Marvel Fans Think Ryan Reynolds Threw Shade At Justin Baldoni In Deadpool & Wolverine

The drama between "It Ends With Us" stars Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively shows no sign of stopping. In December 2024, the complex situation escalated to a point where a legal complaint by Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment, and Baldoni sued the New York Times for libel over a December 21 article about the situation. 

At this point of allegations and litigations, the situation is difficult to comment on, but even so, there's one person whose comments people would really like to hear. Since Lively's husband is one of the biggest Hollywood A-listers of the moment, it's no surprise that speculation on Ryan Reynolds' potential reactions to the situation draws interest. But according to several Marvel fans, including X/Twitter user @spiritualshift_, Reynolds has actually already had his say ... by basing a very specific character in "Deadpool & Wolverine" on Baldoni, no less:

 "The more I learn about Nicepool's character, the more evident it becomes that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were mocking Justin Baldoni in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie."

For readers who haven't seen the movie, Nicepool (Reynolds, billed as his long-running alter ego Gordon Reynolds) is an affectionate and positive Deadpool variant whom the main Deadpool (also Reynolds) immediately despises. Nicepool makes comments about Lady Deadpool's (Lively) body, and ultimately gets used as a human shield before Deadpool discovers that he doesn't actually have any superpowers.

Social media users have pointed out numerous reasons why they suspect that Nicepool is a barely-veiled Baldoni parody. These range from the spiritual and feminist beliefs the character expresses to an outtake where Nicepool says, "My calling is to host a podcast that monetizes the women's movement." This, @spiritualshift_ alleges, is a specific dig at Baldoni, who's open about his own feminist beliefs and hosted a podcast called "Man Enough" until the most recent allegations were made public. The fact that one of the characters who kills Nicepool is none other than Lively's Lady Deadpool also gets a mention in this theory, as does the fact that it happens in front of a flower shop — a prominent location in "It Ends With Us."

At this stage, of course, the theory that Nicepool might be a representation of Reynolds throwing shade at Baldoni is just one of the many allegations in the complex state of affairs around Lively and Baldoni. In a January 7 interview with Megyn Kelly, Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman noted that he's aware of the Nicepool theory, so there's a chance that it's also one of the aspects in the situation that we'll hear more about in the future.