and Marvel have had a huge year, registering three major successes at the box office including Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home, although it’s Avengers 4 that’s obviously the biggest win for the companies. Marvel’s huge gamble paid off in the best possible way, turning the MCU into a property with no equal. Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is only going to get better now that
Of all three, it’s Deadpool who is likely to be the first Fox hero to hit the MCU. A report last week said that Marvel may use a Phase 4 film to introduce the character, and a second story reinforces that idea, providing an additional clue about Marvel’s rumored plans. But, more importantly, this leak might reveal the key plot detail that will help Marvel fix Deadpool’s huge problem that makes the character incompatible with the MCU.
If you’ve seen all MCU films to date and the first two Deadpool films made by Fox, you know there’s a massive problem that prevents Marvel form bringing Deadpool over as is — and that problem only became apparent once Endgame was released. That’s time travel, of course.
In Endgame, altering the past doesn’t change the future. All it does is to spawn a new timeline of events where the future might unravel differently. But in Deadpool 2, changing the past changed the future. Obviously, we can’t have both these rules in the MCU going forward, especially since the former is a key element for the entire Endgame plot. So Marvel has to keep all that Deadpool magic in place while somewhat retconning the sequel.
That brand new leak that I mentioned explains how it might all go down. The same source that said last week that Deadpool will appear in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness in the film and post-credits scene is back with new details. According to We Got This Covered, Marvel may be considering having two Deadpools, one for the Fox-verse and one for the MCU:
The Fox-verse version would cameo in the film and then never appear again, while the MCU version would show up later on and be the one that ultimately joins the cinematic universe. The implication would then be that Wade has always existed in the MCU, which is a fascinating endeavor in its own right.
While the report doesn’t touch on the time travel discrepancies between Deadpool and Endgame, this is the sort of trick that would deal with the issue resulting from incorporating Deadpool as-is in the MCU, complete with the Deadpool 1 and Deadpool 2 baggage. By introducing the MCU’s own Deadpool, one who is played by the same Ryan Reynolds and does pretty much what the other version does without any time travel, Marvel would avoid having to deal with all those issues. They would still exist, however, as the Fox-verse would have different time travel rules if this leak pans out. But Marvel wouldn’t have to worry about it going forward.
Marvel could pull off a similar trick to separate MCU Spider-Man from Sony’s Spider-Man in the future.
That said, we’re still looking at early leaks about a film that’s not set to hit theaters until 2021. There’s no guarantee that Deadpool will show up in Doctor Strange 2 as suggested in these leaks. But it could definitely turn out to be a pivotal MCU film, as it should help establish the fact that there are different realities out there that can interfere with the MCU reality.
What’s also worth noting is that the same film is also rumored to introduce Wolverine and possibly other X-Men heroes to the MCU, something that would make perfect sense. Let’s not forget that Deadpool exists in the same X-Men universe that Fox created, so by separating the two, Marvel would have a simple explanation as to why all the Fox X-Men films mean nothing for the MCU, By the way, the wrong kind of time travel also altered Fox’s X-Men universe, so it can’t function in the MCU, either.
