‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ and the State of the Multiverse

Farewell to Fox.

(Later in this post, there will be spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine. I’ll warn you again when they’re imminent.)

The multiverse hasn’t fared well in superhero cinematic series. Spider-Man (of all characters) has proven the exception, in Spider-Man: No Way Home (as well as both Spider-Verse movies). That’s because the multiverse served the characters; the characters did not serve the multiverse.

No Way Home is about Peter Parker growing up and learning about loss, sacrifice, and responsibility. Yes, there’s the gimmick of villains from previous movie series showing up, but Peter chooses the much harder path of trying to save each enemy rather than just letting Doctor Strange cast them back to their own worlds where they’d be other people’s problems and, in some cases, get themselves killed.

The movie also includes the gimmick of the previous two live-action Spider-Men showing up, but they’re meeting this Spider-Man right after he experiences a tremendous loss and they actively help him through a difficult time. They’re treated as distinct characters, not cameos, and all three Spider-Men come to mean something to each other. They quickly develop a strong, brotherly bond that feels authentic.

Compare that to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which has its entertaining moments but suffers by being barely about Doctor Strange.

For the most part, he’s a passenger in his own movie as we all ride a roller coaster through the multiverse. It’s more of a sequel to WandaVision, which had set up a possible redemption arc for Wanda. Unfortunately, Multiverse of Madness ruins that potential by turning her into an irredeemable villain.

The Doctor Strange sequel delivers plenty of cameos. Chief among them, Patrick Stewart reprises his role as Professor X, and he even appears in the yellow hover chair from the comics while hints of the X-Men cartoon theme play. His primary functions, however, are fan service and exposition. He has no arc of his own nor any meaningful connection to Doctor Strange or Wanda.

Same goes for the other cameos. Yes, it’s fun to see John Krasinski show up as Mr. Fantastic, but we don’t get much of a chance to see him properly be Mr. Fantastic. It’s also fun to see Hayley Atwell play an alternate version of Captain America, but instead of any real characterization, we get the fan service of her speaking Cap’s popular “I can do this all day” line—a hand-me-down catchphrase.

Deadpool & Wolverine lands on the middle ground between the Spider-Man and Doctor Strange multiverse movies. (The SPOILERS will be here soon. Final warning.)

The new movie aims for sheer, unbridled fun. The irreverent anarchy of Deadpool meshes nicely with the anarchy of the multiverse concept itself. But beneath all the randomness, raunchiness, and hyper-violence, there’s just enough heart pinning everything together.

Deadpool’s entire universe is in jeopardy. According to the nice folks at the TVA (which you met in Loki—you did do the homework, right?), in some universes, one person is so vitally important that when this individual dies, the entire universe unravels and eventually ceases to exist. In Deadpool’s universe, that character is Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. It’s an appropriate plot device.

The previous Deadpool movies contained plenty of meta jokes and commentary. The character lives to break the fourth wall, and the shtick fits Ryan Reynolds’s comedic sensibilities perfectly. Reynolds and Deadpool are such a perfect union of actor and character, just as Jackman and Wolverine are.

Wolverine has been among the most popular X-Men characters for over 40 years, but he became even more essential within the movies series. Whereas the comics could expand across innumerable spin-off series and miniseries and guest appearances, the movies were limited to a few hours of story every few years, allowing only a few characters to emerge at the forefront. Wolverine, as portrayed by Jackman, became the standout and MVP of the entire series, with the only real competition being the Magneto/Professor X dynamic. Wolverine died at the end of Logan, which gave him an excellent send-off—so excellent that it essentially closed the door on the entire X-Men movie franchise. (The later X-Men: Dark Phoenix did not renew any hopes.)

Only Deadpool was still hanging in there, though Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were so different in tone and style that they were essentially their own thing.

Having survived the entropy of the Fox X-Men universe, Deadpool now gets to transition into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And this movie serves as an overall transition from Fox Marvel to Disney Marvel.

So, Logan’s death is killing the entire universe. Deadpool is no hero, but he does genuinely care about his friends (whom we’ve met in his previous two movies). The only way to save everyone is to bring a Wolverine from another universe into his.

And that’s who Jackman is playing this time—not the character who died so poignantly in Logan, but a Wolverine we haven’t met yet. And he’s the worst Wolverine, a man who utterly failed the X-Men of his world.

Both Deadpool and Wolverine have plenty to prove. Wolverine had already given up on himself, though. Deadpool hasn’t, and there’s some fun friction as he recruits his reluctant ally.

A sizable chunk of the movie takes place in what’s essentially a wasteland of Fox Marvel. It’s a sort of limbo between universes, and various characters have been exiled here, such as minor enemies from the early X-Men movies. The TVA’s Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) now exiles Deadpool and Wolverine there as well.

It’s not just a Brotherhood of Mutants reunion, though, and the reveal is, shall we say, fantastic.

Deadpool and Wolverine soon meet a cloaked stranger in this wasteland, a man with a familiar voice. Deadpool gets excited, especially when he sees that this man in blue is played by Chris Evans—who, of course, played Captain America until his farewell in Avengers: Endgame.

The original Cap back in the MCU? It seems too good to be true. And it is. Because when the scene tees him up to shout “Avengers Assemble,” he instead shouts, “Flame on!”

Evans is reprising his earlier role as the Human Torch from the first two Fantastic Four movies. The scene brilliantly plays against the audience’s expectations and establishes the full scope of this movie’s sandbox.

The Human Torch meets a gruesome demise that fits the irreverent tone we’ve come to expect from Deadpool movies, but our Uncanny Odd Couple meets more allies.

Jennifer Garner reprises her role as Elektra from the movies Daredevil and Elektra. Wesley Snipes is back as Blade, whose trilogy kicked off the wave of comic book films even before the X-Men. Channing Tatum finally gets a shot at playing Gambit, whom the movie series had overlooked other than a brief appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (played by Taylor Kitsch in that movie). And, most importantly, Dafne Keene returns as Laura/X-23, the girl whom Jackman’s original Wolverine sacrificed himself to save in Logan.

These aren’t just “Hey, I recognize them!” fan-service cameos like we saw in the Doctor Strange sequel. That accounts for much of the fun, certainly, but the script justifies the fan service.

This band of Fox castoffs all want the same thing: a good ending. They want to take down the big bad of this dimension, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), or die trying. They want the satisfying conclusions that their respective movies failed to deliver.

It’s not a lot, but it’s just enough to give their presence meaning. Plus, Laura is well-positioned to reignite the conscience of this movie’s Wolverine. He may not know her, but he does mean something to her.

Wolverine’s comic-accurate yellow costume isn’t just fan service either. The script provides Wolverine with a motivation for wearing it—he’s honoring the X-Men he failed.

Special touches like that are why Deadpool & Wolverine succeeds where Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stumbled.

The new movie doesn’t have the tightest script or anything. Unless I’m forgetting some detail, Mr. Paradox could have succeeded simply by not bringing Deadpool to the TVA in the first place, and there’s some “and then” plotting rather than the more effective “therefore” or “but” plotting. For example, Deadpool and Wolverine knock each other senseless, and then a mysterious woman shows up and drives them to her group’s hideout.

However, for a character as rambunctiously off the wall as Deadpool, we can excuse the occasional contrivance in exchange for a fun time. And this movie absolutely delivers a fun time.