Deadpool & Wolverine could not be coming at a more opportune moment. Although Marvel’s current 2024/2025 schedule is only the result of the strikes messing with the studio’s plans, having the much-anticipated Ryan Reynolds threequel be the one to restore the MCU to its former greatness after an extremely taxing 2023 is the perfect turn of events.
While The Marvels may go down as a perfectly respectable and solid entry in the Marvel canon, going by the surge of support it’s received since hitting streaming, it’s hard to entirely scrub away the stain of the Brie Larson sequel going down as the worst-performing MCU movie of them all last fall. Not only does Captain Marvel 3 now seem like a distant possibility, but it suggested that whole corner of the cinematic universe might be locked away and ignored forever more.
That’s why it’s so intriguing that one all-important moment in the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer has spawned a compelling theory that the aftermath of The Marvels might be about to be explored in this very next film, thereby immediately cementing it as a key entry in the Multiverse Saga — haters be damned.
How could Deadpool & Wolverine cross over with The Marvels?
The climactic moment of the trailer sees DP and Wolvie LFG their way into a mystical multiversal portal. We currently have a lot of questions about said portal, as we don’t know which Master of the Mystic Arts conjured it (if it’s just Ned, I swear to God) and we don’t know where it might lead. As per one convincing theory, pitched by Redditor OneAboveAll0 among others, this portal could lead to a universe we’ve already visited…
Previously on the MCU: The Marvels ended with Monica Rambeau getting sent to another universe — one where a variant of her mother, Maria Rambeau/Binary, was a pal of the X-Men, who seem to be variants of the Fox characters — as seen by Kelsey Grammer returning as Beast. We’ve been trained of late to expect Marvel post-credits scenes to take an age to pay off — where art thou, Harry Styles and Hercules? — but in this case Deadpool 3 could pick up what The Marvels put down less than a year later.
Whether Monica appears or not, going back to this universe could allow for DP and Wolverine to interact with various familiar X-Men characters from the original Fox films — which would otherwise be impossible due to Deadpool hailing from the prequel timeline and this version of Logan coming from an Earth where all the X-Men are dead. Who knows, maybe some kind of incursion could occur — perhaps caused by Cassandra Nova — and result in this universe bleeding together with Earth-616 19999 and that’s how we get mutants in the MCU.
From a more holistic perspective, it would also be pretty meaningful for this ostensibly more bro-y MCU movie to respect and play ball with the Captain Marvel films in this way, considering the whole “M-She-U” backlash of it all. Those kind of fans may claim him, but Wade Wilson himself wouldn’t support such Carol Danvers slander (they were lovers in one comics timeline, FYI).
Basically, don’t skip The Marvels when you do your Disney Plus MCU marathon before Deadpool & Wolverine gets here this July 26.
