The moment that the longer trailer for Shawn Levy’s upcoming Deadpool and Wolverine arrived, fans immediately started combing the footage for clues, hints, and Easter eggs. Mutants who have been rumored to appear in the movie were confirmed. And there were countless other questions raised by the footage, some of them including portals created by Doctor Strange, and others involving Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine… or, several variations of the same character.
But I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into something that we have been seeing in all manor of promotional material for Deadpool and Wolverine, and which showed up once again in the trailer: The physical recreation of the 20th Century Fox studio logo. And based on a number of clues that were present in the new Deadpool trailer, I have a developing theory on how the studio is being used. But I’m going to put it after this photo, in case you came in here, and don’t want to read spoilers.
So, we know based on the Deadpool and Wolverine footage that Marvel Studios showed at CinemaCon in Las Vegas that Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) gets kidnapped by the Time Variance Authority (or TVA), and is offered a role on the Sacred Timeline. I believe – this has not been confirmed – that Deadpool will have to go on a multiverse-hopping mission to retrieve Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). The trailer opens with Wade trying to coax a disgruntled Wolverine out of a bar… though he’s not in his X-Men suit. So I think that’s a different Wolverine than the one that Deadpool eventually brings back to the TVA.
The Wolverine variant in the yellow-and-blue spandex, we’re told, has “let down his entire world.” And I believe, as punishment, he was pruned by the TVA and sent to a Void at the End of the Timeline… as is featured in the Disney+ series Loki.
What do we know about the Void? When variants participate in a Nexus Event that deviates from the Sacred Timeline, they get pruned by the TVA, and end up in the Void at the end of the Timeline – banished like trash to a dumping ground. In the Void showcased in Loki, the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) first met He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), a Kang variant who was keeping the Sacred Timeline together, and preventing Kangs from different universes from rising up. He Who Remains succeeded in ending the Multiversal War when he harnassed the power of a gargantuan creature known as Alioth.
Who, conveniently, appears in the Deadpool and Wolverine trailer:
So, I believe that the desert-looking area where Deadpool is fighting against Wolverine in the yellow-and-blue spandex is the Void of that multiverse. Specifically, I think it’s the Void at the end of the universe that used to contain 20th Century Fox, the studio. And I think, in a meta joke, physical remnants of the Fox films will be present in this void. Things like the massive 20th Century Fox logo that can be seen, in pieces, behind Wolverine and Deadpool while they fight.
And even the pirate ship that can be spotted in the background:
Can Deadpool and Wolverine work in a joke about how 20th Century Fox failed to establish the Master & Commander franchise, thereby relegating the ships to the Void at the end of the Fox timeline? Will some jokes be held until the final cut of the movie? For example, could this ship actually be replaced by something from the Star Wars or Avatar franchise?
The Deadpool franchise thrives on inside jokes, and the hero breaking the fourth wall to place the story in the time frame of the audience. The new trailer itself ends with Ryan Reynolds’s Wade blatantly referencing jokes that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige wouldn’t let them include in the movie. Because Deadpool only was able to come to the MCU because Disney purchased 20th Century Fox, you know that this movie is going to creatively reference that acquisition. And I think sending Deadpool into the Void of Fox remnants to retrieve Wolverine amongst a pile of pirate ships, space craft, and other wreckage (that likely will be filled in with Fox specific VFX additions) is exactly the kind of winking nod that Deadpool would include.
That’s my best guess as to where the characters of Deadpool and Wolverine are in those moments from the film, based on Alioth, the obvious pirate ship, and more. I also believe that we’ve only seen a sliver of that’s in store, and that the final shot of Wolvie and DP leaping through a portal is going to kick start the movie on a whole ‘nother adventure. We’ll find out in July when Deadpool and Wolverine finally opens in a theater near you.
