Jennifer Garner Returns as the Corset-Wearing Elektra in Deadpool 3

Just last month, actress Jennifer Garner told Allure that she was “not comfortable ever once” in the restrictive costume she wore to play the comic book character Elektra in 2003’s Daredevil and its 2005 follow-up, Elektra. It appears, however, that Garner is prepared to grin and bear the discomfort in the upcoming Marvel movie Deadpool 3, where she’ll reprise the role.

Garner, who at 51 sports a box jump enviable for a person half her age, isn’t the only physically adroit actor expected to appear in the latest film in the Ryan Reynolds-starring franchise. As reported last fall, Hugh Jackman, now aged 54, has been preparing for the physical demands of his X-Men character Wolverine, whom he first played in 2000.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “multiple sources” confirm that Garner will appear as the sai-wielding assassin in the latest Deadpool film, shooting for which is already underway under Disney’s Marvel Studios. (The previous Deadpool films were made by 20th Century Fox, which Disney has since acquired.)

Its director is Shawn Levy, who has some experience wrangling Garner and Reynolds as the director of the 2022 Netflix feature The Adam Project, in which she played Reynolds’s (age 46) mom. (That’s not as bad as it sounds: the sci-fi/action movie was based around a time travel plot, and Garner played the mother of Reynolds’s far younger self.)

It’s possible that this entry in the Deadpool series will look significantly different from the previous two, and not just because of its new ownership. As the Writers Guild of America strike is still underway, Reynolds—who is also credited as a writer on the film—is not allowed to improvise any dialogue for the traditionally ad-lib-heavy role of the so-called “merc with the mouth,” Collider reports, and the film must follow the script as penned prior to the strike’s beginning “to the letter.”

While Deadpool is grappling with that change, perhaps a costume revision for Garner is also in the works. Though it’s been 18 years since Garner played Elektra, she still seems to have vivid and traumatic memories about Elektra’s outfit, saying in a video released last month that she was required to wear “three different jellies” to fill out the chest area in the anti-hero’s signature red corset. “Corsets are not comfortable,” she said. “But they do look good.”