When Sanshirō Kasama and Hikaru Uesugi—the menace/genius duo behind Deadpool: Samurai—announced a brand-new manga called Secret Steward, everyone nodded politely and braced for a wholesome rom-com palate cleanser. The pitch looked simple enough: a buttoned-up butler, his refined mistress, and the kind of gentle, fizzy hijinks that make you want to sip sparkling water and believe in people again. It was a charming detour from Marvel’s loudest chaos goblin. Or so we thought.
Then the “rom-com” did what every rom-com does around chapter three: it got absolutely obliterated by a meta-prank.
Secret Steward wasn’t a new lane; it was a Trojan horse with a bowtie. Just as readers settled into the genteel back-and-forth of steward-meets-mistress, the series yanked the tablecloth and left the plates spinning in midair. The elegant façade peeled back to reveal the real headline: this was an elaborate setup for more Deadpool: Samurai—specifically, a full-blown “Season 2.” That’s not a twist; that’s a stage magician pulling another magician out of a hat, and the second magician is yelling punchlines while juggling katanas.
And because Deadpool can’t enter a room like a normal mammal, the reveal arrives the only way Deadpool knows how: with a van. No slow burn, no tasteful cameo. The Merc with a Mouth literally crashes the scene, turning our stoic steward into an unlucky speed bump. It’s shocking, it’s slapstick, and the limbs are doing more cartwheels than a cheer squad at regionals—played for black-comedy laughs, because of course it is. Even fans who fully expected Wade Wilson to show up didn’t expect him to obey traffic laws this little.
What looked like a genteel romance was actually a carefully rigged confetti cannon pointed straight at your expectations. Kasama and Uesugi didn’t just swerve genres; they used a fake rom-com as a runway for a Deadpool van to smash through the door. The punchline lands, the van hits the brakes, and the message is clear: the “new project” was never about tea and tenderness. It was about telling you, in the loudest way possible, that Deadpool: Samurai is back—and it just stole the keys.
Just when you thought the butler was about to pour tea and feelings, he unzips his humanity and reveals he’s a Mushi—a man-eating bug in a tux, planning to turn his mistress into a charcuterie board. Enter Deadpool, who’s not here for romance or subtlety. He’s here because someone slid a contract across a table and said “please squash the nightmare cicada in formalwear,” and that’s the kind of gig Wade Wilson was born (and repeatedly reborn) to take.
If you somehow missed Deadpool: Samurai, imagine Iron Man recruiting the world’s loudest disaster clown into a Japan-based Avengers unit called the Samurai Squad, then handing him both a katana and diplomatic immunity. The first season (2018–2021) was a global hit, written by Sanshirō Kasama and illustrated by Hikaru Uesugi, and it wedged Marvel’s fourth-wall wrecking ball straight into Shonen Jump chaos. The tone? Like someone taped an air horn to a rollercoaster and then gave it feelings.
Peak “I can’t believe they did that” moment? A multiversal stunt where All Might from My Hero Academia strolls in to square up against Thanos like it’s the world’s strangest PTA meeting. That crossover didn’t just break the fourth wall; it filed the paperwork to rezone the entire neighborhood. It was the kind of “did my manga just do that?” energy that made Marvel diehards and Jump lifers nod in the same language: screaming.
The series blew up so big it hopped the Pacific with a VIZ Media release in 2022, recruiting a fresh army of readers who prefer their heroics with extra shrapnel and punchlines. And now, with Season 2 teased—via the greatest rom-com bait-and-switch since “surprise, you’re reading Deadpool again”—we don’t have a date, but the Secret Steward prank makes one thing clear. The team is still gleefully unhinged, the bug guts still fly, and the payoff is almost certainly worth the wait. Deadpool’s back, the van is idling, and somewhere a very nervous insect in a waistcoat just checked its life insurance.
