When Channing Tatum’s Gambit returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Doomsday, fans will finally understand what he’s saying.
The card-slinging mutant, who made his much-anticipated debut in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, was pretty hard to understand thanks to Tatum playing up his thick Cajun accent. It even became a running joke that his fellow heroes were constantly confused about what he was saying — but according to Tatum, that joke ends with Doomsday.
“I’m not gonna go full Cajun,” Tatum told Variety of his appearance in the team-up movie. He explained that while Doomsday directors Anthony and Joe Russo “want things to be funny,” they “don’t want to go full Deadpool” with the movie’s tone.
“They want to keep the drama and keep it tight,” he said. Tatum also teased that the toned-down accent signals just how high the stakes are in the upcoming film, adding, “When Gambit gets serious — when he drops the Mardi Gras mask — things do matter.”
Disney/Marvel
The 39th film in the MCU, Doomsday sees Tatum reprise his role as Remy LeBeau aka Gambit, the Louisianan mutant with the ability to charge objects full of kinetic energy. How exactly Gambit (and his fellow X-Men) factor into the latest Avengers film remains a mystery, but Tatum did hint that his mutant has a role to play in more than one action-packed sequence. In fact, his action scenes are so intense that Tatum walked away with an injury while there was still plenty of production left to go.
The actor said he ended up getting sidelined and relying on his student double to do much of the heavy lifting — even when it came to a “big fight” with Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom.
Disappointed that he didn’t get to participate as expected, Tatum said, “It’s not about the pain I feel in the moment. It’s knowing I can’t take this back. And now I know what the next six months of my life will be like. I just hate getting old. In my mind, I’m literally still 30 years old — 26, if I’m honest.”
The injury was all the more frustrating given just how long Tatum has waited to bring Gambit to the big screen. Prior to Disney purchasing 20th Century Fox properties, the Magic Mike star was set to play the Cajun mutant in a standalone movie that the actor likened to Deadpool, in tone. But those plans were scrapped after the Disney-Fox merger, when Marvel put mutants on hold and turned its attention to expanding its interconnected multiverse of movies and TV shows.
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The Fox era X-Men ended up getting another moment in the spotlight, thanks to Deadpool & Wolverine. Afterwards, star Ryan Reynolds (rumored to appear in Doomsday) hinted that the MCU wasn’t done with Tatum’s Gambit.
“I honestly don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in the bookkeeping sessions at Marvel, but I do know that they’re obsessed with him in that role,” Reynolds told Entertainment Weekly‘s Awardist podcast. “It’s kind of like the same situation I went through. Once you show that it works well, that’s really what they need. Sometimes they just need to see it in action.”
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Sure enough, Tatum’s name was one of many written across those infamous chairs revealing the cast of the upcoming Avengers movie, alongside several stars of Fox’s original X-Men franchise.
Avengers: Doomsday is currently filming and scheduled to open in theaters on Dec. 18, 2026.
