Yes, Stan Lee Manages To Appear In Deadpool & Wolverine (And Not In A Morally Questionable Way)

This article contains some spoilers for "Deadpool & Wolverine."

Ever since 2000's "X-Men," the appearance of Marvel Comics guru Stan Lee ("The Man," if you're nasty) in a cameo role became a prerequisite for every single Marvel movie made after. After playing a slew of characters with rich inner lives such as "Man in Fair," "Old Man at Crossing," "Waterhose Man" and, his greatest role, "Stan Lee," the filmmakers at Marvel Studios started to get a little more sneaky and clever with inserting Stan's visage into each movie.

Turns out that sneaking Lee into increasingly kooky and weird places was good practice, for when Lee passed away at the ripe old age of 95 in November of 2018, Marvel had to try and find a new way of honoring the tradition without resorting to ghoulishness. While a number of Lee cameos were shot before his passing, there were others that were planned for Lee that never allowed him to get before the cameras.

Fortunately, thanks to decades of Lee's visage becoming recognizable to superfans and casual enjoyers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe alike, the new Marvel movies don't have to work too hard to get a Lee appearance in. Witness this month's "Deadpool & Wolverine," which allows Lee to make not one, but two cameos: one hidden, and one from the past.

During the final act of "Deadpool & Wolverine," the Merc With a Mouth (Ryan Reynolds) and Weapon X (Hugh Jackman) are attempting to stop Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) from ripping Deadpool's timeline out of the multiverse, but in order to get to Nova, they have to fight through a plethora of Deadpool variants she's recently let out of the timeless wasteland known as the Void.

While Deadpool and Wolverine hack n' slash their way through the many red-suited Mercs, they pass a city bus that has been, cartoon-like, loaded with Deadpool baddies to be cut up. If you're paying too close attention to all the mayhem and carnage. however, you may miss Lee's first cameo in the film: his grinning mug is part of an ad on the side of the bus for "Stanley Steemer" (get it?), a man who apparently provides a solid carpet-cleaning service.

The carpet-cleaner aspect of this cameo may be a gag related to a cleaning service ad juxtaposed with the super-bloody action sequence it's part of, or it's that "Stan Lee" sounds like "Stanley" and "Stanley Steemer" is the most famous company with the name "Stanley" in it. In any case, the cameo also builds on Lee's appearance in 2018's "Deadpool 2," where he can be seen in graffiti art within the city.

Never mind a picture of Lee's face, though; the real Stan "The Man" turns up in person at the end of "Deadpool & Wolverine!" Again, however, this is not some questionable de-aged CGI monstrosity. Instead, Lee is part of a "Seinfeld" finale-style 20th Century Fox's Marvel films behind-the-scenes reel that runs during the end credits of the film.

This appearance is actually from "Deadpool: No Good Deed," a short directed by David Leitch in 2017 that played before "Logan." Deadpool's rejoinder of "Zip it, Stan Lee!" is one of the few audible lines heard during the reel, which is set to Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."

As "Deadpool & Wolverine" demonstrates, the era of Stan Lee appearances is far from over, as there are now enough established ways of getting Lee into a Marvel movie that we may be in for Stan Lee cameos from now until eternity. Excelsior!

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is now playing in theaters everywhere.