has a bigger budget than the first movie, so why not go full Point Break? While they’re in the helicopter, the pilot notes that they’re experiencing some bad turbulence and Peter gets a little nervous about the wind levels - but Deadpool dismisses his “Sugar-Bear’s” concerns. X-Force dives from the helicopter as AC/DC belts out “Thunderstruck” and for a brief shining moment they do look really cool. Then they open their parachutes, and it all goes wrong.

The wind sends X-Force spinning wildly off-course. Deadpool manages to get off fairly easily by crashing into a billboard, but most of his recruits aren’t so lucky. Bedlam steers into the path of an oncoming bus and gets instantly pulverized. Shatterstar’s parachute carries him directly into the blades of a helicopter, reducing him to green goo and a severed hair braid. Vanisher gets tangled up in electrical cables and fried (making him visible for just long enough to reveal Brad Pitt in his first superhero role), and is later seen falling to earth as a burned-up husk. Zeitgeist somehow manages to land in a woodchipper feet-first. Peter (who landed safely) tries to get him out, but Zeitgeist spews acidic vomit all over him and gets sucked into the wood chipper and reduced to bloody mulch as Peter dissolves in agony on the ground.

Domino lands safely, of course.

Page 2 of 2: Will the Original X-Force Line-Up Stay Dead?

Will the Original X-Force Line-Up Stay Dead?

As perfect as X-Force’s introduction and immediate mass-slaughter was, some fans may be disappointed that they never got to see the team in action - especially since Terry Crews (Bedlam), Lewis Tan (Shatterstar) and Bill Skarsgård (Zeitgeist) are popular actors with strong fan followings. And before they all died their horrible deaths, they did look pretty cool.

There might be some hope in the fact that Deadpool 2’s end-credits scenes bring one member of the X-Force team back to life. Negasonic Teenage Warhead manages to repair Cable’s time travel device, and Deadpool uses it to travel back in time and warn Peter away from trying to help Zeitgeist. Peter agrees that things have gotten pretty scary and decides to just walk away from the fight and go home. He might appear again in future movies, but he seems to have decided against launching a new career as a superhero.

However, Deadpool doesn’t use time-travel to bring any of the other members of X-Force’s original line-up back to life, and we haven’t heard anything about Crews, Tan or Skarsgård signing on for multiple movies (Zazie Beetz has a three-movie deal as Domino), so sadly we may have seen the last of X-Force’s original line-up… unless of course Deadpool has a change of heart somewhere down the line and uses Cable’s time travel device to bring everyone back. Speaking in an interview with CBR, co-writer Rhett Reese said that the introduction of the time machine means “we can always go back in time and make anybody alive,” and specifically referenced Shatterstar as a character who could return if fans were really upset over his death:

So, don’t give up hope of seeing the original X-Force recruits again!

“In the very back of our mind, we did have the time machine in our heads, saying if we really need to resurrect Shatterstar, if people are that upset that he’s going, we can do it.”

Who’s in Deadpool 2’s Final X-Force Line-Up?

At the end of the movie, Deadpool has managed to scrounge together a new X-Force line-up, consisting of himself, Domino, Cable, Firefist, Colossus and Dopinder. At least, those are the six characters who are seen walking down the road together when the movie ends. Domino and Cable are already confirmed to be returning for X-Force, and we can almost certainly expect to see Deadpool in that movie as well. In the movie’s end credits, Shioli Kutsuna’s (Yukio) name is accompanied with a caption that says, “the X-Force is strong with this one,” so we may see her again in X-Force. And who knows - perhaps Deadpool will be able to convince Negasonic Teenage Warhead to come along for the ride as well.

According to Deadpool 2 writer Rhett Reese, Drew Goddard already has a story in mind for X-Force, so don’t be surprised if he ends up adding a character or two of his own to the line-up. Apparently Deadpool’s world is just full of random mutants and aliens cruising LinkedIn for superhero team opportunities, so it shouldn’t be too hard to round up a few more recruits.

Let us know what you thought of Deadpool 2’s big X-Force twist, and whether you’re hoping those characters will somehow return, in the comments below!

More: X-Force Movie: Every Update You Need To Know

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