Deadpool & Wolverine is the biggest live-action movie of the year so far, so it’s not surprising that after being a box office hit, the movie is making a huge splash as a video-on-demand title. The fact that it can now be watched at home means a lot of people are getting a chance to rewatch it or watch it for the first time, taking more time to check out all the various references and easter eggs that might have been missed the first time around.
One of those random easter eggs has recently gone viral, as a lot of people apparently hadn’t noticed it the first time around. Not to toot our own horn or anything but we, or at least CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell, absolutely noticed it in the trailers alone. Yes, the ship from Master & Commander is among the wrecks found in The Void when Deadpool and Wolverine have their first big fight.
Not Every Deadpool & Wolverine Easter Egg Is Marvel Related
Deadpool & Wolverine wasn’t just full of random jokes and references about the MCU or other superhero movies, it was a film that was almost entirely about the movie business, and whose actual plot was based in the fact that Disney had purchased 20th Century Fox.
This resulted in several of the film’s big jokes referencing Fox directly. During the big battle in The Void between Deadpool and Wolverine the most obvious reference to this is obvious, a half smashed 20th Century Fox logo, but that’s not the only thing worth seeing, as one eagle-eyed viewer recently noticed.
Finally watched that new Deadpool movie. I do not care about most of the references but I'm fixated on this ship in the Fox graveyard being the HMS Surprise from MASTER AND COMMANDER. pic.twitter.com/HYAzvH25LgOctober 25, 2024
The tweet has gone viral as it appears that a lot of people had not noticed the smashed ship in the background, or at least not recognized it as being the HMS Surprise from Master & Commander.
The Master & Commander Reference Was Part Of The Film’s Larger Joke At The Expense Of Fox
Back when the first full trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine dropped our own Sean O’Connell put forth a theory about the film and how the Fox logo and the HMS Surprise would fit into the story. While he got some of the details wrong, the broader concept, that Deadpool’s universe, and by extension the Fox movie universe, was coming to an end, turned out to be largely on point.
While recent MCU teases have indicated some elements of the Fox/Marvel universe may carry over into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least short term, most of those franchises are dead. Deadpool & Wolverine acted as a surprisingly heartfelt send-off. However, apparently, the Marvel franchises aren’t the only ones that died.
Master & Commander was always meant to be a franchise of its own. While the movie is broadly praised today as being an exceptional movie, at the time, the film wasn’t the hit it needed to be to justify sequels, largely due to the movie being an incredibly expensive production.
While some Fox franchises, like Alien and Predator, have continued under Disney, Master & Commander certainly belongs in The Void. If there was ever a chance of it returning under Fox, that almost certainly died following the Disney purchase. But at least we know where to find it.
