If you were expecting a big Deadpool announcement at Disney's D23 expo earlier this month, you might've been disappointed. But since when has Deadpool ever played by the rules of other Marvel movies--MCU or not? Instead of taking the stage at a big expo, Ryan Reynolds himself announced the release date for his third outing as the Merc with a Mouth in Deadpool 3 from his couch, along with a cameo from a friend.

　　Hard keeping my mouth sewn shut about this one. ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/OdV7JmAkEu

　　— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) September 27, 2022

　　Deadpool 3 will hit theaters on September 6, 2024, starring Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and, yes, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine one last time. It's everything you'd expect from Reynolds, from Jackman's casual, blink-and-you'll-miss-it background appearance to the music choice of Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You."

　　This reveal leaves us with even more questions than answers. Wondering why Marvel didn't choose to announce it at D23 or next week at New York Comic-Con is just the first of many. Hugh Jackman will be playing Wolverine again, despite publicly stepping away from the role after 2017's Logan; the first X-Men film released in July 2000, meaning Jackman will have been playing the character for nearly a quarter century when Deadpool hits theaters.

　　Marvel's gigantic cinematic universe has long been without one of the company's most popular and enduring properties, the X-Men. While Disney brought the X-Men back in-house with its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, the interconnected nature of MCU and the long history of X-Men films meant that it was never going to be as simple as just making a new X-Men movie and dropping it. Fans have been asking since the acquisition how Marvel would bring mutants into their established universe.

　　We still don't know just how that will happen, but hints have been growing steadily, starting with the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this spring. Doctor Strange's jaunt through the multiverse brought him to Earth-838 and to that Earth's Illuminati. Along with the Illuminati's other members, including Mordo, Black Bolt, Captain Peggy Carter, Reed Richards, Maria Rambeau's Captain Marvel, out rolled Patrick Stewart in a green suit jacket and a hovering yellow-gold wheelchair as that earth's Professor Xavier, a role he's played alongside Jackman's Wolverine and for just as long.

　　While that character met an untimely end, we got another hint in July with the finale of the Disney+ Ms. Marvel series, in which her friend Bruno reveals that Kamala has a mutant gene. While it's not immediately clear whether that refers to the Inhuman gene she possesses in the comics or the X-Gene that makes one a mutant, Marvel does not mess around with the word 'mutant.' Disney+ brought us our latest hint in She-Hulk, in which a newspaper headline refers to a barroom brawl involving a man with claws jutting out of his hands. We also can't forget about WandaVision's casting of Evan Peters, who played Pietro Maximoff, also known as Quicksilver, in the X-Men films. That turned out to be less of a hint and more of a prank, though, as it eventually came out that the character was not, in fact, Wanda's brother, but was an actor named John Boehner.

　　With nearly two years between now and September 2024, the wait to see two of our favorite X-Men characters together will be a long one.

　　Eric Frederiksen on Google+