Spoilers ahead for Deadpool & Wolverine.
After being the most highly anticipated upcoming Marvel movie in years, Deadpool & Wolverine is out and breaking records. I'm one of the many fans who have spent years watching the Marvel movies in order, so I made sure to see Shawn Levy's blockbuster on opening weekend. And while I loved the movie, there's one thing about Deadpool 3 that's still nagging at me. Let's break it all down.
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman's faux feud was on full display for Deadpool 3, and their chemistry really leapt off the screen. But the movie's earliest moments confused me, and has kept bothering me since. Specifically the scene where Wade Wilson uses Cable's time traveling device to go to the Sacred Timeline and ask Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan if he can join The Avengers.
This scene revealed that Wade Wilson was on Earth-616 aka the sacred timeline. And after he gets rejected by Happy, he ends up returning to his own timeline aka Earth-1005. But I thought that Deadpool had a repaired time machine, not one that allows him to go through the multiverse. And even if it does, was this pivot between universes even necessary?
Of course, it's possible that Cable's machine was a multiverse-jumper the whole time. When Wade Wilson used it during Deadpool 2's wild credits scene, he does end up infamously shooting actor Ryan Reynolds in the head before he can sign on to the ill-fated Green Lantern movie. So unless Reynolds and DC also existed in Earth- 1005, then I guess Wade Wilson was traveling through the multiverse before it became commonplace for the MCU.
I suppose Deadpool needing to travel to the Earth-616 served as a reason why the Avengers seemingly didn't exist in the last two movies of the R-rated franchise. But I'm not sure the opening sequence for the threequel needed it; both myself and a friend I was in theaters with spent much of the movie's opening scenes confused about how/why Wade Wilson had already been in two separate timelines.
This early timeline jumping also made me question which universe we were in/ what was happening when Ryan Reynolds' title character was celebrating his birthday during the first act of Deadpool & Wolverine. Six years pass, and we see that Wade Wilson and and Morena Baccarin's Vanessa aren't together. But with her continually calling him "buddy", and the multiverse already in play, I was unsure if they had broken up or we were in a universe where they just never got together. It all worked out in the end, but the first few scenes of the blockbuster were definitely confusing.
Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now. Check out the 2025 movie release dates to plan what titles you want to see next year.
