The next piece of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s marketing campaign has descended upon us, this time in the form of a second trailer, which sheds far more light on the “Wolverine” part of Deadpool & Wolverine.
Indeed, we’ve gotten the most proper look at Hugh Jackman‘s hundred-year-old mutant—complete with yellow spandex and a swath of f-bombs—yet, but perhaps most curious aspects of this close-up are all the none-too-subtle, cheeky-to-depressing hints that Wolverine has some awareness surrounding the real-life downfall of Fox’s X-Men franchise. This is in spite of the fact that, the last time we saw Jackman wrapped around that adamantium skeleton, it was a cinematic feast for the ages.
Indeed, Jackman’s last turn as Wolverine before Deadpool & Wolverine was in Logan, the 2017 James Mangold feature that became an Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay. Ryan Reynolds previously hinted that the ending of Logan would remain untouched by the MCU feature, but it’s hard to tell if “untouched” in Reynolds’ mind means the same thing for the fans.
What happened to Wolverine in Logan?
Wolverine—then an old man whose healing factor wasn’t what it once was—gave his life defending a group of mutant children, including his adopted-but-also-biological daughter Laura, from a corporation known as Transigen, who created the children using mutant DNA to be trained as weapons. The children bury him, with Laura tilting the cross at the head of his grave sideways to form an X before leaving.
In the trailer, we hear Deadpool say “is that what you said when your world went to s***?” when Wolverine rudely declines his request for help in saving the MCU. So, on some level, Wolverine will at least learn of the Fox universe’s implosion, which may or may not suggest that he’ll gain a sort of omniscience about the events that play out in that canon, which would include Logan, since said implosion would have had to occur after Logan. This suggests that the events of Logan remain intact in some way, but could just as easily indicate that they haven’t yet played out in Wolverine’s time/universe; in other words, if Wolverine returns to his proper time/universe at the end of Deadpool & Wolverine, he’ll likely possess knowledge that he can use to interfere with the established events of the Fox canon.
All this to say that we simply don’t know the depth of the implications here, and we still have so many questions about this movie that won’t be answered until that sweet summer release date. For now, though, all we really know in this vein is that Deadpool recruited a Fox version of Wolverine that was alive, rather than one that was buried in the dirt. Indeed, never was there a more peerless tactician than Wade Winston Wilson.
Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on July 26.