Last night was the Super Bowl, which, of course, means big film trailers. And one of the biggest was the highly-anticipated first trailer for ‘Deadpool 3’, aka ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’. As the title suggests, it teams up Ryan Reynolds with Hugh Jackman as the titular characters, but there are also some other interesting little bits and pieces in the trailer. Here is a breakdown.
We open at Wade’s birthday party, which not only features his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), but also Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), and the rest of his “X-Force” team. If you’re thinking “wait, didn’t Vanessa die in ‘Deadpool 2’?”, yes, she did, along with some of the others in this scene. However, in a post-credit scene, Wade uses Cable’s time travel device to mess with the timeline and bring Vanessa and the others back to life (along with murdering his variant from ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, and stopping “Ryan Reynolds” from starring in the ‘Green Lantern’ movie…) This might explain why the TVA has shown up at his door…
For those of you who haven’t watched the ‘Loki’ series (which you should, it’s really good!), the TVA stands for Time Variance Authority, who are tasked with protecting the timeline. They appear to have some snazzy new outfits too! They kidnap him and take him back to TVA headquarters. Side note, he makes a joke here about Disney, and this is the first of a number of references in the trailer which shows this is likely to be Deadpool’s most fourth-wall-breaking film yet.
At the TVA, we’re introduced to Mr. Paradox (played by the wonderful Matthew Macfadyen) who offers Wade the chance to be “a hero among heroes”. As to exactly what that entails, we don’t know, although the monitors in this scene are showing clips of older Marvel films such as ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’.
This next shot is brief, but possibly one of the most interesting of the trailer. The camera pans up the back of a bald-headed individual. At first glance, you might think this is Professor X (played by either Patrick Stewart or James McAvoy)… However, there is another possible candidate – Cassandra Nova, who is believed to be the lead villain character being played by Emma Corrin (The Crown). There is a reason you might mistake her for Professor X, but I won’t go into that here as it’ll take too long and I don’t want to give away too much!
There is a second interesting little back-of-the-head shot in this sequence, which shows a man in a white suit sitting at a table. From the hair, you would say this is most likely Hugh Jackman’s “Wolverine”. However, in this guise, it’s likely to be “Patch”, an alias of Wolverine’s who wears a white tuxedo and eyepatch, which he uses whilst in Madripoor, the (to steal a quote from Disney’s other franchise) “wretched hive of scum and villainy” which we last saw in the ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ series.
In the voiceover, Wade, who is apparently talking to Mr. Paradox, comments that “your little cinematic universe is about to change forever”, before proclaiming himself “Marvel Jesus”, in another fourth-wall-breaking remark.
In the next sequence, we see Deadpool battling some TVA agents in a wasteland, possibly the Void at the End of Time, last seen in ‘Loki’. One thing really sticks out, quite literally, and that’s the giant 20th Century Fox logo which is sticking out of the ground behind him. We’ve long suspected the purpose of this movie was to tear down the old Fox/Marvel universe, and it seems like it will, in the most meta way possible!
Moving further through the trailer, we get another familiar face – Pyro, played by Aaron Stanford (12 Monkeys) from the ‘X-Men’ films.
One last thing, which you might have missed. Just before the end of the trailer, where Wolverine (or his shadow at least) shows up, Deadpool is laid out on the ground. To his left is a comic book. That is a Secret Wars comic, and (according to Reddit), is Secret Wars #5 from the 2015 run, featuring Doctor Doom on the cover. Could this be a tease for the introduction of the Fantastic Four big-bad? Phase 6 of the MCU is supposed to conclude with ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’, and Doom is a major player in that comic book. There is also some suggestion Marvel is looking for a big bad to fill the hole left by Jonathan Majors’ legal issues. Could it be Doom? We’ll have to wait and see!
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ is set to hit UK cinemas from 26th July 2024.
