Fifteen years ago, X-Men Origins: Wolverine brought Logan and Deadpool together on the big screen for the first time.
When the two Marvel superheroes met in the 2009 X-Men spinoff, it didn’t go so well. The Merc With a Mouth had his mouth sewn shut and an indiscriminate medley of mutant abilities. He didn’t even have his iconic red-and-black suit. It was a messy introduction to the comic book cult favorite, and ever since the Deadpool franchise began in earnest in 2016, Deadpool—along with the actor playing him, Ryan Reynolds—has been dreaming of another chance to team up with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
On Friday, that long-awaited team-up finally arrives as Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters nationwide. This film will be the first Marvel Studios project to center on characters who were once exclusive to 20th Century Fox, following Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019. It’s also the lone MCU movie scheduled for release in 2024, as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige leads an effort to slow down the studio’s output following a number of creative and commercial misfires in the Multiverse Saga. With Reynolds returning for the third installment of the Deadpool franchise and Jackman stepping out of superhero retirement to take on the role of Wolverine for the 10th time, Marvel is pulling out all the stops.
Directed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy), Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, and it’s a film that Marvel fans have been hoping to see for many, many years. If you want to hear the full story of how Deadpool & Wolverine came to be, through the characters’ journeys in Fox’s Marvel franchises and the X-Men’s rise in mainstream popularity in the early ’90s, check out my recent audio feature on The Ringer-Verse. But if you just want to read a quick refresher on the latest entries in the Deadpool and Wolverine franchises, along with the details about the upcoming blockbuster that have already been revealed in its trailers, here’s everything you need to know.
Deadpool 2 and Deadpool Join the MCU
It’s been six years since Deadpool 2, and much has changed since the Merc With a Mouth’s last appearance.
In the Deadpool sequel, Wade Wilson’s fiancée, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), gets killed early on, and he spends the rest of the movie trying to make it up to her. (For as self-aware as the Deadpool franchise’s writers may seem, apparently Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were completely unaware of the fact that this was a pretty classic example of “fridging,” which caused a bit of a controversy at the time of the film’s release.) Wilson tries joining Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna) to become a member of the X-Men, but he ultimately finds his true calling as a hero when he meets a troubled young mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison).
Russell is being hunted by the time-traveling mutant Cable (Josh Brolin), who seeks to kill Russell before he can grow up to murder Cable’s family in the future. Deadpool eventually forms a team of his own, the X-Force, to face Cable, and he proceeds to get every single one of his team members killed save for the lucky Domino (Zazie Beetz). Despite his many missteps along the way, Deadpool and his friends—a group that comes to include Cable—manage to stop Russell and his prison buddy Juggernaut (voiced by Reynolds) before Russell turns down the path of villainy.
In the mid-credits sequence of Deadpool 2, Deadpool borrows Cable’s time-traveling device to undo pivotal moments of the movie, and then some: He prevents his friend and X-Force teammate Peter (Rob Delaney) from getting killed, he saves Vanessa, and he goes back even further to kill his unfortunate counterpart from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Reynolds himself before the actor ever had the chance to star in DC’s Green Lantern.
(In the X-Men Origins bit, Deadpool tells Jackman’s Wolverine, “Look, eventually you’re gonna hang up the claws, and it’s gonna make a lot of people very sad. But one day, your old pal Wade’s gonna ask you to get back in the saddle again. And when he does, say ‘yes.’”)
Now, the loudest, raunchiest antihero in Fox’s Marvel universe joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he’s bringing (most of) his friends along with him. Vanessa, Wilson’s onetime roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), taxi driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Yukio, Colossus, and even Peter, among others, will return in Deadpool & Wolverine. And with them, they bring the Deadpool franchise’s risqué humor, as the film becomes the first R-rated project in Marvel Studios’ history.
Despite all the initial concerns that Deadpool fans had when the franchise fell under the Disney umbrella, Levy told The Ringer that the studio never interfered.
“The whole team at Marvel and, frankly, Disney, they knew what we were when we came in the door,” Levy said. “We made it clear this is going to be the tone. We’re not softening the edges. We’re not going to dilute it. We’re going to be off-the-wall audacious in the way that all of us want a Deadpool movie to be. So there was buy-in from the jump.”
With the MCU at a reputational low point, Deadpool has a lot of new superhero material to make fun of in his distinct, fourth-wall-breaking way—and Feige isn’t making him pull any punches.
The Return of Wolverine
“In my world, you’re well-regarded,” Deadpool tells Wolverine in the film’s final trailer. “You were an X-Man. Fuck that, you were the X-Man. The Wolverine. He was a hero in my world.”
As Deadpool says all of this in the trailer, a montage unspools beneath Reynolds’s voice-over, showing Wolverine’s history in films such as Logan and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. As the filmmakers and moviegoers alike are well aware, Jackman is reprising the iconic role he’s inhabited for more than 20 years, and he’s playing the part for the first time since he seemingly hung up his adamantium claws for good in 2017’s Logan.
In Logan, an older version of Wolverine is almost all that’s left of the original X-Men team. Only he and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) remain, and they’ve both seen much better days. Logan struggles to use his claws at times, and his healing factor has slowed considerably, while Xavier suffers from violent, telepathic seizures. Wolverine is no longer a hero, taking odd jobs to scrape together money to pay for Xavier’s medications and save enough for him and Xavier to retire on a boat together. But everything changes when they find a runaway mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen).
Laura is brought to Logan by a scientist who explains that she was created in a lab through the use of Wolverine’s DNA, essentially making her Logan’s daughter. As much as he resists at first, Logan takes on the responsibility of bringing Laura—whose lab name is X-23—to a safe haven for other young mutants who escaped from the lab. In the end, Wolverine sacrifices himself so that Laura and the next generation of mutants can live.
Continuity in Fox’s X-Men universe has always been a bit confusing, and Logan is no exception. While Jackman himself once said that Logan appeared in a “slightly different universe” than the other X-Men movies, Logan director James Mangold has confirmed that the film takes place within the same universe, approximately five years after the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past (which would set it around the year 2029).
With that version of Wolverine dead, a new one emerges in Deadpool & Wolverine, thanks to the narrative cheat code that is the multiverse. This version of the character isn’t so much a legendary hero as he is a massive failure to his entire world—but he’ll have the chance to redeem himself and help Deadpool save his own.
In addition to the reunion with Deadpool, Deadpool & Wolverine will also see Logan reunite with Laura (played again by Keen), who’s grown up since Logan.
“Whoever you think I am, you got the wrong guy,” Wolverine tells Laura in the final teaser.
“You were always the wrong guy,” she replies. “Till you weren’t.”
Jackman’s return as Wolverine comes seven years after Logan provided the perfect send-off for the actor and his iconic role. Deadpool & Wolverine seeks to pay tribute to that legacy, along with the other Deadpool and X-Men movies that came before it. As Levy told The Ringer, “We not only made sure to honor that legacy in how we protect and caretake these characters, but in fact … the acknowledgment of that legacy is itself part of the story.”
A Multiverse of Cameos and Crossovers
Keen’s appearance as X-23 is just one of many cameos that Marvel fans can expect to see in Deadpool & Wolverine. Here are just a few of the other characters set to return, based on the teasers and trailers:
- X-23 from Logan
- B-15 from Loki
- Sabretooth from X-Men
- Lady Deathstrike from X2
- Pyro from X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand
- Azazel from X-Men: First Class
And that list includes only the characters that Marvel Studios doesn’t mind showing the audience ahead of time. What with all of the cameo rumors that have been swirling around on the internet for months, it sounds like the studio has gone to absurd lengths to try to prevent any spoilers from leaking prior to release. As executive producer Wendy Jacobson told GamesRadar+, “There may or may not have been some subterfuge and misdirections on the internet or in-person in order to protect the secrecy.”
Settings and characters from Loki, in particular, will play a pivotal role in Deadpool & Wolverine. The bureaucratic organization known as the Time Variance Authority, which governs the MCU’s Sacred Timeline, is supplying the bridge between Fox’s X-Men universe and the MCU. And one way or another, Deadpool and Wolverine will find their way to the purgatory at the end of time, the Void, where they’ll have to face the all-consuming smoke monster called Alioth and Xavier’s long-lost twin, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin).
Deadpool & Wolverine arrives as the first MCU movie since last November’s The Marvels, which had Marvel Studios’ worst opening ever at $46 million domestically and $110 million worldwide. The Deadpool threequel is currently tracking for a $160 million to $170 million domestic opening, which would be the biggest R-rated opening of all time, with a global total ranging from $340 million to $360 million. This movie is set to make a lot of money for Marvel, and if it strikes all the right chords with audiences, it could be exactly what the studio needs to jump-start its brand as Phase 6 looms. At least one thing is certain: Deadpool & Wolverine will usher in a new era of movies and TV shows that will feature beloved mutants from Fox’s Marvel universe.
“It’s just the beginning,” Feige said at the world premiere of Deadpool & Wolverine on Monday. “I’ve said that mutants are coming, and it all starts with this movie. I can’t wait for people to see what [Deadpool & Wolverine] has in store and know that this is the beginning of mutants finally, finally arriving into the MCU.”
