Yahoo News Deadpool 2's Cable explained
In Deadpool's obligatory post-credits scene, Ryan Reynolds gave a nod to Ferris Bueller by emerging in a bathrobe and revealing that Cable would feature in the sequel.
At which point, the non-comic book readers among you will have scratched your head and said 'Who?', much like you did when Thanos rocked up at the end of Avengers.
Josh Brolin will debut in Deadpool 2 as the most comics-in-the-'90s character ever – a time-travelling mutant cyborg who is and yet kind of isn't the son of two of the best-known X-Men members. The film will apparently not touch on his origin, but it's just too gloriously weird for you not to understand (or at least try to understand).
What you are about to read is honestly what happened in the comics, no word of a lie. We'd say you couldn't make it up, but they actually did.
A childhood like no other
Cable is Nathan Christopher Summers, the son of X-Men leader Scott 'Cyclops' Summers. His mother isn't Scott's sweetheart Jean Grey as you might have expected. No, she's Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean created by Mr Sinister, a villain who has an unhealthy fixation on the Summers-Grey genetics, who you may remember as the creepy guy with the red diamond on his forehead from the '90s X-Men cartoon. His plan is for Nathan to be powerful enough to beat his enemy Apocalypse.
With Jean presumed dead, Cyclops meets her exact double, marries her and has a baby, but as soon as Jean returns he runs off to be with her. Madelyne, understandable upset by this (and struggling with the fake memories of her fabricated past), makes the obvious choice to... well, make a deal with some demons to sacrifice her son in order to usher in hell on earth while dressed in nothing but a cloak, a bikini and knee-high boots. We've all been there.
None of this reflects very well on Cyclops who a) didn't realise that his wife was an exact copy of his old girlfriend, b) was presumably mainly into them for the looks, and c) ditches his wife and baby at the drop of a hat. Creep.
Madelyne – as the 'Goblin Queen' – is defeated, but then Apocalypse rocks up and infects the baby with a 'techno organic virus' to kill of the potential threat. Nathan is sent into the future to be raised by his half-sister Rachel, Jean and Scott's daughter from an alternate reality (Jean at this point has three de facto children that she never had to give birth to).
Nathan grows up as the messiah figure of a group called Clan Askani in a horrible future where Apocalypse rules. They can't fully cure him, so he has to use most of his super-duper mutant powers to keep his virus in check, but at least he gets a cool metal arm out of it. He goes up against his evil clone Stryfe (of course!), who was raised by Apocalypse before the villain's eventual death. Oh, and did we mention Nathan is raised by Jean and Scott, implanted into future empty clone bodies?
Hardcore mercenary type
Meanwhile, the apparently unrelated, adult character Cable was introduced in X-Men spinoff New Mutants, invented by Louise Simonson and Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld. The series was soon replaced by X-Force – a comic intended, like everything in the '90s, to be more gritty and hardcore. To that end, Cable recruited the young mutants into his proactive and aggressive new team.
Cable was probably the ultimate expression of Liefeld's brilliantly ludicrous devotion to superfluous pouches, unfeasibly huge guns and outlandish musculature over, you know, human anatomy.
Cable was eventually revealed to be Nathan Summers, which weirdly made him now older than his parents. Thanks for that, time travel. He has been killed, resurrected and lost in time more often than we can count, has been a frequent X-Men and X-Force member, and even managed to finish off his enemy Apocalypse a couple of times (as well as bringing him back to life on one occasion, just to be contrary).
He has also become a popular partner for Deadpool, probably because the latter is silly and slapstick and the former is grim and serious thanks to his messed-up origin. They managed to support the Cable & Deadpool comic series for an impressive 50 issues – including a story in which Cable was turned into a baby, casting Deadpool as the least likely babysitter ever.
As noted above, most of this is unlikely to factor into Deadpool 2. If it makes you feel better, you can pretend that a crazy clone of Famke Janssen is Cable's mum. We won't stop you.
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