From the moment Marvel Studios announced the return of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, one question was on fans’ minds. Would the movie, produced solely by Marvel, make the character canon to Marvel’s cinematic universe? Reynolds’ take on the merc had always been relegated to Fox’s X-Men universe, but with the studio joining the Disney family, Deadpool was free to follow suit.
But Deadpool & Wolverine made it clear that officially crossing over into the MCU is easier said than done. Deadpool does take a brief trip to Earth-616, the timeline that hosts most MCU heroes, in an attempt to join the Avengers. After a whirlwind trip through the multiverse, however, Deadpool ultimately chooses to stay put in his own timeline. It’s a fitting end to his three-film story, making Deadpool & Wolverine more of a farewell than a new beginning. Had Reynolds gotten his way, though, Deadpool would have done more than simply visit the Sacred Timeline; an initial pitch for Deadpool & Wolverine would’ve revealed that he’d been there all along.
Deadpool & Wolverine officially hit Disney+ this week, and a new episode of the behind-the-scenes Assembled series wasn’t far behind. In Assembled: The Making of Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds and his collaborators discussed all the hurdles the film faced. Chief among them was the issue of canon: Reynolds wanted to find a way to fold Deadpool into the MCU, but none of the ideas pitched fit Kevin Feige’s expectations.
“Because of Deadpool 1 and 2, the expectations are just high, and we just want to keep one-upping everything we do,” said producer Wendy Jacobson. “I think Ryan had 19, 20 ideas throwing everything at the wall.”
“I pitched them a Sundance movie,” Reynolds added. “Not kidding, like a $4 million budget Marvel movie with no action, but a Deadpool suit. I pitched them mid-sized, big, small, all kinda of stuff. I’d kind of felt like I’d run the gamut.”
Ultimately, the Deadpool team kept running into continuity issues. How could Deadpool & Wolverine bring the character to the MCU in a way that felt organic? Reynolds later found a solution, pitching a “deleted scenes extravaganza” that would have placed Deadpool in other Marvel adventures... but always conveniently out of frame.
“We were going to try and show that he was in the MCU the whole time, you just didn’t see his scenes because they were all on the cutting room floor,” Jacobson explained. “We had some crazy ideas. At one point, we talked about a frame-for-frame remake of Thor 2, up until the midpoint, with Deadpool in it.”
That could’ve explained why Thor was crying in one of Deadpool & Wolverine’s possible futures, but it also could’ve raised far more questions than Deadpool & Wolverine was prepared to answer. The team eventually opted to keep things simple, leaning more into the multiverse than the Sacred Timeline. Ironing out plot details got easier with the addition of Hugh Jackman, who expressed interest in returning as Wolverine, and the rest is Marvel history.
We may never see what the MCU would have looked like had Deadpool been around from Day 1, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t show up in the future. Anything is possible with Avengers: Secret Wars on the horizon, so Reynolds and his collaborators could get another chance to pair Deadpool with Marvel’s iconic heroes down the timeline.
