[This story contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.]
The ending of this summer’s billion-dollar Deadpool & Wolverine Marvel installment could have looked slightly different, if Ryan Reynolds hadn’t been married to Blake Lively.
The film, which stars Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the respective super heroes (and in which Lively appears briefly as Lady Deadpool), ended with Deadpool and Wolverine’s fate called into question after they destroyed the time ripper and disappeared from the screen. For a moment, while Matthew MacFadyen’s Paradox delivers one more evil speech, audiences can’t be sure the heroes have made it out alive.
“Credit where credit is due. It used to be that there was no suspense, that the power room blew up, and our heroes had survived,” director Shawn Levy says on the director’s commentary release of the film, reported by Games Radar. “It was Blake Lively who said to us, ‘You know, I’ve been with you this whole movie. I want to sit in the fear that they’re lost. Let me be in that place of suspense so the triumph of their survival is more emotional and visceral.’”
Levy added, “It really opened up a new way of thinking about this part of the movie and it’s why we did this reshoot… and, here, the payoff is so much more satisfying.”
Elsewhere in the commentary, Reynolds — who also served as a producer for the record-breaking film — revealed that the team only did a day-and-a-half of reshoots.
“These kinds of movies typically involve weeks of reshoots. But this speech that Matthew has is one of the pieces that we reshot. And he is miraculous.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to reps for Reynolds, Lively and Levy for further comment.
Lively has seemingly proven her producer’s vision several times this year, given that Deadpool & Wolverine released within a month of Lively’s It Ends With Us, an adaptation of the bestselling Colleen Hoover novel. Shortly after the latter movie’s release, THR learned that Lively commissioned a separate cut of the movie amid alleged tension with director Justin Baldoni. The separate cut came from editor Shane Reid, an editor for Deadpool & Wolverine and for Lively-directed Taylor Swift music video, “I Bet You Think About Me.” It’s unclear which cut became the final film. Sources later told THR that Lively’s cut was the one playing in theaters.
During the It Ends With Us press tour, Lively also revealed that Reynolds helped write a key rooftop scene toward the beginning of the movie. “We help each other,” the actress wrote on Instagram. “He works on everything I do. I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations are mine and mine are his.”
