During the 97th Academy Awards on March 2, 2025, host Conan O’Brien opened the ceremony with a musical bit built around the running joke that the show would not “waste time.” In the middle of that opening number, a Deadpool-costumed dancer popped up onstage, instantly recognizable to fans as “Dancepool,” the dancing version of the character made famous in Deadpool & Wolverine.
A couple days later, the person behind the mask confirmed what viewers suspected: the Oscars performer was Nick Pauley, the dancer who portrayed Dancepool (and served as Ryan Reynolds’ dance double) in the 2024 film. Pauley shared behind-the-scenes footage from the night on social media, including a quick pre-stage moment that turned into a full-on Marvel meta-joke: he gets a fist bump from Robert Downey Jr., aka the MCU’s Iron Man, seconds before heading out toward the cameras.
The cameo worked because it wasn’t random cosplay—it was a direct nod to one of the movie’s most viral “Wait, is that actually him?” details. In Deadpool & Wolverine, Dancepool is the version of Deadpool associated with the film’s big choreography moment (set to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye”), and Pauley has been credited publicly as the performer who brought that movement style to life. That’s why the Oscars bit landed as an in-joke for fans: it wasn’t just Deadpool showing up, it was that Deadpool.
Pauley’s posts also framed the moment as a personal career peak, not just a studio gag. In his captioning, he described the adrenaline of stepping onto the Oscars stage and singled out Reynolds for backing the idea of “Dancepool at the Oscars” and for pushing to have the original Dancepool performer be the one in the suit. In other words, the cameo wasn’t only an Academy telecast flourish—it was also a small victory lap for the dancer whose work helped make the character’s choreography stick in pop culture.
And yes, the Iron Man fist bump is the kind of “only in 2025 Hollywood” moment that spreads because it compresses two entertainment universes into one second: the MCU’s most iconic face meeting the newest (and silliest) viral Marvel offshoot backstage at the biggest awards show in film. It’s also perfectly on-brand for an Oscars broadcast that leaned into playful spectacle in its opening stretch—mixing sincerity about the state of the industry with big, weird stage bits that play well on social media the next morning.
