Amongst the many cameos in Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine movie (now in theaters and making all the money in the world), we get a first live-action incarnation of Lady Deadpool.

That the costumed-and-always masked Lady Deadpool is played by Blake Lively is in fact not “meta” (due to her being franchise front man Ryan Reynolds’ real-life wife) but fitting, seeing as the comic book character when introduced back in 2010 was modeled on a Gossip Girl-era Lively.

“Back in 2009, Marvel called me and asked me to introduce Lady Deadpool,” veteran comic book creator Rob Liefeld shared on Instagram during Deadpool & Wolverine‘s opening weekend, alongside a screenshot of a post he did in March 2022 first detailing the character’s inspirations. “My wife and I never missed Gossip Girl, Team Serena all the way, so I gave her the blonde hair and modeled her after Blake Lively.”

“When [Marvel Studios chief] Kevin Feige informed me that they were exploring the Deadpool Corps. [in the movies], I got my hopes up,” Liefeld added. Jump-cut to now, and, “If you’ve seen a screening of Deadpool & Wolverine and you see me fighting back tears, they are tears of joy…. My daughter could not be more excited to see the true Killer Queen” — as in Gossip Girl‘s Serena — “finally take her role in the pantheon. Blessings to you, Blake.”

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attend the ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ world premiere in New York City (Getty Images for Disney)

Lively in turn shared on Instagram how she learned only two years ago that she inspired Lady Deadpool’s look — and how it amazingly had nothing to do with her Ryan Reynolds ties.

“In 2010 I was on Gossip Girl and about to film my first superhero movie, The Green Lantern, with my kind Canadian costar Ryan Reynolds,” she wrote. “He told … all of us about the Deadpool movie [idea] for the first time [and how] it was a ‘meta’ superhero.

“[H]ow it would come together for an audience was murky, for everyone but him,” she said. But at the time, “It wasn’t a real dream. The movie was never gonna happen.

“Just before all this in 2010, Rob Liefeld drew an unmasked Lady Deadpool for the first time,” she continued, stressing the coincidental nature of it all. “[The Deadpool film franchise] wasn’t real. And Rob had no idea I was working with Ryan Reynolds. 12 years later I read Rob’s [original] post. A year after that, [Deadpool & Wolverine] was filmed. And today it’s in theaters. The universe has such a magical sense of humor sometimes.”