The Only Deadpool Recap You Need Before Deadpool & Wolverine

It's official. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will welcome Deadpool into the field with this summer's "Deadpool & Wolverine." Opening July 26, 2024, the sequel will bring the unabashedly R-rated character into a larger franchise that is usually PG-13, recent official incorporation of the TV-MA Netflix shows notwithstanding.

Deadpool as a big-screen character originates with Fox's somewhat convoluted "X-Men" franchise, but it's also apart from them in significant ways. All two (and a half, sort of) "Deadpool" movies include references to different stories and characters within the franchise. Even aside from that, the X-Men movie timeline is by no means clear, with different casts in different timelines of the past, present, and future. You could watch all 13 of them in order, hoping for clarity, but you may have trouble finding it. However, if all you're concerned about is what you need to know about Deadpool from his movie appearances, and maybe a little bit of Wolverine, this is the article for you. 

From a bizarre origin to a confusing meta-timeline, here's what you need to know before he meets Wolverine again.

Following fan disappointment with its initial trilogy capper "X-Men: The Last Stand," largely thanks to its rushing of the Phoenix saga and casual killing of Cyclops, Fox hoped to win audiences back with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which was intended to be the first of at least two prequels. (The other one, focusing on Magneto, became "X-Men: First Class" instead.) "Wolverine" wouldn't just appeal to fans by focusing on the most popular character, but it would also introduce other favorites from the comics like Gambit and Deadpool. At least that was the plan. 

Gambit came out relatively unscathed, even though it ended up being a dead end role for actor Taylor Kitsch. Wade Wilson, as initially portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in a purple shirt, at least had the character's wisecracks down. First appearing onscreen as part of "Team X," with mutant speed powers that let him deflect bullets with swords, he's seemingly killed offscreen before showing up again for the climax, now called "Deadpool" because he's been genetically modified to pool the abilities of multiple mutants. These include retractable metal spikes, laser eyes, and teleportation. But in the most egregious insult to the Marvel Comics character, his mouth is fused shut, so instead of the "Merc with a Mouth," he's pointedly called "the Merc without a Mouth." Yikes. 

Wolverine defeats him in a battle that causes the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown. But in a post-credits scene that appeared at the end of some prints of the film, Wade's severed arm finds his head, now with an open mouth, and as his eyes suddenly open, he tells the audience, "Shhhhh."

After Matthew Vaughn recaptured the fandom's goodwill with the prequel "X-Men: First Class," original director Bryan Singer returned to combine both timelines and wipe the slate clean of anything unpopular thus far with "X-Men: Days of Future Past." The sequel sees Wolverine travel back in time, from a "Terminator"-style future filled with deadly sentinels hunting mutants, to the 1970s, in hopes of stopping the Sentinels from ever being invented. He achieved this primary goal, but the filmmakers decided to make use of the butterfly effect to clean up the franchise. Most notably and obviously, when Wolverine returns to his time, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden) are still alive, meaning the events of "X-Men: The Last Stand" didn't happen in the newly reset continuity (although Beast still grows up to be Kelsey Grammer, indicating that filmmakers are free to pick and choose).

The time Wolverine spends in the past ends in 1973, effectively cancelling out most of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" as well. That version of Deadpool that fans hated now never existed, and from here on, Professor Xavier in the '70s had always looked like James McAvoy, rather than a digitally facelifted Patrick Stewart seen in "Wolverine." It may be worth noting that these "Back to the Future" time travel rules do not work for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which changing the past creates a new, variant timeline rather than changing the old one. But that's a conversation for another day.

The stage was set for Deadpool to begin anew.

Finally released in 2016, "Deadpool" started from scratch, albeit in a timeline where mutants and X-Men definitely exist. Wade Wilson, as far as he knows, isn't one at first, though. He's just a smart-mouthed hitman for hire, who falls for gorgeous hooker Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). But before they can seriously plan a life together, he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exhausting legitimate medical options, he signs up for a dubious program to activate any possible latent mutant genes in his system. Unfortunately for him, the only way to do that is to torture him to the brink of death, over and over again.

Eventually, a mutant healing factor kicks in, though it leaves his body looking like that of a severe burn victim. Hoping to extract a cure for his new appearance from his torturer, the mutant Ajax (Ed Skrein), he loses the fight and is left for dead. Now that his full powers have kicked in, though, he's virtually impossible to kill. Taking the name "Deadpool," this time from a betting pool to see which local hitman will die first, he develops the red costume after realizing it won't show bloodstains as badly as other options. Now a vigilante, he hunts Ajax's men to get even with his tormenter and possibly find the cure for his disfiguration.

For a guy who seems like he'd be kind of a loner, Deadpool ends up on teams, impromptu or otherwise, quite a bit. First there was Team X, and then there's his unnamed team that comes together to help save Vanessa from the clutches of Ajax. Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), from the X-Men, and his trainee Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) go with Wade into battle, but he also has the aid of the equally wise-cracking Weasel (T.J. Miller), cab driver Dopinder (Karan Soni), and his unlikely friend Blind All, his senior-citizen roommate (Leslie Uggams).

They're all effective backup, and they collectively manage to save Vanessa. Unfortunately, the original mission to extract a disfigurement cure from Ajax is a bust, since none actually exists. Seriously, Wade should have figured that part out — why would a cure exist for a mutation that's unique to one person? Yeah, "X-Men: The Last Stand" had something like that, but fourth-wall-breaking Deadpool surely knows that movie has been retconned away at this point in the narrative. Anyway, since Vanessa still truly loves him, and since he still basically looks like Ryan Reynolds with perpetually prune-like skin, his scars aren't as big a deal as he thought. At least he still has a mouth!

So what timeline is this, exactly? Colossus survived the changes Wolverine made to the original, as he's seen teaching a class at the end of "Days of Future Past" in human skin, played by Daniel Cudmore. The Kapicic version in Deadpool stays metallized the entire time, so it could conceivably be the same version, even if the actor sounds very different.

"Deadpool 2" features a brief cameo by the "First Class" cast, implying it's that canon, even though they'd be aged up to the Patrick Stewart timeline if truly accurate. As we know from the MCU's Multiverse Saga, variants from other universes can look exactly like the ones we know, so that doesn't prove anything.

Wade's ability to break the fourth wall complicates matters. The fact that he knows both James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart have played Professor X doesn't mean he's not in the same universe as either. However, the fact that he has a cardboard cut-out mask of Hugh Jackman, and action figures of both Wolverine and the mouthless Deadpool from "X-Men Origins," suggests he is indeed in another timeline, where Jackman is an actor. Then again, X-Men comics exist in the "Logan" universe, but Wade knows about the existence of "Logan" as a movie. What's the deal here?

"Deadpool 2" director David Leitch answers the issue with a handwave: "...because it's its own entity, we're flexible with the timeline, per se. But we've never had a lot of conversations about that." 

A new timeline, then?

"Deadpool 2" begins with Deadpool getting sloppy and paying the consequences. Hoping to marry Vanessa and start a family, he finds his plans thwarted when a henchman he failed to kill earlier tries to shoot him and hits Vanessa instead. She dies, which the opening credits of the movie pretend is a huge shock. How could such a popular character be killed off?

Well, it actually happens so often there's even a name for it: "fridging." The phrase, coined by comics writer Gail Simone, comes, ironically enough, from a "Green Lantern" storyline in which Kyle Rayner comes home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed in the refrigerator. (Reynolds, who also starred in the poorly received "Green Lantern" movie, just can't escape references to it.) More generally, it refers to the killing off of a female character close to the male hero in order to motivate his journey of revenge and/or build his character. 

Deadpool subverts this trope to a small degree in his most immediate response, which is to repeatedly attempt suicide. (As a side bonus, he hopes to one-up Hugh Jackman, who had recently had Wolverine die onscreen in "Logan.") Unfortunately for that plan, he's almost impossible to kill. However, a vision of Vanessa in the afterlife encourages him to try to do good, rather than wallowing in despair and hate. Can he get past the "anti-" and just be a hero?

Sincerely trying to join the X-Men this time, Wade dons a "trainee" jersey and once again joins Colossus and Negasonic, this time on their terms, to thwart a mutant calling himself Firefist (Julian Dennison). This kid seems to have gone crazy at a "Mutant Re-education Center," and Deadpool quickly susses that the kid is being abused. Killing the abuser instead of subduing the kid, Wade gets sent to mutant prison along with Firefist. With his mutant powers suppressed, Wade's super-immunity disappears, allowing his cancer to gain a foothold again.

Then the story goes full "Terminator," as the mutant Cable (Josh Brolin) shows up from the future, determined to kill Firefist before he grows up and kills Cable's family. This would imply that "Back to the Future" time-travel rules are in place, as in "Days of Future Past," such that if Cable changes the past, elements of his future-present will never have happened. As we'll see later, though, the movie is not consistent on this. Anyway, Cable's intrusion allows Deadpool to escape the prison, while Firefist still remains out of both their clutches, soon to be transferred to a new facility.

X-Force, in the comics, were a team created by Rob Liefeld out of the New Mutants, introducing the world to the likes of Cable, Deadpool, and Domino. The trailers for "Deadpool 2" promised that Deadpool would assemble X-Force onscreen, with the likes of Domino (Zazie Beetz), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard), Bedlam (Terry Crews), and Peter (Rob Delaney). Much of the footage of them fighting in said trailers turned out to be a fakeout. With the exception of Domino, whose power is good luck, the whole team, including a hilarious cameo by Brad Pitt as Vanisher, dies almost immediately in hyper-violent ways. This leaves just Domino and Deadpool to break Firefist out of his prison transportation vehicle before Cable can get there first.

Meanwhile, Firefist (aka Russell) befriends and frees the massive Juggernaut (also voiced by Reynolds) in his quest for revenge against his abusers. Looking very different and super-sized than the Vinnie Jones version of Juggernaut in "X-Men: The Last Stand," the Hulk-sized CG creation is either proof we're in a whole new universe or that Wolverine seriously changed the timeline in bizarre ways.

When it becomes apparent that Firefist, if he succeeds in killing his abusers, will keep on a murderous path that eventually includes Cable's family, Cable agrees to work with Deadpool, to potentially seek a peaceful solution before resorting to preemptive killing. Bringing in former and new allies, Deadpool effectively assembles a new de facto X-Force with Cable, Domino, Colossus, and Dopinder. When Wade sacrifices himself to save the young mutant, by taking Cable's bullet instead, Firefist has a change of heart, as does Cable, who uses up the last of his time travel fuel to go back a few minutes and save Wade too. Under the apparent "Back to the Future" rules, Cable's future garb changes to reflect a changed timeline where his family is saved, and Wade lives.

With Wade's costume now so dirty that it resembles his gray X-Force suit from the comics, our new X-Force appears to be formed, with Cable willing to stay in the past for a little while, now that his family's safety is ensured. Firefist is now an ally too. A proposed "X-Force" movie probably would have featured this version of the team, perhaps with additional characters from the comics joining in. When Disney bought Fox, however, the need to milk a small chunk of the Marvel Universe became less essential, and an X-Force movie took a back seat to the demands of the larger Avengers saga. Introducing mutant superheroes into the MCU was going to take time.

For the credit scenes of "Deadpool 2," Negasonic and her girlfriend Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna) find a way to refuel the time-travel device, and Wade steals it. Not only does Wave go back in time to kill the version of himself from "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," but he also murders actor Ryan Reynolds, before he can accept the role of Green Lantern.

Under "Back to the Future" rules, this would make the "Deadpool" movies no longer exist, or at least they would no longer star Reynolds. Meanwhile, Wade does manage to change the timeline enough to save Vanessa (and Peter in the extended cut). The only logical conclusion: "Wolverine" and our timeline exist in different universes from the Deadpool movies, and changes to them cannot affect Wade's timeline.

This may help explain why, at the very end of the extended cut, Wade doesn't kill an infant Adolf Hitler. It's not just that he'd have to kill a baby; it's that, if killing Ryan Reynolds hasn't stopped the "Deadpool" movies from existing, there's no guarantee the death of baby Hitler will stop World War II either, as we may now be operating under "Avengers: Endgame" time travel rules. When it comes to meddling in the sacred timeline, there's only one group equipped to see the consequences. We'll get to them in a moment.

Deadpool's last appearance onscreen in live-action was a bizarre one. In the Christmas movie, "Once Upon a Deadpool," he kidnaps an adult Fred Savage, ties him up in a replica of the bedroom from "The Princess Bride," and reads him the story of "Deadpool 2." This apparently lasts for three days.

In reality, the goal of this movie, which mostly consisted of "Deadpool 2" footage bookended by Wade/Fred scenes, was to create a PG-13 edit of the sequel that could be seen by younger teenagers and audiences in more censorious countries like China. As a bonus, it theoretically had enough new jokes to convice fans to sit through the parts they'd already seen, again. It worked for China, which renamed it "Deadpool 2: I Love My Family," and it opened to $8.5 million. In the UK, however, the toned-down cut earned exactly the same 15-and-over rating as the original version, rendering it mostly pointless from a ratings standpoint. At least a percentage of the profits went to fight cancer.

We could speculate that, if canon, the kidnapping of Fred Savage proves Deadpool now exists in a version of our timeline, especially since they both talk about Brad Pitt, Celine Dion, and Matt Damon — the latter two apparently chained up in the basement below — but that would be overthinking it.

Here's what we know about X-Men so far in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Earth-838, as seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," has a more eco-friendly New York City and pizza served in spheres. But it also had a Professor X who looks exactly like Patrick Stewart, complete with a yellow wheelchair like the one in the animated universe. However, he is also dead now, killed by Wanda Maximoff of Earth-616, along with Reed Richards (John Krasinski), Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), Black Bolt (Anson Mount), and a different Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch).

Speaking of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), and her brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), they're canonically supposed to be Magneto's kids. Said parentage couldn't be mentioned before, so we don't really know where it stands. An alternate Pietro (Evan Peters) existed in the X-Men movies — the ones with the younger cast, at least — and while he briefly seemed to have crossed into the main MCU, it turned out that an actor named Ralph Bohner, who just happens to look exactly like him, was brainwashed by the witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) to mess with Wanda in "WandaVision." Elsewhere on the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Earth-616, Namor and Kamala Khan are its first confirmed mutants. 

When universes ruptured in "The Marvels," as a result of Kree leader Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) using quantum bands, a rift opened up into a parallel reality, where X-Men pals Beast (again played by Kelsey Grammer) and Professor X still exist, as we see when they're encountered by Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in a credits scene for "The Marvels." Beast looks a bit different than we've seen before, but we'll chalk that up to visual effects. But we're still left wondering, are these the Fox X-Men or new variants? And what does that mean for Deadpool?

Considering what we've seen with variants thus far, there's a strong likelihood that the Wolverine we encounter in "Deadpool and Wolverine" will not be the same one whose story we followed in the "X-Men" films. It's not insignificant to note that the original Fox version of Wolverine died pretty definitively in "Logan," though that movie was set clearly in the future relative to every other X-Men and MCU movie thus far. So Deadpool could conceivably encounter him prior to his death, but you'd think the future seen in "Logan" would be considerably less grim if the heroes in it knew of a multiverse. Since this Wolverine has a comics-accurate yellow suit, the more likely notion is that he comes from the same universe as comics-accurate Beast, where Monica Rambeau is now trapped.

Remember, though, Hugh Jackman exists as himself in Deadpool's timeline. Given how irreverent these movies are, it's entirely possible this is actually actor Hugh Jackman, now with super powers somehow. Rumors of cameos from other Fox-Marvel movie superheroes may bolster that theory, but it could also confirm this is the X-Men version of Wolverine, the original Logan, prior to his future death. But there's one more clue in the trailer...

In a brief shot from the "Deadpool and Wolverine" trailer (seen bove), we glimpse what appears to be Wolverine in a white suit at a gambling table. If that's indeed the case, it's most likely from his time under the identity of "Patch," a storyline in the comics that hasn't yet been presented in movie continuity. 

Following a period after the X-Men were believed dead and/or relocated to Australia, Wolverine resurfaced on the fictional island of Madripoor, where he utilized the clever disguise of a white suit and eyepatch, without ever considering a re-style of his distinctive hairdo. (To be fair, it's a style more common in comics than real life, with the likes of Beast and Tygra also sporting variations.) Going by the name of Patch, he ran missions out of a bar, while operating amongst the criminal underworld.

Madripoor has been seen in the MCU, as Sharon Carter's Power Broker base of operations in "The Falcon and The Winter Soldier." The show didn't give any indication of mutants operating there, even though that's what the location is primarily known for in the comics. If a version of Wolverine already exists in the MCU's "sacred timeline," it's entirely possible he's been secretly operating there under the Patch identity all this time.

Then again, some fans don't think that looks like Hugh Jackman's physique from behind, possibly indicating that there's a Wolverine variant in the movie. Anything is possible!

The first trailer for "Deadpool & Wolverine" also shows Wade in a toupee, celebrating a birthday with a group of friends that somehow includes the very deceased Shatterstar, last seen being liquified by helicopter blades. They're interrupted by agents of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), the interdimensional regulatory agency that included Loki among their ranks for two seasons of "Loki," until he grew beyond them and became the center of the universe (it takes two seasons of TV to explain exactly how).

The TVA appears to tacitly acknowledge Deadpool's unique ability to have knowledge outside of his own timeline and talk directly to the audience, and they initially seem to make him an offer to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where he ends up, however, the only familiar faces we see are Wolverine (still Hugh Jackman) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford from the "X-Men" movies). Only this time, they're in very different, more colorful costumes than before. There's also a giant 20th Century Fox logo in rubble. 

Which universe is this? Though it has elements we've seen elsewhere, they're in altogether unfamiliar configurations. Could this be the Void from "Loki," where pruned variants go? Calling 20th Century Fox itself a pruned variant is exactly the kind of snarky joke we'd expect from the "Deadpool" franchise. 

We'll have to wait and see what happens when "Deadpool and Wolverine" hits theaters on July 26, 2024.