Your bag is empty.
When FX announced that Donald Glover is no longer involved with Marvel Television’s animated Deadpool series, the assumption was that the ridiculously prolific polymath had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Remember, this is the guy who, when not winning Emmys for his groundbreaking TV show Atlanta, or touring the world as his rap and soul alter ego Childish Gambino, is busy starring in some of Hollywood’s splashiest films.
But as it turns out, there may be more to Glover’s sudden Deadpool exit than meets the eye. On Wednesday, Glover returned to Twitter after an extended hiatus to set the record straight on the project that is now without a network, as FX is also no longer involved. In a series of tweets on Wednesday that began with the cryptic declaration that he “wasn’t too busy to work on Deadpool,” Glover unleashed a 15-page spec script positioned as an excerpt from the hypothetical show’s finale. First of all, the script is glorious. In it, Deadpool is en route to Africa, where he’s been tasked with getting Sudan—the last known male white rhino, who died last week—to mate. It’s just one of the many references Glover ripped straight from recent headlines. The script also addresses the Beyoncé face-biting story that rippled across the internet this week, and alludes to our current commander-in-chief. “I actually think it’s a good thing,” Deadpool says about the show’s cancellation. “I mean, is it even a good time to have a violent, gun-loving white man ranting on TV? Other than the PRESIDENT!” Yeah, this would’ve been a fun show.
Of course, this isn’t an actual script from the now-defunct series. The timeliness of it all suggests that the social media-averse star just whipped it up specifically to clear the murky air. While Variety had speculated over the weekend that the show “may have been a casualty of Donald Glover’s packed schedule,” and FX blamed “creative differences,” Glover’s faux script hints that something far more insidious might have been to blame.
“Do you think they canceled the show because of racism?!” Deadpool wonders at one point. “Yeah, all the writers were black. The references were pretty black, too. I heard they went over lunch budget ordering Jamaican food at least once a week.”
While the line could very well be a pointed jab at industry racism writ large, it could also be Glover’s way of not-so-subtly offering up his explanation for why he and the network ultimately parted ways. Remember, this is the same guy who had no problem exposing the blatant racism that he says he experienced at the hands of Chevy Chase on the set of Community.
Some may argue that the network that gave Glover and his brother Stephen—who was set to write Deadpool—a platform to make what might very well be the blackest show on television—a.k.a. Atlanta—would be immune to ditching a project that celebrates blackness. But Atlanta is a show in which the exploration of what it means to be poor and black in America is its primary currency.
While no superhero is truly apolitical, the recent deluge of comic book fare has largely been devoid of meaningful social undercurrents—that is, of course, until Black Panther happened. And indeed, Glover hints at FX’s concerns by having Deadpool say in the script, “I just want a place to be honest. And I guess that place is Freeform.” (The praise for Freeform is certainly tongue-in-cheek, although the youth-skewing cable channel is gearing up for this summer’s launch of its Marvel series Cloak and Dagger, which features an African-American male lead.)
There’s no telling what Donald Glover’s Deadpool might have looked like. What we do know is that he’s an artist with something important to say, and it would be impossible for him to create something divorced from his core beliefs. He’s an oddball with dark sensibilities, who likes to experiment with tone and whose perspective on race is unflinching. It’s hard to say whether or not those hallmarks would have translated into a cartoon about superheroes vigilante—even one as formally progressive as Deadpool. It’s also a bummer that we’ll never get a chance to find out.