There’s a Guinness World Record for pretty much anything you can think of, and it’s always interesting when you see it intersect with geek culture. A few years ago, a man in Florida took home a record for seeing Spider-Man: No Way Home in theaters about 300 times, and now it’s Deadpool & Wolverine that’s gone and set a record—two of ’em, in fact.
The surprise appearance of Blade in the film’s third act means Wesley Snipes now has the world record for longest tenure of any live-action Marvel actor. At 25 years and 340 days, the actor has dethroned Hugh Jackman, who was originally expected to take the crown from Patrick Stewart. The last time we saw Snipes play Blade was alllllllll the way back in 2007 with Blade: Trinity, which gives him another time-related record. At 19 years and 231 days, he’s now got the longest gap between character appearances in Marvel films. His Deadpool & Wolverine appearance beat out Alfred Molina’s 17-year gap between playing Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2 (2004, the movie) and No Way Home.
Like with Deadpool & Wolverine’s other guest characters, seeing Blade pop up was a shock to many. Beyond the Mahershala Ali of it all (or the unfortunate lack thereof), it seemed Snipes had put the superhero life behind him, to say nothing of the allegedly rough relationship he and Ryan Reynolds had while filming Trinity. But in an interview with Entertainment Weekly before the movie’s release, he revealed a text from Reynolds got the whole ball rolling.
“It didn’t make sense to me,” he recalled, “but when you get a call from Ryan out of the blue after 20 years, you go, ‘Okay, I got to take this call.’ […] He told me the idea… They said ‘yes’ and ‘it’s a go.’ ‘If you’re in, we’re in.’” It was tough to keep a lid on the news, ditto getting physically ready for whatever action was in store. But he was glad to do it again, and remains hopeful in seeing what Ali eventually brings to the table. “You need a lot of secret sauce to do the Blade thing, man. Good luck. You’re my man, though.”
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