Deadpool 3 Looks Wilder Than We Thought – And We Have Theories
Potential "Deadpool 3" spoilers to follow.
In a time of great turmoil for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who better to come strolling in than the Merc With A Mouth himself? The big-screen iteration of Deadpool — as played by Ryan Reynolds — thrives on upending expectations for the superhero genre, like when "Deadpool 2" introduced a version of the famous mutant outlaw squad known as X-Force, only to immediately kill off the entire team in a comically violent fashion (save for Zazie Beetz's luck-powered Domino). A little chaos along those lines would surely do the MCU good at this juncture, allowing it to shake off its recent woes and work towards a better tomorrow.
For that to happen, however, Marvel Studios should probably do a little House (of Ideas) cleaning first. Enter "Deadpool 3," a three-quel that's gotten fans hyped ever since it was confirmed to bring Reynolds' Wade Wilson into the MCU. Eyebrows only rose higher at the news that it would not only retain the same R-rating as the first two "Deadpool" films (a first for the Disney-owned franchise), but it would also somehow revive Hugh Jackman's growling Wolverine for a reunion with his "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" co-star. With director Shawn Levy preferring to shoot on location rather than the typical green screen sets used for MCU productions, that's only made it harder than usual for Marvel's highly-trained snipers to do their job and prevent a parade of intriguing set photos from leaking online.
Then again, can we really trust that these "leaks" are as revealing as they appear to be? Or is this all just an elaborate setup for another X-Force type of situation? Pull on your tin foil hats, it's time to speculate recklessly about "Deadpool 3" and everything we think we know so far.
Deadpool Tango & Wolverine Cash
The perfect Deadpool/Wolverine team-up movie already exists and it's called "Rorschach and Deadpool," a 13-year-old YouTube short that pairs the motor-mouthed mercenary against the taciturn, brooding, hot-tempered Rorschach from "Watchmen." A cheeky parody of buddy cop flicks like "Tango & Cash," the short sees the titular duo investigating a mystery to unsurprising results, bouncing effortlessly back and forth between dramatic and zany. Luckily, it seems that Reynolds and returning writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have always had something similar in mind for the third "Deadpool" installment.
Before Disney bought most of Fox in 2019, "Logan" director James Mangold talked to Reynolds and Jackman about the duo making what Mangold described as a "really fun '48 Hours' style buddy picture," featuring Deadpool and Wolverine on a road trip that mixes gritty thrills with broad comedy in the style of director Martin Brest's 1988 hit "Midnight Run." Even with the film having since become part of the MCU, it appears "Deadpool 3" will retain at least some part of that initial pitch (hence the shooting on location).
But what of Reynolds' claim back in 2021 that the film was originally intended to be a "'Rashomon-style" story about Wade and Logan hitting the road? The first "Deadpool " movie had a non-linear narrative structure for much of its runtime, flashing back to Wade's past while he casually waited to beat the everlasting s**t out of his enemies on an expressway. Might "Deadpool 3" take a similar approach? If so, how would all that beg comparison to Akira Kurosawa's classic 1950 drama about characters giving conflicting accounts of the same crime?
This could be where the greater multiverse comes into play.
A road trip across the multiverse?
Remember how "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" introduced the Illuminati, a group of alternate universe versions of characters like Peggy Carter and Maria Rambeau ... and quickly proceeded to kill them off? It's conceivable that "Deadpool 3" is planning to lay waste to another group of variants, albeit in a much more comedic fashion. Except, instead of casting fan-pick John Krasinski as Reed Richards and bringing back Patrick Stewart in his beloved role as Charles Xavier, the threequel would likely take the joke a step further, resurrecting characters from not-so-treasured Fox Marvel movies — like Jennifer Garner's Elektra Natchios from "Daredevil" and "Elektra," who's rumored to appear in the film — before gleefully sending them off into the sunset.
A storyline in which Deadpool and Wolverine have to traverse the multiverse to "clean up" its history — bringing them face to face with the ghosts of Marvel's past — not only sounds like an appropriately meta plot for the third "Deadpool" film, but it's also one that has a precedent in Marvel's comic books thanks to "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe" (an arc with a pretty self-explanatory title). This would further explain the "Rashomon" comparison, as Wade and Logan could encounter different variants of the characters they previously knew along the way. Leaked set photos have already shown the duo encountering a deteriorating version of 20th Century Fox's logo, which only seems to lend additional credence to this theory.
For that matter, "Deadpool 2" even ended with Wade hopping through time, killing Reynolds himself before he could star in 2011's much-derided "Green Lantern" and shooting Weapon XI (the infamous transformed Wade Wilson from "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"). Should "Deadpool 3" go this route, it would be a logical expansion of the same concept.
Always rooting for the antihero(es)
Running around through time killing people isn't exactly what heroes are known for, although that does sound like something the trigger-happy Deadpool would do (with a raging Wolverine perhaps unwillingly dragged along for the ride). But wait, isn't there an organization whose job entails maintaining some semblance of order across the multiverse? That would be the Time Variance Authority (TVA) from "Loki," an institution that would undoubtedly have something to say about Wade and Wolverine skipping merrily about and committing murder from timeline to timeline.
If we assume "Deadpool 3" takes place below the TVA reorganized itself as a more benevolent force at the end of "Loki" season 2, it's possible Wade and Logan could end up being "pruned" by their agents and land themselves in the Easter egg littered graveyard known as "The Void" at the end of time. Perhaps it's there that they encounter such relics as the ice cream truck from "Moon Knight" and the Red Skull's roadster from "Captain America: The First Avenger" (both of which have been spotted on the "Deadpool 3" set).
That's a whole lot of "ifs" for a single film, so where's the harm in one more (and a relatively minor one)? In what could prove to be the deepest cut in a movie full of them, rumor has it Reynolds' real-life buddy Taylor Swift will cameo opposite her fellow antiheroes in "Deadpool 3" as Dazzler, the musically-inclined mutant the pop music superstar was once rumored to portray in 2016's "X-Men: Apocalypse." Levy refrained from ruling the idea out when recently interviewed by ScreenRant, although you should only read so much into that. Still, in a film as increasingly wild-sounding as "Deadpool 3," you shouldn't discount anything.
"Deadpool 3" hits theaters on July 26, 2024.