Is [SPOILER] really dead? All your Deadpool 2 burning questions answered 

[MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN

has a lotta twists and surprises (rhymes with “Crad Shmitt”). So EW talked to screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick about what it all means and what the future holds for X-Force.

EW: This movie has huge surprises and guest spots. How did you keep the secrets in this film without anything getting out?

PAUL WERNICK: There’s very few people who are in the inner circle. When we’re writing the script, it’s generally just Rhett, myself, and Ryan, and obviously [director] Dave Leitch was seeing pages as they were being written. Actors and agents never got sent scripts. It was always that you come into the office and read the script.

RHETT REESE: We treat ourselves like spies behind enemy lines at all times. You do have to pretend like you’re in the CIA.

One of the breakout new characters is X-Force candidate and regular dude Peter [

WERNICK: It’s based on Rhett Reese himself.

REESE: It was Ryan’s idea to have somebody who didn’t have any superpowers. Then we thought, “What if it’s a truly average guy who works in payroll with a mustache and dockers?” We were talking about me playing the part, and thank God that never happened because Rob Delaney is about 10,000 times better than I would have been.

WERNICK: I think so. This won’t be the last you see of Peter.

At the end of the film, you set up X-Force. Will this be the same team in the Drew Goddard film?

REESE: We gave Drew the pieces to play with, but I think he also has the freedom to drop characters and add new ones to X-Force. Whether it will be that existing six or seven that walk off at the end of our movie remains to be seen, but I think Cable, Domino, and Deadpool will definitely be there.

The fact that Juggernaut is in the film is something that was also kept hidden. Why do that and pick him as one of the villains?

REESE: Juggernaut is a force of nature in the comics. He’s incredibly strong and generally pretty angry. He’s never been done justice. No one had ever done a CG Juggernaut before. We just thought why not introduce him into the story? Deadpool is all about mayhem and there’s no one who dishes it out like Juggernaut. We also thought what a great foil for Colossus he’d be. There’s someone who’s even stronger and bigger than Colossus and he turns Colossus into an underdog. Generally, trailers and movies give away too much we think. So we saved in our back pocket Brad Pitt and the Juggernaut and these elements.

You all kill off a ton of actual X-Force characters from the comics like Bedlam (Terry Crews) and Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård). Were you nervous about the fan reaction? 

WERNICK: I’d say yes. Absolutely. Terrified. These are characters that childhoods grow up on. So the idea that Shatterstar just jumps out of a plane and dies, then yeah. But our test with

is, if you couldn’t do it in another superhero movie then you SHOULD do it in

. It’s like we’re given the license to push the boundaries and it’s a boundary we definitely worry about. It’s shocking and crazy and funny and we built our whole marketing campaign around these guys. People are coming to the movie thinking these guys are gonna team up and be part of this X-Force and in an instant they’re all dead! Comedy trumped better judgment.

REESE: Another thing: What the actors were very gracious about doing was shooting footage they knew was not actually going to be in the trailers so we could trick people into thinking they’re in the movie longer than they actually were. If you watch trailers and commercials, you’ll watch Bedlam and Shatterstar out on the street kicking people’s ass. It was all done with the knowledge it wouldn’t be in the movie.

WERNICK: Here’s the beauty of it: Deadpool has gotten hold of Cable’s time-travel device so we could always bring back any of these guys if we wanted to.

Speaking of that, the ending has Deadpool changing time and saving Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). But will that change everything we’ve previously seen? Like will he still meet Domino? 

REESE: Oh God, you’re bending our brains. It’s a very good point. We have thought about that. Sometimes we think

is just crazy enough of a franchise that people aren’t going to get particular about details about that. But we’ll see — we might be in deep trouble. We try to do what’s most entertaining at the end of the day.

Now that Vanessa is alive again, could she potentially become mutant shape-shifter Copycat, as she is in the comics? 

REESE: Absolutely. We’re leaving that option open. We certainly haven’t made any decisions along those lines. But we always thought that might be a fun twist for her at some point. The question is how to give her those powers without it feeling too coincidental. You have to iron out the logic if we go there. But why not? I think people would love to see Vanessa kicking ass.

Ryan recently told EW that he didn’t think there would be a

REESE: When the Fox executives read your interview, I think they all had a collective heart attack. X-Force will come next. The appetite for

is certainly there, but we all need to put our thinking caps on and talk about what sets it apart from