Deadpool, expertly played by Ryan Reynolds, is a rarity in the Marvel canon. He’s a foul-mouthed hero cursed with immortality and humor curated explicitly for a teenage boy. He’s already gotten two movies from 20th Century Fox. After Disney merged with the company, it absorbed the rights to superheroes like the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and, of course, Deadpool. The merger means that the motor-mouthed antihero can officially make his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based on the movie’s trailer, Deadpool has been looking forward to it.
Deadpool & Wolverine, out July 26, has been in the works for a while, and a lot is riding on this film. Marvel is entering a new era, trying to figure out how to get moviegoers back to the theaters in droves, and constantly shuffling their meticulously planned timeline. With the amount of backstory Deadpool and Wolverine have in the comics and their previous movie appearances, there is more than enough material to pull from.
Deadpool has appeared in two prior movies, and Wolverine has been integral to several X-Men movies. Here’s everything you need to know about Deadpool, Wolverine, and where they fit in the MCU before watching Deadpool & Wolverine.
The status of the MCU
Marvel has been in sort of a slump and is currently pulling its way out. Its last three films, released last year, were Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Marvels—and all required the viewer to have watched other Marvel projects to understand the full context. The same goes for Deadpool & Wolverine. In the movie, Deadpool is summoned by the Time Variance Authority when a man named Paradox (played by Matthew Macfadyen) takes him to a room and tells him he has a purpose, before sending him on a mission (this is when Deadpool adopts the nickname he gives to himself, Marvel Jesus).
The Time Variance Authority are the keepers of the Sacred Timeline—it is precisely what it sounds like—and they keep alternate timelines from forming and “pruning” variants. When a variant is pruned, we learn in Loki, they don’t die—they get sent to the Void. In Loki, this is where the titular character meets his variants: Kid Loki, Classic Loki, Boastful Loki, Alligator Loki, etc. (This will come into play in Deadpool & Wolverine). However, variants are not the only thing that exists in the Void. One of the guardians of the Void is Alioth, a giant, scary cloud monster that has consumed many of the variants exiled to this desolate land.
The Deadpool movies
The Deadpool movies provide the origin story for how the world became blessed with this quick-witted, vulgar guy. But before that, we must note that Deadpool was not Reynolds’s first brush with Marvel, or his first time playing the character. In the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds played Deadpool. However, his mouth was taped shut, and fans hated it, so he committed to doing the hero justice with standalone movies.
The revamped version of Deadpool got his first standalone movie in 2016. Wade Wilson falls in love with a woman named Vanessa, but shortly after proposing to her, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He gets an opportunity to undergo an experimental treatment that would allow him to activate any mutant genes in his system via the Weapon X project. With the treatment, he becomes deformed after being tortured by the lead scientist on the project named Ajax (but his real name is Francis). Still, he gains healing and regenerative abilities, just like Wolverine.
Once he assumes the role of Deadpool, Wade ventures off to find the man who tortured him to get revenge. He almost does but is stopped by Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who try to get him to join the X-Men, but Deadpool declines. At the end of the movie, he kills Ajax and reconciles with Vanessa.
In the second movie, Deadpool is seen hard at work taking out mob bosses and such. One of those groups then finds out where he lives and kills Vanessa. This leads Deadpool to try and die by suicide, but his remains are found by Colossus, who again tries to make him a member of the X-Men. This time, Deadpool agrees. While responding to a call at a mutant orphanage, Deadpool encounters a mutant named Russell Collins, aka Firefist. Wade realizes that a staff member is abusing Firefist and kills them, leading him and Firefist to be detained and sent to the Ice Box. They wear collars that suppress their powers, meaning they are mere mortals and can be killed.
A time-traveling mutant named Cable tries to kill Russell, but Deadpool stops it and breaks out with Cable. He does feel for Russell and organizes a team called the X-Force to break him free—but they all die except for Deadpool and a character named Domino (played by Zazie Beets). Russell escapes and frees Juggernaut, who agrees to help him kill the abusive headmaster of the orphanage. Cable tells Deadpool that if Russell kills the headmaster, he becomes a serial killer who kills Cable’s family. Wade agrees to help Cable stop him, but only if he’s given a chance to talk to Russell, and Cable obliges. When they finally get to Russell, though, Deadpool cannot convince him, and Cable fires a shot at Russell, but Deadpool jumps in front of it wearing the power-suppressing collar and dies. Cable is surprised by his decision to save Russell, reverses time, and puts a Skee ball token that Vanessa left behind after she died where the bullet eventually hits Wade, saving his life, and a taxi driver kills the headmaster.
Deadpool then uses Cable’s time travel device to travel back in time and saves Vanessa before she’s shot.
The X-Men movies
With Wolverine, there’s a lot of ground to cover. The first time we are introduced to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is in the 2000 film X-Men, which also brings us Patrick Stewer’s Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, Halle Berry’s Storm, and James Marsden’s Cyclops—and Sabertooth, which will become important later in the timeline. The original X-Men sees Magneto trying to use Rogue’s powers to turn the world’s leaders into mutants and bring about a wider acceptance of mutants. The X-Men subdue him, and Logan joins the “family.”
In the second X-Men film, X2, Logan attempts to learn more about his past. Colonel William Stryker was the man who coated his skeleton in adamantium, the fictional metal. All you need to know is that the X-Men defeat Stryker after he tries to kill every mutant on Earth. A flood destroys his lab, and Jean Grey (the woman Cyclops and Wolverine are secretly in love with) is killed as she helps the X-Men escape.
The third movie sees Professor Xavier killed by a Jean Grey lookalike called the Phoenix, leading Wolverine to become the leader of the X-Men. The Phoenix is recruited by Magneto, who is unable to harness her powers, and she goes rogue, meaning that Wolverine is the only person who can kill her. So, Wolverine kills the love of his life or a version of her.
We won’t get into the three prequels because they don’t mean much for Deadpool & Wolverine. But you need to know what happens in the 2017 movie Logan. There are few mutants in this movie due to a mutant apocalypse, and many of the X-Men are dead. Logan encounters a young girl named Laura with claws like his after Logan’s blood was used to create her. The most crucial part of this movie is that Logan’s healing abilities are weakened, and he fights his clone, who kills him for good. Jackman did announce that he was not interested in reviving Logan or Wolverine (let the man do his Broadway shows!), but Reynolds was able to get him to don the claws once more for Deadpool & Wolverine.
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