Ryan Reynold’s Wade Wilson, better known as Deadpool, was an utter cinematic sensation during the 2010s. People couldn’t get enough of his fourth-wall-breaking antics and the anti-hero action and carnage he unleashed on-screen. He had reaffirmed to the world that yes indeed, you can get a box-office smash hit, or two, with R-rated superhero films.
Then, when Disney took over 20th Century Fox Studios and decided not to continue with Fox’s X-Men continuity, it seemed that Deadpool and all our favourite X-Men buddies were getting the boot. It was made clear that Disney wanted their own version of the mutants and didn’t need the old guard getting in their way…or so we thought. With “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” making Patrick Stewart’s Professor X canon again, we had our hopes up that some version of Fox’s X-Men might be still floating out there.
Then last September, Ryan Reynolds drops a major bombshell on all of us that not only are we getting a “Deadpool 3” film but Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine will be starring in it! Needless to say, the internet lost its mind. All rejoicing aside, there are quite a number of questions raised here. How will Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine fit into the film? How will the two of them fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? More importantly, what does this mean for the X-Men? Stick around as we answer those questions!
The Dysfunctional Duo
In spite of the many, many awful errors made in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, the one thing that the film at least gets right is that Deadpool and Wolverine do have a working relationship. In the comics, occasionally you’ll see the two of them team up together in their own series but they never last very long. More likely than not, both of them are seen working together within a larger team, like the covert black-ops mutant taskforce called X-Force. The team consists of folks like Psylocke, Fantomex and Archangel. Recently though in Jonathan Hickman’s new status quo, Deadpool united with Wolverine to take down some baddies…after Deadpool stole something valuable from the clawed mutant. It was an utter riot!
We saw X-Force make an appearance in “Deadpool 2” but they were quickly killed off as a gag. Could we possibly get another version of the X-Force in “Deadpool 3”? Well, it all depends if Josh Brolin’s Cable, Zazie Beetz’s Domino, Stefan Kapičić ‘s Colossus, Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Julian Dennison’s Firefist are making a comeback. Then we’d have the makings of an X-Force. Fun fact: Lewis Tan who played Shatterstar in Deadpool’s X-Force in “Deadpool 2” has teased his return to “Deadpool 3” on Twitter.
Where and When in the MCU?
The big question we have is that in light of the events of 2017’s “Logan” marking the end of Hugh Jackman’s journey as Wolverine, where does “Deadpool 3” fit in the timeline? Thankfully, Jackman has answered this question by stating that “Deadpool 3” will take place before “Logan”. So yes, the events of “Logan” did happen but wait…it gets a little more complicated now. If Jackman is officially acknowledging that “Logan” did happen, that would mean that Fox’s X-Men timeline actually does exist somewhere in the Marvel multiverse. Will Disney officially acknowledge this fact in its future films? Or will this remain unspoken?
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Oh but it gets even more convoluted and confusing. During a podcast on “The Empire Film Podcast”, Jackman goes on to say: “this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines, now we can go back because you know it’s science. And so I don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline which was important to me and I think probably to the fans too.” He’s basically saying that “Deadpool 3” is going to have some timey-limey shenanigans that won’t affect the events leading up to “Logan”. This does however mean, according to the MCU’s law of time travel, that every time an alteration to an original timeline occurs, a separate new alternate timeline (or universe) is brought into existence.
In that sense, if Deadpool does travel back in time to pick up a younger Wolverine before the events of “Logan”, he has created two branches from Fox’s original X-Men timeline. One where the original timeline leading up to the film happens and another that could lead to infinite, fun possibilities. If you take a second to think about it, it’s all kind of brilliant. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman get to have their cake and eat it at the same time!
The Deadpool-Verse is Born
Now that we’ve got all the messy details out of the way, now we can get to the fun part. With “Deadpool 3” being part of the Marvel multiverse, that means we can see Reynold’s character run around, popping into the MCU’s main Earth-616 to mess about with Thor, Captain America and the lot before returning to his reality. Since having Wolverine taken out of his timeline creates a new reality, we’re going to name this one the Deadpool-Verse for now. At least until Disney officially gives it a proper designation.
In this universe, the writers and creators of “Deadpool 3” can play around with all the characters of Fox’s original timeline and Disney’s MCU roster but never worry about the canon. Honestly, Disney acquiring Fox was the best thing to have happened to the character. Can you imagine him visiting Loki at the Time Variance Authority (TVA), collecting Infinity Stones in his own universe and rewriting history? Now that’s a film we’d love to see!
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