The Merc with a Mouth hijacked Marvel’s Comic-Con panel with the weekend’s biggest crowd-pop — no footage required.
Marvel Studios’ Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con delivered its single biggest crowd-pleaser without rolling a frame of footage. Midway through the presentation, Ryan Reynolds strolled out of the audience wearing a gray-and-black Deadpool suit and stopped the room cold — the kind of unscripted-feeling stunt that has become Comic-Con’s stock-in-trade, and that Reynolds executes better than almost anyone.
True to form, he played the moment for laughs, riffing about muscling his way into “Avengers: Doomsday” before being politely ushered off the stage. Whether the cameo hinted at a genuine role in Marvel’s next two-film Avengers event or was pure showmanship, the bit did exactly what it was designed to do: it became the most-shared clip of the entire weekend within minutes.
The appearance lands at a moment when Reynolds’ Deadpool is one of the most valuable properties on Marvel’s board, and the studio has been coy about how — and how often — the character factors into its road to “Doomsday.” Marvel offered no confirmation either way, which only stoked the speculation. For a panel packed with actual announcements, it was telling that the loudest reaction of the day belonged to a man in a mask who technically wasn’t supposed to be there.
