Deadpool & Wolverine Pic Reveals Blade Variant Before Marvel’s Reboot?
Let’s face it: this is a pretty weird time for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While everyone is hyped up for Deadpool & Wolverine, exciting projects like the Blade movie seem to be stuck in limbo. Furthermore, nobody knows whether or not Disney can successfully pivot away from Jonathan Majors to give us a new villain as compelling as Kang or Thanos. Nobody but Kevin Feige knows the future of the Avengers films, but we may know the future of Blade: an official image from Deadpool & Wolverine shows what appears to the Blade as played by Kirk Jones, better known as Sticky Fingaz.
The Maybe Blade
Like almost everything having to do with the multiversal mania of Deadpool & Wolverine, this potential Blade news is going to take some time to explain. The image in question has our title characters in the foreground, so it’s very difficult to make out the exact facial details of the character on the far right.
However, the fact that he’s a Black man wearing a trenchcoat has made many Marvel fans think that he must be some kind of Blade variant.
Not Snipes Or Ali
While the facial details are fuzzy, this Deadpool & Wolverine image helps us rule out some of the possibilities for who could be playing Blade. For example, we’re definitely not looking at Wesley Snipes, the screen legend who turned this vampire into a blockbuster Marvel franchise long before the MCU began.
And we’re not looking at Mahershala Ali, the acclaimed actor who appeared in Eternals as the character and will reprise the role in an upcoming Blade film (assuming, at this rate, that the solo film about the Daywalker ever sees the light of day).
It Could Be Sticky Fingaz
However, the more fans look at this promotional Deadpool & Wolverine image, the more they think we might be looking at Sticky Fingaz, who played the famous Marvel vampire in the short-lived show Blade: The Series.
That series had a slightly different plot from the films, with the title character linking up with a brother/sister duo and trying to infiltrate vampires organized by a charismatic leader. This 2006 series lasted only 12 episodes and has largely faded from our collective pop culture memory.
Hey, It’s Toad!
It’s impossible right now to confirm whether the mysterious figure in this Deadpool & Wolverine image really is Sticky Fingaz’s Blade, but it seems very likely. For one thing, the Deadpool films have often poked fun at Marvel’s tangled continuity, like when Wade Wilson revealed that he knew multiple actors had played Charles Xavier.
For another thing, this upcoming movie seems to be using its Wasteland setting to feature once-prominent characters who got the shaft (you can also see Ray Park’s Toad in this image, a character who hasn’t appeared onscreen since the first X-Men movie).
We’ll Find Out In July
Plus, Deadpool & Wolverine featuring a character like Blade from a failed TV show would match the vibe of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which had Anson Mount reprise his role as Black Bolt from that awful Inhumans show.
Still, the jury is out on whether all these cameos and winking Easter eggs will actually add up to a good movie or not. If Blade is in this film, he might be able to remind Disney executives not to try to ice skate uphill when it comes to Deadpool and Wolverine, their last universally popular heroes.
