When I think about a movie (or television show) cameo, two very distinct variations come to mind: the first is a cameo of another fictional in-universe character, and the second is an actor from a past project reprising their role or just briefly showing up as someone else in a new project. In my mind, both of these methods can be done successfully if they’re executed properly. Cameos now have become more of a marketing tool than a fun inclusion in a movie and to put it simply, it’s backfiring. If a cameo can’t be kept a secret, I personally don’t think it should be included in a movie or it just comes off as pandering.
With Deadpool and Wolverine now firmly set in the main MCU timeline, audiences got a solid throwback to how cameos should be done and it’s one of the reasons I felt prompted to write this in the first place. Despite what you think about the movie, one thing we all have to admit is that this movie was fun, and one of the things that made it so fun were the surprise cameos. The main keyword here is surprise, and I hope you retain that because if you’re going to take one thing from this article away with you, that should be it.
A (Very) Brief History Of Cameos
The Arrowverse
Going back through the last 15 years of impactful superhero cameos, my mind automatically always goes to the Deathstroke mask on Lian Yu during the first two seasons of Arrow, ominously hinting that the lethal Batman big bad would eventually be making his way to live action. The series began with a shot of the infamous Deathstroke mask hanging from a branch, showing viewers that the character was out there somewhere even if he wasn’t the featured season one big bad, Malcolm Merlyn. What was the purpose of doing this? It kept viewers invested in a show that I’m assuming producers and showrunners didn’t know for sure was going to work or not. If you plant a seed for another fan favorite character without telling the audience when, if, or how there will ever be a payoff then they’re almost guaranteed to invest themselves in the story. This might not work across the board for the general population of movie goers, but the desired demographic will take notice: the superhero and comic book fans.
The Arrowverse didn’t do everything right, but one thing that it knocked out of the park at one time were its cameos… at least during the first few years. The first season of Arrow didn’t actually feature the character of Deathstroke. It gave us the character of Slade Wilson (GOAT’d by Manu Bennett, by the way), the man Deathstroke was before he became the assassin who would eventually try to kill Oliver Queen and his entire family…. er, city. The show gave us a glimpse at who this Slade Wilson character could potentially become. The genius behind that approach was that it gave the audience time to actually get to know the character of Slade Wilson (as an ally) and kept us invested in his story. If we see the human-side before, and we’re teased about the monster that they could become, then the audience is almost guaranteed to become invested. Multiply that ten times over if the character being teased is an A or B list DC or Marvel character.
This method was so effective that there were times during the low points of season one where the only thing that kept me going through some of the filler episodes was wondering when they would pay off the Deathstroke tease, or if they even would. That strategy, paired with the last few minutes of most episodes pushing forward the overarching season long story (think: Marvel post credit scene) made the anticipation of seeing Deathstroke even more impactful than when he was actually in the show.
Marvel Phase 1 & 2
The thing about the Arrowverse using cameos right is that it was not the only platform to do so, far from it actually. Let’s face it, Marvel championed cameos in phase 1. It used them brilliantly to slowly introduce new versions of characters to the big screen, tie together self contained stories, and build an overarching long term story to keep people coming back to the movies. This is without a doubt in my mind one of the main reasons the first Avengers movie did as well as it did in the box office, which I will elaborate on later.
The first four movies of the MCU were self contained (for the most part) stories that introduced the core embers of the Avengers: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk. The movies could be enjoyed on their own for what they were, and while there were cameos sprinkled in they didn’t over-saturate anything which kept new cameos feeling fresh and exciting. They really did an excellent job with this up until the Thor: Ragnarok days. No knock to that movie as it’s my personal favorite of the Thor franchise, but not every movie needs a “revengers” style team up. We want Tony and Rhodey again, Cap and Falcon… not Thor rolling deep with 15 B and C-tier characters. I can understand them using Hulk in that movie since they couldn’t do another Hulk solo film at that point and there was real audience demand for the character, but Valkyrie, Korg, and even Loki just felt forced at times. Loki was only necessary for transitioning into Infinity War, Korg would have served well by himself as strictly background comedic relief, and if we’re being completely real here I still don’t know why they even introduced Valkyrie. It felt like they were trying to build a makeshift Guardians of the Galaxy and it just didn’t work. Ragnarok was still a very good movie, at least in my own opinion, but that was the tipping point on cameos for me.
The Tipping Point: Captain America: Civil War, aka Avengers 2.5 and DC’s Arrowverse Crossovers
If I had to choose a turning point where cameos started to become too much, I would point to the Captain America: Civil War era. That was when, in my mind, the MCU got too crazy with putting as many character in a movie as they could. I wouldn’t expect audiences to be as excited for Avengers team ups if non-Avengers team ups offer basically the same thing. It wasn’t a bomb by any means, but a story like Civil War is something they could have based an entire phase of movies on, instead deciding to pack it all into one two and a half hour movie. It was a strange decision because after the success of Captain America: Winter Solider it was obvious Chris Evans could carry his own movie, so why overload one movie with all those characters when you already have a proven formula for the character? Civil War wasn’t a bad movie, but it opened the floodgate for cameos and from that point on every movie started feeling like a giant cameo fest. After Civil War you have movies Thor: Ragnarok, Infinity War, Endgame, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. With the latest Spider-Man movie the Andrew Garfield and Tobey Macguire cameos were more than welcome but I don’t personally think all the villains were necessary. I believe the movie would have been better overall had they kept it to either just Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin or Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock.
The last example I’ll use goes back to DC’s Arrowverse – just like the Marvel movies, the DC shows on the CW also eventually overdid the cameos. The crossovers in the later seasons were entertaining, but I can’t help but think they would have been a lot better if shows like the Legends of Tomorrow and Black Lightning didn’t expand them to confusing levels. Those were not bad shows by any means, but by that point the crossovers honestly became hard to follow. The crossover events, specifically Crisis on Infinite Earths, were some of the highlights of the later seasons of those shows but if they would have pulled back on the amount of featured characters the more important characters would have had a larger impact.
Let’s just call a spade a spade: when there are too many cameos in a movie or a television show, there’s almost a guarantee that the quality control took a backseat in favor of cameo over-saturation. Let’s face it, having that many characters in a show or movie makes it hard to write quality content for each and every character and more times than not it shows.
The Post Credit Scene Problem
Cameos done right can be a big draw to seeing a movie, however too many cameos or doing them the wrong way actually makes them a perfect example of diminishing returns. Now, in 2024, we have firm examples of cameos done poorly from almost every movie studio who were once the pioneers. For example, some of the following cameos are all from different movie studios that basically lead to nothing, which is another major issue with the over-saturation of cameos: Henry Cavill’s Superman at the end of Black Adam, the introduction of Joe Manginello’s Deathstroke during the Snyder cut Justice League post-credit scene, the Venom post credit where he crosses into the MCU for a split second, the Spider-Man: Homecoming post credit scene with the Vulture and the Scorpion (both movies from Sony), or the Eternals post credit scene with Starfox and Pip (from Marvel/Disney). Then you also have the Shang-Chi ten rings post credit, the Kang dynasty, etc. that all will most likely lead to nothing significant. At least Marvel is now aware of this and is most likely course correcting as we speak. The Beast cameo after The Marvels, for example, was fantastic and a huge improvement from a world building perspective over some of the other less impactful modern cameos. I don’t want to jinx it, but I do believe Marvel has the right idea with post credit scenes again in terms of building the foundation for a full fledged MCU X-Men team. The Marvels post-credit scene did exactly what it set out to do.
The other post credit scene from The Eternals introducing the vampire hunter Blade will most likely have a payoff, because let’s admit it: one of the most exciting announcements from Marvel over the last few years has been the Mahershala Ali Blade remake that pretty much needs to happen at this point, but aside from Wesley Snipes in Deadpool and Wolverine fans still don’t have any real solid information on this project. In fact, it was just recently announced to be delayed again in real time as I am writing this article. Maybe wait until they release Daredevil: Born Again and then segue it into a darker Blade territory? The Eternals seemed like a very random spot to introduce such a dark character, tonally anyway, which just adds to the reasons it didn’t work. Who knows, but if they don’t go through with this project it will just continue to weaken fans’ faith in the reliability of any announcements.
These kind of post credit scenes don’t only hurt the movie they’re in, but the overall excitement of post credit scenes, and cameos by extension. If half the post credit scenes an audience decides to stay for end up being a waste of time by not leading to anything significant, do you really think those viewers are going to have the same excitement for future post credit scenes? Of course not. Moral of the story: don’t do a post credit scene introducing a story element that is not 100% slated to happen yet. You will almost undoubtedly annoy the fans that decided to stay, and you will have less fans staying for future post-credit scenes as an almost immediate result. If you want to be safe, you could always pull a Deadpool and Wolverine and just have something quick and funny to match the tone of the movie. Post-credit scenes are about expectations vs. reality, if the expectation is high going in and the post-credit scene isn’t great, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. However, if you’re expectation is something just quick and fun like the rest of Deadpool and Wolverine then you might come out of it thinking, “that was just enough”. Okay, now enough of my post-credit scene tangent, but it does work hand in hand with the general idea of cameos.
Cameos Done Right
Cameos were not always a problem, and back when superhero movies and shows were first hitting their stride they were one of the main reasons to stay invested in a franchise. Once again, the Arrowverse excelled at this, specifically Arrow in its first two seasons. The show utilized the character cameo technique of introducing characters into the show that pointed to a larger DC universe, when Arrow was still the only DC show on the CW. And that was HUGELY exciting at the time. One of my largest joys of the first few seasons were the Batman villains they slowly brought in. The show went from a grounded, real world take on the hero, to fighting aliens in season 5 and it only worked as well as it did because the show trickled in just enough (slightly) zany Batman villains to make the transition from the grounded to the fantastical believable enough to not break the immersion.
This all ended with an anti-climactic big bad in Ras al Ghul (season 3), giving us an underwhelming take on a pretty major character. The season 2 villain, Deathstroke, was most likely the inspiration for using Ras al Ghul, as he was also a Batman villain. The only difference is they knocked it out of the park with their Deathstroke. The main differentiator between Deathstroke and Ras al Ghul was that Deathstroke was given a season and a half of character development. Ras al Ghul got one name drop in season 2. After the lower level Batman villains of the week started becoming a regular thing (Clock King, Dollmaker, Huntress, etc), using Deathstroke – a MAJOR Batman villain for Green Arrow’s second big bad – was the icing on the cake and the high point when it came to character cameos. Deathstroke started as a cameo with the mask tease, but cemented himself as one of the pillars of that entire series. I also can’t forget to mention this doesn’t just apply to villains – both Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen, better known as the Flash, who would receive his own spinoff, and Sara Lance’s Black Canary, who would also receive her own spin off with Legends of Tomorrow – started as cameos on Arrow. Both characters were cast well, were characters that made sense for expanding the Arrowverse, and had overall purpose.
DC isn’t the only company who did cameos right at one point – Marvel also knew how to knock it out of the park during phase 1. Although it’s true the Marvel Cinematic Universe is largely to blame for eventually botching cameos by phases 3 and 4, the cameos in phase 1 and 2 were most likely some of the main drivers behind the first Avengers movie being as successful as it was. Not only did the first Iron Man tease the Avengers teaming up, but it also gave us a HUGE double cameo. Of course seeing Nick Fury was exciting by itself, but let’s not forget we also got a name like Samuel L. freaking Jackson in the role. This post credit scene blends both cameo techniques – not only did they give us a major character that drove the overarching story forward, but they gave us another A list actor to play the role. If you want an audience to come to your next movie in the franchise, that was the way to do it… well, until it wasn’t.
After Iron Man, the rest of the cameos and post-credit scenes that led up to the Avengers were clearly well thought out and lent themselves to a solid overarching story. Most people are already aware of this to some extent, but world building is the reason that the first Avengers was as successful as it was. What a lot of people don’t think about, however, is that the well thought out cameos were significant parts of the world building being successful.
Making Cameos Exciting Again
Let’s bottom line this: cameos should be a tool in a writers belt that needs to be used sparingly to help elevate an already high quality project, no more no less. If you overuse cameos, then you take away the effectiveness. If you use a cameo to help carry a project, you’re using them wrong. If the show or movie isn’t very good, a cameo is going to be counter productive. For example, I loved the first Shazam movie. It’s still a favorite movie of mine and I am currently staring at a framed movie poster of Zachary Levi right now as I’m writing this. The last thing I’d ever thought I’d be disappointed in is a Wonder Woman cameo in Shazam 2, but that movie was just so bad as a whole that the cameo didn’t only not do anything to help the movie, it actually hurt DC in two ways:
- It made it look like the producers of the movie knew it was bad so they threw Gal Gadot in at the end to help gain some positive fan reception. Not a good look.
- It actually discredited both the character of Wonder Woman (why did she show up in this movie in the first place?) and the DCU as a whole because there was no way anything significant was going to build off of that
Once again, nothing against Wonder Woman or Shazam as they were originally two of the best properties the DCU had to offer, but throwing the very obvious hail Mary of putting Gal Gadot at the end of the sequel ultimately did more harm than good. (I’m sure they knew this as the DCEU was coming to an end, but they should have saved the money with that cameo and bought the crew of the upcoming Superman reboot lunch or something.) Shazam 2 isn’t the only movie where a cameo actually hurts the narrative, but it demonstrates my point perfectly.
For future movies, all I would really want to see if a fan favorite established character showing up briefly to pass down the mantle to a new generation. I don’t want to see a Robin from the 80s that I never actually watched on a screen just to say they had a Robin cameo, but I want to see a Stephen Amell or Grant Gustin cameo, a Mike Coulter or Jessica Ritter cameo, Matt Ryan reprising Constantine or Tom Welling in a Superman movie (briefly)… something that brings up nostalgia from the past while being respectful of the future. I don’t want to see John Krasinski be turned into spaghetti by the Scarlet Witch because someone made some fan art of him as Mr. Fantastic, only to be forgotten about and replaced by Pedro Pascal. That doesn’t bring up feelings of nostalgia for the past or excitement for the future, it shows confusion and a lack of story telling cohesion. I want to see Grant Gustin as Jay Garrick in a future Flash movie the way John Wesley Shipp played the character on his show. Cameos should have meaning and carry weight, but not weigh a movie down.