It turns out good things really do come to those who wait… 23 years, to be specific. Hugh Jackman has, at long last, revealed our very first look at him in the classic yellow and blue suit as Wolverine in Deadpool 3, finally fulfilling a wish X-Men fans like myself have had since he first unsheathed his Adamantium claws as Logan in 2000. However, once I came down off that initial Everest-sized high, something struck me. Does Jackman’s costume reveal tell us even more than it appears?
The placement of Deadpool 3 in Wolverine’s personal timeline has already caused much consternation among continuity nuts, although Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have claimed it simply takes place before his death in Logan. But is there actually something else going on here? What if Jackman isn’t necessarily reprising the same Logan we’ve always known but one from another universe? Specifically, a universe we’ve visited before, a universe already confirmed to be home to the X-Men.
Yes, what if Deadpool 3‘s Wolverine comes from Earth-838? Apart from sharing various variants with Earth-616, the world of the Illuminati is likewise home to a variant of Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, albeit one who more closely resembles the Charles Xavier from X-Men: The Animated Series. So, logically, it would stand to reason that 838 also has a Wolverine variant who looks like Hugh Jackman but actually likes to wear bright yellow. Just like the Australian star is in his DP3 set pic.
The one downside of Jackman’s return in the threequel is that it emotionally undoes his perfect ending in Logan, so bringing him back as an alternate Wolverine would instantly solve that problem, as well as creating a neat tie-in with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a film which you could say DP3 is something of a follow-up to in its multiversal themes. Folks are already saying Deadpool 3 is the movie Doctor Strange 2 should’ve been, but maybe that’s more true than we know.