After astonishing audiences and making a pile of money at the box office in 2016, superpowered mercenary Deadpool is back for his second movie next month – and so far things are looking pretty rosy for Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with a mouth.

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According to the Hollywood Reporter, Deadpool 2 has had extremely high scores from test audiences, with one cut of the film (which 20th Century Fox will be using) scoring 98 out of a possible 100.

However, perhaps more intriguingly, the report also mentions that Deadpool 2 recently went through some reshoots to add extra content to the film, including two hours of work in Los Angeles for a “secret cameo”.

Naturally, this has fans already speculating who the cameo could be, with a few prime contenders (not including comic-book creator Stan Lee, whose appearances in superhero films is near-compulsory at this point).

For many, the obvious choice for a cameo would be veteran X-Men actor Hugh Jackman, who was referred to several times in the first film and is friendly with leading man Ryan Reynolds. Jackman said goodbye to his iconic X-Men role Wolverine in last year’s Oscar-nominated Logan, but who’s to say the actor couldn’t appear as himself, contributing to Deadpool’s trademark meta stylings?

Alternatively, it could be that we’ll see one of the other movie X-Men making an appearance. The first Deadpool film was the highest-grossing X-Men film of all time, and with another movie in the franchise – Simon Kinberg’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix – set to debut later this year they might want to use Deadpool's popularity to draw attention to their own upcoming release.

However, perhaps after his name was dropped in the first film, it could be James McAvoy’s Professor X making a cameo. We saw the X-Mansion and a few of the second-tier X-Men in Deadpool, so maybe it’s time for their boss to make an appearance in a bigger budget sequel.

It could be an even deeper cut from Deadpool’s comic-book catalogue, maybe a classic character from superhero team X-Force (Josh Brolin’s Cable, who appears in the new film, is famously a member of that team) or one of Deadpool’s other frequent allies and enemies.

And then there’s the nuclear option. What if, after it was revealed that Marvel’s parent company Disney was buying X-Men studio 20th Century Fox last year, they found time to sneak in an MCU cameo? Thus far, the X-Men and Avengers franchises have existed in separate franchises – but wouldn’t it be very Deadpool to sneak in Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury, or one of the key Avengers, for a post-credits scene?

It would have to be short – two hours is an insanely short amount of time to shoot something – and considering they shot it away from the rest of their set in Vancouver, Canada it must have featured someone whose schedule they were very keen to accommodate.

Then again, it could be someone completely unconnected to the world of superheroes, whose appearance will baffle just as many audience members as it thrills. Knowing Deadpool, this might be the likeliest option of all.

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Deadpool 2 is released in UK cinemas on 15th May

Authors

Huw FullertonCommissioning Editor

Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.

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