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Mahershala Ali’s Blade reboot has become one of the most tumultuous productions in the MCU’s history. With multiple rewrites and false starts with filming, the movie has become something of a punchline among fans. Even Wesley Snipes, who played the Daywalker in the late 90s/early 00s Blade trilogy, has gotten in on the act, poking fun at the multiple delays. Just to throw salt in the wound, Snipes even showed up as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine - 20 years after he last played the character before Ali’s beleaguered reboot even started filming.

What must really make this sting for Ali is that Snipes has seemed to enjoy poking fun at the reboot’s inability to get off the ground. Following the exit of Blade’s second director, Snipes wrote on social media, “Blade, lordylordylordy. Folks still lookin for the secret sauce, riding snowmobiles in traffic, kinda rough. Daywalkers make it look easy, don’t they?” All while knowing that he was going to get another appearance as the character before Ali even gets fitted for his fangs.

We do wonder if, when trying to sort all these cameos and appearances for Deadpool & Wolverine, the conversation came up about getting Mahershala Ali to play Blade in the film, but we’re glad that wasn’t our first real introduction to his take on the character. After this long in production, it would be anticlimactic to have his first on-screen appearance be in a seemingly random cameo in someone else’s movie. Besides, Deadpool & Wolverine is as much a celebration (and send-up) of comic book film history as anything else, so it is fitting that Snipes’ Blade, who helped kick off the trend in 1998, is included in that conversation.

We don’t doubt that Mahershala Ali will have the last laugh when his Blade film finally hits cinemas, even if we doubt it will be in 2025 as previously announced. However, for now, we’re just happy the reunion between Ryan Reynolds and Wesley Snipes following 2004’s Blade Trinity resulted in a far less terrible film.

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