Ryan Reynolds flat-out stole the incredibly expensive, custom-fitted Deadpool suit from the set on the very last day of filming because he had waited exactly ten years to get the movie made.

Why Ryan Reynolds wanted to keep the Deadpool suit

Ryan Reynolds has said he took a Deadpool costume from the film set. The appeal was more personal than practical: a superhero suit is not just wardrobe, but the most tangible piece of a character an actor has spent years trying to bring to the screen.

Reynolds had been associated with Deadpool since playing the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009, and later campaigned for a standalone film. The 2016 movie arrived after a long development process. That history makes the costume a keepsake from a project he had worked to make real—not evidence that studio executives formally let him take company property as a reward.

A costume built around the character

Deadpool’s look had to do two jobs at once: make him read as a recognizable comic-book hero, while leaving room for the character’s irreverent humor. The full-body suit also gave Reynolds a visual signature that audiences could recognize immediately, even when Deadpool was masked.

A screen costume can be tailored and altered for movement, camera angles, and repeated takes, so keeping one can mean preserving a working piece of the production rather than a pristine collectible. Reynolds’s anecdote is a small, concrete coda to the film’s unusually long path to the screen: after years of advocating for Deadpool, he left with a reminder that could fit in a closet.