Stan Lee’s inevitable appearance in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse will be “different than every other one [he’s] done,” according to a panel the “Excelsior”-shouter-turned-cameo-junkie gave at Comic-Con this year. Despite begging from all the devoted Lee-Heads in the audience, the Fantastic Four co-creator and No-Prize Laureate was stopped by Marvel officials from revealing what would make this latest dash across the screen so notable, only promising that those who saw it would remark, “I remember he told me about it here,” and that it would contain “one additional thing.”
In the absence of any concrete information from the wizened Stripperella creator, we’re left to blindly speculate about what that “one additional thing” might be. The most obvious guess would be that Lee is going to get to show off some superpowers or reveal himself as a mutant, finally letting fans see the 92-year-old merry Marvel mascot clad in spandex or black leather like they’ve been craving all these years. (The 2008 Incredible Hulk movie jokingly flirted with the idea of a powered up, gamma-irradiated Lee, but that idea has since been discarded as thoroughly as Edward Norton’s performance as Bruce Banner.)
None of Lee’s cameos have ever seen the briefly appearing movie star sing or rap, so those are possibilities, as well as the chance that he’ll give a lengthy, never-before-seen dissertation on the care and cultivation of the elegant begonia. Heck, Lee might even do something really different and admit that he’s always been more effective at promoting Marvel properties—like, say, hyping up a five-second appearance in an upcoming film—than as actual creative force, and offer tribute to co-creators like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby for their contributions to the company. After all, that’s the magic of the superhero movie: anything is possible!