[This story includes spoilers from Deadpool & Wolverine.]
Wesley Snipes‘ Blade has broken two Guinness World Records.
The actor returned to the half-vampire “daywalker” in Deadpool & Wolverine, officially making him the person to hold the longest career as a live-action Marvel character, according to Guinness World Records. He beat out his co-star Hugh Jackman, with Snipes’ return coming 25 years and 240 days after he first played the character in 1998’s Blade.
Jackman, meanwhile, had his first outing as Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men and was expected to take the record from Sir Patrick Stewart for Charles Xavier/Professor X upon the release of Deadpool 3 but lost it to Snipes.
Blade’s surprise cameo in the film also broke the record for the longest gap between character appearances in Marvel films, according to Guinness’ tabulations. Snipes’ last appearance as the character was in Blade: Trinity (2004), which was 19 years and 231 days before the Shawn Levy movie was released. He surpassed Alfred Molina’s 17-year gap between playing Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2 and his appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Snipes’ Blade was one of the many cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine. He joins forces with the title characters and fellow Marvel characters Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Gambit (Channing Tatum) and X-23 (Dafne Keen) to battle Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) and her mutants.
Chris Evans also reprised a former role of his — and no, it wasn’t Captain America. The actor returned to his Fantastic Four hero, Johnny Storm, briefly in the film.
Over the last few years, Marvel has tried to bring a new Blade franchise to life with Mahershala Ali in the title role, but the film has faced hurdle after hurdle. Snipes playfully referenced the project in Deadpool & Wolverine, saying that he’s the only Blade people are ever going to see on the big screen.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige briefly talked about the film, which lost director Yann Demange in June, in an interview last month, noting that he thinks Blade will still get an R rating, whenever it takes off.
“For the last two years as we’ve been trying to crack that movie,” the head honcho said, “the most important thing for us is not rushing it and making sure we are making the right Blade movie.”
