Ryan Reynolds Teases Possible Boyfriend for Deadpool

Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds says he is open to giving the pansexual superhero a boyfriend, which is one way to get us interested in future Deadpool movies.

Superhero movies purport to celebrate the best of humanity, yet their protagonists have all the diversity of a bread slice. The last superhero movie led by a woman was 2005’s Elektra. The last superhero movie led by a person of color was 2004’s Blade: Trinity. The closest we’ve ever gotten to an openly queer big-screen superhero is Rachel Talalay’s 1995 comic adaptation Tank Girl.

Luckily, things won’t stay like this for much longer, with Wonder Woman and Black Panther on the horizon. It might take a more unlikely hero to bring LGBTQ representation to superhero film. Deadpool, perhaps?

In a recent interview with Variety, actor Ryan Reynolds mentioned that the foul-mouthed antihero could get a male love interest in the future. “What love is to Deadpool may not be what love is to Batman or someone else,” he said. “I think that could be played up more. He’s an outsider in every way, shape, and form.”

Deadpool is confirmed as pansexual in the comics, and Reynolds has long maintained that his version of the character will be faithful in that regard.

For all its graphic, “edgy” violence and sex scenes, though, Deadpool only vaguely hints at its hero’s sexual orientation. It sees Wade Wilson in a fairly committed, monogamous relationship with girlfriend Vanessa. And, to be fair, Morena Baccarin is one of the movie’s best elements; we’d rather she didn’t get sidelined or erased in the sequel(s). Still, there are ways to make a character’s queerness canon without having him or her actually hook up.

Continuity isn’t the only reason to not get our hopes up. Hollywood is so absurdly gun-shy when it comes to LGBTQ characters that Sulu briefly embracing his husband in Star Trek Beyond felt radical. A couple years ago, Andrew Garfield, then star of the Amazing Spider-Man films, caused a minor Internet uproar by suggesting that Peter Parker should be bisexual; Sony, however, had other ideas. In fact, the only canonically non-heterosexual blockbuster protagonist we have at the moment is James Bond, thanks to a passing line in Skyfall that the filmmakers seem determined to pretend never happened.

So, at this point, we’re skeptical. But if Reynolds isn’t pulling a Kevin Feige and follows through on his word, it would do a lot to stoke our excitement for more Deadpool.

The character is, after all, known to break barriers.

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