Ryan Reynolds and 20th Century Fox's summer event pic Deadpool 2 rocketed to a huge $18.6 million in Thursday-night previews from 3,785 theaters, a record for an R-rated pic.

The previous record holder was It ($13.5 million). Prior to It, the first Deadpool had boasted the top preview gross for an R-rated film ($12.7 million). Deadpool, opening in February 2016, went on to debut to a massive $132.4 million, the best launch ever for an R-rated film.

The marketing of Deadpool 2 has been ripe with the introduction of X-Force. Conceived back in 1991, in a nutshell, X-Force is a lot like X-Men, but considered maybe a little more aggressive in how they go about things than the X-Men were. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s why we used the word “nutshell.”

If you’ve watched the trailers for Deadpool 2, you’ve seen the X-Force in action. There’s Terry Crews’ Bedlam in a huge battle while all the other members of X-Force are doing their thing. It’s pretty apparent that X-Force plays a huge role in Deadpool 2!

[Again, spoilers ahead. Also, why are you still here if you don’t want to read spoilers?]

Nope. They tricked you.

“I loved the idea of fucking with the audience through Deadpool’s lens,” says director David Leitch.

Co-writer Rhett Reese explains, “One of the things we did, we asked the actors if they’d be willing to shoot extra footage – that indicated they were in more of the movie than we were actually going to use them in. So, Terry Crews and Bill Skarsgård and these guys all went out back in front of a green screen and did a bunch of fighting with stuntmen. And you see it in trailers. You see Bedlam kicking ass. They all stayed an extra half day to do that. It was awesome.“

“When they came to set we shot additional material that we knew we were just going to put in trailers that would never be in the movie,” adds Leitch. “It was all about playing a prank like only Deadpool would do. Ryan is reaching out from the screen and tickling you.”

How far were they willing to take it? Pretty far, until the studio asked them to pump the brakes.

Co-writer Paul Wernick explains, “At one point marketing was going to make posters and standees. It’s a fun mislead, but we can’t take it too far. The audience will be so mad.“

Reese adds, “I think they finally blinked and got nervous.”

If you’ve seen the film, you know by now that after Deadpool has an elaborate interview process to form his X-Force team … almost the whole team immediately dies on their initial parachute jump into action due to “high winds.” It’s a great joke, but, yes, there will be people who are probably a little bit upset they didn’t get see more of a character like Shatterstar.

“When Rob Liefeld found out we were killing Shatterstar he was like, ‘What? What?!,’” says Wernick of the Deadpool co-creator.

“He handled it well, actually. Well, once he found out there was a time machine that could possibly resurrect Shatterstar he felt better,” says Reese.

And don’t forget, this is the world of Deadpool, where pretty much anything is possible and Deadpool now owns a time machine.

Director David Leitch has encouraging words for all the Shatterstar fans out there, “And that’s why you can say to fans, or whoever reads it who are upset that Shatterstar is dead: they can bring him back. He’s from outer space, they kept his blood and they regenerated him. They’ll figure it out. It’s just lazy writing, that’s all you need.”