Well, it’s official: Hugh Jackman will be reprising the role of Wolverine, a role he said he was finished with, for his good friend Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool 3. Though Reynolds has been jokingly including Jackman’s Wolverine in the last two Deadpool movies through gags and bits, the announcement of his inclusion still comes as a surprise to fans since Jackman said he was done with the character after Logan wrapped things up so nicely. So what does this revelation mean in relation to the Wolverine’s last on-screen outing?
Reynolds recently released a teaser for Deadpool 3 updating fans on where he was at with the project. He starts off with a misdirect, claiming, “I have nothing,” before mischievously going on to state, “But we did have one idea,” cue Hugh Jackman walking nonchalantly across the background. Reynolds asks, “Hey, Hugh, you want to play Wolverine one more time?” to which he responds, “Yeah, sure Ryan.” It would seem after years of joking, teasing, and downright begging, Deadpool will finally get some quality time with the clawed mutant.
So Wolverine is coming back to our screens, huzzah! But does this mean the ending from Logan is undone? Well, not necessarily. We are all very aware that there are different cinematic universes that Marvel characters exist within, including the MCU, Sony, and 20th Century Fox. Disney now owns both MCU and Fox characters and has an agreement in place with Sony, which allowed the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home to take place.
Both Deadpool and the X-Men franchise were owned by Fox with their storylines kept separate from the events that were taking place in the MCU. However, with Disney’s acquisition of the production company in 2019, storylines and characters now have the potential to cross over as we have already seen with Charles Xavier’s inclusion in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
We also know that there are different multiverses and one character can have multiple variants across the multiverse. This is likely what they will do with Wolverine in this instance, making him a different variant from the one we saw die at the end of the rather grim Logan. The X-Men films themselves also had an issue with continuity thanks to Days of Future Past messing around with timelines, and on top of that Logan was a very different breed of superhero film compared to all that had come before. It may be considered that the 2017 film already wasn’t a part of the same universe as the other X-Men movies and that Wolverine was yet another variant.
Many will be wondering which version of Wolverine we will see in the upcoming Deadpool movie, and the answer is we just don’t know yet. Many think that the greyish/silver Deadpool costume worn by Reynolds in his teaser may be a hint that the story will look at X-Force, an offshoot of the X-Men who were often a lot more brutal in their methods. This would work well for Deadpool’s gritty and bloody vibe which saw the last two films rated R. Add on top of that two mutants that can never die, one with a short fuse, the other constantly antagonistic, and we might see some hilariously violent scenes between the two characters.
Though the Australian actor previously mentioned being worried about returning to the role after Logan, it would seem he has had a change of heart, and it will be great to see Reynolds and Jackman working together again. The two have an ongoing friendship that started when both of them were playing the same characters on the set of the much-maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Though the film was panned by fans and critics, it did give us something truly beautiful: the Reynolds/Jackson bromance. It all feels as if it has been leading to this moment, coming back full circle with the two in their iconic characters beside one another once again for Deadpool 3. Let’s just hope their chemistry on screen is as good as it is off, because if that’s the case, we’re in for a treat.
We still have a few years to wait to see them together again though as Deadpool 3 is set to hit theatres on September 6, 2024.
