There were moments in the first two Deadpool movies in which the fourth-wall-breaking Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) would poke gentle fun at both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the X-Men movies, neither of which he is really a part of. But with the Disney/Fox merger in full effect, it’s almost bizarre to now have Deadpool freely engaging with elements of the MCU and a full slate of X-Men villains so openly.
Is it fun? Absolutely. But it was playing with those earlier restrictions that made the first Deadpool chapters unique and highly entertaining—that and their dedication to being fully R-rated for language and violence, something that hasn’t changed in Deadpool and Wolverine.
Directed this time by Shawn Levy (Free Guy, Real Steel, Night at the Museum trilogy), the new Deadpool installment has a lot of goals. One is to finally bring Deadpool and his longtime rival Wolverine (still played by Hugh Jackman) together in a movie. But the film’s secondary commitment is to pay tribute to what came before in the X-Men/Fox superhero universe, while seeing Wade tentatively embraced into the cinematic universe of his new corporate overlords. This could have been a cynical exercise, but Deadpool and Wolverine is something a bit more heartfelt, both in terms of the reasons Wade is trying to find a version of Wolverine in the multiverse that can help him save his world/timeline and the only friends he knows within it, and the knowledge that these two have to become allies and maybe even friends in order to save anything.
When we catch up with Wade, he’s given up the superhero life and is now selling cars. He’s not exactly happy but he is content, still hanging out with old friends like cab driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), co-worker Peter (Rob Delaney), roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), and even his old X-Men buddies Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna), and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic). Most of all, he’s still in touch with ex-love Vanessa (Morena Baccarin).
But while celebrating a birthday, Wade is visited by soldiers from Time Variance Authority (TVA, which you may know from the two seasons of Loki on Disney+), who swipe him from his timeline to see their boss, Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen). He wants to recruit Wade to help stop the destruction of the so-called “Sacred Timeline” by destroying his own (aka the X-Men timeline in which he currently resides). If he does this, he’ll be allowed to be a part of Earth 616 (aka the MCU timeline) and possibly get his wish of becoming an Avenger (early in the film, we see him interview for a position in the supergroup, which does not go well).
Right at the top, Deadpool and Wolverine acknowledges that it is fully dismantling and dishonoring the greatest Wolverine story of all, Logan, the film Jackman promised would be his last playing the Canadian-born, claw-wielding death machine. Oh well. Deadpool bounces through various timelines searching for a similar version of Wolverine, and finally finds one that is burdened with a frightening amount of guilt that he somehow allowed his world’s X-Men to all be killed (I won’t spoil the details). Wade thinks if he can replace the now-dead Wolverine with this new one, his timeline might be spared, but things don’t quite work that way at the TVA, and that might simply be because Paradox doesn’t want them to.
Eventually, Deadpool and Wolverine find enough common ground to team up, and after attempting to disrupt Paradox’s universe-destroying plan, they end up in a temporal junkyard known as the Void (again, very familiar to Loki fans) where things start to really get interesting when they meet its ruler, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the twin sister of Charles Xavier, who is the most powerful being in this realm.
The Void is also a blast because it’s where many of the best cameos happen, although calling them cameos isn’t entirely fair. In nearly every case, if a familiar face comes into the movie, that character stays around for a bit and actually serves a purpose beyond making the uber-geeks happy. For example, we’ve seen villains like Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford) in the early trailers for the film, and they take on fairly substantial roles in Cassandra’s army.
But the fun doesn’t stop there, and as always, I’m not going to ruin the surprise for you, although I will say that these surprise appearances don’t just represent what once was but also what might have been. I’ll say no more.
Deadpool and Wolverine is now in theaters.
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