Negasonic Teenage Warhead Will Be “A Lot Cooler” in Deadpool 2

We’re pretty cynical when it comes to teenage sidekicks in our superhero movies. Fortunately, most of today’s filmmakers have the same attitude toward sidekicks that we have and we’ve been blessed with Ellen Page as Boltie in Super and Dafne Keen as X-23 in Logan, rather than Robin in short-shorts backing Batman or gee-whiz-shucks Bucky fighting alongside Captain America.

Another surprise treat was Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead in Deadpool, an addition that, played the wrong way, could have ruined the movie, but instead managed to elevate the story and reveal a surprisingly needy-for-approval layer of the Merc with the Mouth’s persona. Thankfully, the angsty, sullen X-Man-in-training will be back in Deadpool 2, and be “a lot cooler” than in her first go-round, according to Hildebrand, though she confesses she hasn’t “actually read the script.” Hildebrand has seen some concept art, which revealed to her that her Negasonic Teenage Warhead has matured:

I’m very excited. [I’ve seen] some ideas, nothing that’s concrete or anything. But I think it’s cool that she’s grown and matured and she still has so much of this essence of a punk kid.

David Leitch (John Wick) will be directing Deadpool 2 from a script by Deadpool writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds and Drew Goddard. Reynolds returns as Wade Wilson/Deadpool, with Zazie Beetz as Domino and an actor-to-be-determined as the time-traveling X-Man Cable.

Deadpool 2 is expected to start shooting in June and wrap in September, for a planned early-2018 release.