Jennifer Garner is coming back as Elektra for Deadpool 3
18 years after starring in the Elektra stand-alone movie, Garner is teaming up with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman for the 2024 film
Today, in “We legitimately did not see this one coming” news: Jennifer Garner is apparently picking back up her sais and Greek ninja costume after an 18-year absence, with THR reporting that the Party Down star has joined the cast of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool 3. And, yes, Garner will be playing Elektra Natchios, a character she last played in 2005's Elektra, a spin-off of the original Daredevil movie, which came out more than two decades ago at this point.
Like we said: Did not see this one coming.
That being said, it’s not like Garner has lost her taste for action scenes in the intervening years: We’re only five years out from her vigilante violence showcase Peppermint, which readily displayed the fact that Jennifer Garner is still totally down to kill a dude in very bloody fashion. She also recently appeared in Reynolds’ Netflix film The Adam Project, which presumably helped pave the way for the pair to cook this latest collaboration up.
As for what Elektra’s appearance in the film will entail, it’s hard to say, given how tightly the plot for Deadpool 3 is being kept under wraps. (Even though Reynolds presumably isn’t improvising his own dialogue for this one, thanks to the ongoing Writers Guild strike, which means the script is at least set in stone for once.) Both Deadpool and Elektra operate at a similar tier in the world of Marvel Comics—which could be loosely described as “anti-heroes who mostly just shoot and stab folks”—although comic-Deadpool has a long friendship with Elektra’s occasional murderer, Bullseye, that might make a team-up awkward. And once you get Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in the mix—whose own return to the world of stab-happy heroes is being positioned as one of the main reasons to make the movie in the first place—god only knows how many sharp objects will go flying once the movie hits theaters in May 2024.
Garner is one of two actors to play Elektra in live-action; the other, Élodie Yung, played the character in the Netflix Daredevil show and its spin-off, The Defenders.