SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Deadpool. If you haven’t had a chance to see the film yet, and don’t wish for any part of it to be ruined, please click away to one of our other wonderful articles!
In crafting the relationship between Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) and Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick did what they could to stay as close to the source material as possible… but fans will likely recognize one significant change to Vanessa’s identity. In Marvel Comics, her character is actually better known as Copycat – a mutant with shapeshifting abilities similar to Mystique’s. Fans may wonder why this alteration was made, but there actually is a very straight forward explanation: it just made things too confusing.
After seeing Deadpool, I was one of the fans curious about why Vanessa wasn’t revealed as the mutant that she is in the comics, so when I hopped on the phone with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick a couple weeks ago I took the opportunity to ask about it. While they didn’t quite remember if there was ever a specific version of the script that featured Copycat, they did mention that it was something they considered including before deciding that it would simply be too much for the audience. Or as Reese put it,
We did toy with [the idea], you know, but again, there was so much for the audience... We’re introducing a new character to the world, and so we didn’t want to muddy the waters with, ‘Wait a second, she’s also a mutant?’ So hopefully, we’ll see what happens if we’re afforded the opportunity to move forward on this world. It’s something that would probably be worth exploring at some point.
Now that we know Deadpool 2 is officially a go, this statement definitely only increases our interest in the next movie. Right now, nothing is known about the sequel other than the fact that it will feature the bionic arm-sporting, time traveling mutant known as Cable, but what if the film featured Copycat as well? Learning that Vanessa has mutant abilities would certainly take some leg work on the part of the writers following the events of Deadpool, but there are surely many creative options that could work.
Vanessa/Copycat was actually introduced in the very same Marvel Comics issue that brought us Deadpool - Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld's The New Mutants #98 - but her first apperence wasn't actually as herself. Instead, she spent a good amount of time disguised as the probability-altering mutant known as Domino in an attempt to infiltrate the X-Force. It wasn't until almost exactly two years later, in X-Force #19, that Copycat revealed her true form. On beyond those comics, she was also featured in some of Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness’ brilliant Deadpool issues in flashback.
Would you like to see Vanessa reveal herself as or become Copycat in Deadpool 2? Or do you think it’s best at this point to just keep her as a normal human? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
