We weren’t sure if the news from Comic Con that Mahershala Ali is the new Blade could get any more badass… turns out it can. Marvel didn’t call him, he called Marvel. Mahershala Ali phoned Kevin Feige and asked to be Blade. Insane.

Blade was first introduced in the comics in 1973, before heading to the big screen in 1998 for a trilogy of films by New Line Cinema starring Wesley Snipes as the fearsome vampire hunter. Many people believed Snipes would one day be back for Blade 4, including Snipes himself, but after the rights returned to Marvel it’s become increasingly likely that a new actor would take over.

While it’s taken 10 years for a Blade movie to become part of the MCU, it took far less time to find the actor to play him. THR interviewed Kevin Feige at Comic Con 2019 to discover that it was Ali that called Marvel and asked to be Blade, Feige said ‘when Mahershala calls, you answer.’ He also revealed that the actor called not long after his Oscar win for Green Book – talk about striking while the iron is hot.

It’s also interesting to note that Ali has already been part of the MCU (sort of) as he played Cornell ‘Cottonmouth’ Stokes in the Netflix show Luke Cage. While these shows were technically part of the MCU, the characters did not interact with those from the movies, and the events were largely self-contained. Ali’s move to play another character within the MCU raises certain questions – as Marvel now moves away from Netflix, does it mean the shows are non-canon? Can actors from the shows play other characters in the movies? Do their characters no longer exist in the MCU moving forward? (In other words, is Daredevil no more? Please please say it ain’t so!)

Ali is a super talented Oscar winner for Green Book and Moonlight, so adding him to the MCU for an exciting role such as Blade is an absolute dream. Now we just have to wait and find out when we can see him slay some vamps.