SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Deadpool 2. If you have not yet seen the film, please bookmark this page, and save the read until after your screening!
Despite being R-rated and much smaller in scale than most superhero movies, 2016's Deadpool did keep up a mainstream trend in one way, as it included a special post-credits scene for fans. A reference to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the tag had the titular Merc With The Mouth dressed in a bathrobe and making promises about Cable's introduction in Deadpool 2. Now that sequel is finally here, and it too has a memorable, wonderful set of end credits scenes to enjoy.
What happens in these sequences? How does it affect what audiences saw in Deadpool 2? What are some ideas that didn't make it to the big screen? We have the answers to all those questions and more below and on the next few pages, so without further delay, let's dive in!
What Happens In The End Credits Scenes
Deadpool 2 ends on a mostly positive note, as Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) finds his peace with himself among his new family -- but the end credits scenes basically serve to make is a SUPER happy ending. While Cable (Josh Brolin) says earlier in the movie that his time travel device is two-use only, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Breanna Hildebrand) and Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna) fix it so that it can be used a hell of a lot more than that. Unfortunately, they make the mistake of putting it in Deadpool's hands, and he uses to do anything he wants -- a bad decision that the couple quickly realizes together.
As Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" cues up on the soundtrack, Deadpool makes his first stop by traveling back to one of the earliest scenes in the film. Specifically, he goes back to a few seconds just before Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is killed, and makes sure that he is much more adept with his cream cheese spreader throwing abilities. With the love of his life spared, he declares that they need to name their kid Cher, and then ventures off for more timeline screwiness.
Deadpool then arrives mid-way through the X-Force's parachute blunder -- but if you think he's going to bother saving Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), or Vanisher (Brad Pitt) you just don't know Deadpool. Instead, the Merc With The Mouth uses this opportunity to exclusively save the life of the gloriously-mustachioed Peter (Rob Delaney), who he has clearly fallen for hard. Wade tells Peter to just walk away and leave the mission behind, saving him the horrible fate of being vomited on and melted by a dying Zeitgest. This weight of this is clearly lost on the normal fellow, as his last request to DP is that he give Domino his email.
Stop #3? The third act of Gavin Hood's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is one of the darkest moments in Deadpool history. Fans are brought back to the most notorious scene in that film, where it's revealed that Wade Wilson has been transformed into a mouthless mutant with razors in his arms and laser eyes. Only in the Deadpool 2 version that doesn't happen. As Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) looks on, snarking, "Stryker finally found a way to shut you up," the real Deadpool comes up from behind the abomination and shoots him in the head. This isn't quite enough, though, as he feels compelled to essentially unload an entire clip in the version of Deadpool that everyone wants to forget.
After that we get to the fourth and final mission, which finds actor Ryan Reynolds sitting pretty in his home and at his desk. In his hands is the script for Green Lantern, and with sheer joy the young man says to himself, "Welcome to the big leagues, kid." Before Reynolds can make this terrible, terrible career decision, however, Deadpool comes up from behind him and blasts a hole in his skull. The titular hero then delivers the last line of Deadpool 2: "You're welcome, Canada."
It's an epic sequence that is unquestionably one of the best ever seen in the comic book movie genre. But what does it mean for Deadpool 2? We'll get into that next, with quotes from writers/producers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick!
Does This Mean That The Entire Film Didn't Happen?
Funny as the Deadpool 2 end credits scenes are, they do make you ask a very big question once you have left the theater: did everything I just watched actually happen? All of the events were set in motion because of Vanessa's death, so you have to wonder if everything changed once Wade went back in time to save her life. Fortunately, I recently got Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to comment on that issue.
I sat down with the two writers/producers during the New York press day for Deadpool 2, and a nice chunk of our conversation was dedicated to the end credit antics. I specifically asked if all of the time travel negates the story of the film, and they had a funny response:
Does it rewrite everything?Paul Wernick: Yes.Rhett Reese: So we invalidated the whole movie job. Great job! We're telling everybody, 'You didn't even need to be here for two hours, because everything is solved!' But yeah, we do at least want to leave the possibility open for Vanessa and Peter.Paul Wernick: More lazy writing.Rhett Reese: Or was it really smart, clever forethinking? I think it was lazy. [laughs]Paul Wernick: It was one of those things where we all looked at it, and go, 'Yeah, I mean on a purely tactical screenwriting basis it's probably not the wisest thing to do, but it was just too funny and so much fun that I think the audience will forgive us for doing it, because time travel in general is kind of a funky thing. And so we just took our license with it and made it Deadpool.
Not only is there the benefit of Deadpool 2 being a Deadpool movie, but there is also the nature of fate to consider. If certain things are destined to happen, such as Deadpool meeting Cable and Domino to start X-Force, that means things might just unfold as shown, only with a different impetus. Maybe a totally event occurred that led Wade to meet Russell (Julian Dennison), which is really all you need for the film to play out normally.
What makes this whole situation funnier, though, is the end credits scene that didn't wind up making it into Deadpool 2 -- which presumably would have had even greater consequences on the timeline. But you'll have to go to the next page to read about that!
The Scene That Didn't Make The Cut
As it stands, Deadpool 2 has five fantastic end credit scenes, but it nearly had a sixth. In addition to telling me about how the antics affected the timeline for the film, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick also clued me in on a scene that didn't wind up making the finished cut of the movie. Originally there was going to be a last part where Deadpool went back all the way to 1889 so that he could kill baby Adolf Hitler, thus presumably avoiding the Holocaust and some of the horrific atrocities that occurred before and during World War II.
Of course, as you might have guessed, it wasn't because of the timeline issues that the scene wasn't included in Deadpool 2. Instead, it was mostly about ending the multimillion dollar blockbuster on a moment where the hero kills a baby. Said Rhett Reese,
We did have the killing of Baby Hitler in the original, and that would have changed world events completely. But we didn't take it out for that reason. We took it out because it's sort of left that movie on this weird note where Deadpool was strangling a child. Perhaps that's not the right message to send.
I noted that this would have been particularly strange given the fact that Deadpool 2 is almost entirely about the protagonist actively trying to stop a time traveling assassin. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick took that idea one step further, totally expanding on their original "Killing Baby Hitler" idea:
Rhett Reese: Now [Deadpool's] got to go befriend Baby Hitler and put him on the good path, get them into arts school or whatever. Like that's not gonna happen. So, yeah, we took it out, but it may be a little extra.Paul Wernick: So we set out to fix Colossus, Juggernaut, Deadpool and Hitler.That's your legacy. I love that.Rhett Reese: That would have been awesome. We would have fixed the Hitler thing.
A possible plot for Deadpool 3? Probably too same-y.
Even without the assassination of Baby Hitler, Deadpool 2's end credit scenes still go down in history as some of the best ever made. Needless to say, it will be a serious challenge for them to be topped in DP's next adventure, Drew Goddard's X-Force.
