Deadpool 2's End-Credits Scene & Timeline Change Explained

Warning: Spoilers for Deadpool 2.

Deadpool 2's end-credits scene may just be the best in the history of superhero movies. With the extended coda to his latest raunch-fest, Ryan Reynolds not only throws the middle finger up at conventional superhero narrative, but also directly addresses some of his biggest spandex mistakes: X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern.

This end-credits scene had a high bar to reach given the standard of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's game-changing post-credits stingers and, indeed, Wade Wilson's own debut. The first Deadpool ended with a homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off's stinger (one of the first of its kind) where the Merc with a Mouth - masked up and wearing a dressing gown a la Matthew Broderick - told the audience, "it's over, go home", the ultimate fourth wall break, and was then followed up by a second stinger where Deadpool confirmed Cable for the sequel, speculating on the casting of Mel Gibson, Dolph Lundgren, or Kiera Knightly. A send-up of Marvel's foreshadowing (he even called out Samuel L. Jackson and his Nick Fury eye-patch), the icing on the cake was that the second scene wasn't part of press screenings, making it an audience-only "exclusive".

Deadpool 2's end-credits scene isn't anywhere near as forward-thinking (or is it?), instead choosing to address some hard-baked ideas of the character in both this movie and well into the past. And it's kind of brilliant.

This Page: Wade Saves Vanessa & Peter... And Rewrites Deadpool 2?
Page 2: Wade Kills Origins Deadpool And Ryan Reynolds

Deadpool Travels Back In Time To Change... Everything

A key part of Deadpool 2's story is time travel, with Cable jumping back to kill Russell, and at the end using his second charge to save Wade himself. The mechanics aren't detailed too heavily in the film itself for the sake of brevity, but it appears to operate as a pretty simple divergent timeline situation: Cable is able to change the future by going into the past (with none of the Back to the Future fading). Essentially, it's whatever the story needs it to be.

In Deadpool 2's end-credits scene, Deadpool needs it for many things. The scene - technically in the middle of the credits - picks up with Wade, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio in the X-Mansion, with the two young X-Men adding more jumps to Cable's now-depleted time dial. After some light jokes - Deadpool calls Negasonic Eleven in a nod to Stranger Things and has one final "Hi Yukio" - he goes to jump through time to make... so many changes.

First, he goes back to the start of the movie and the death of Vanessa, correcting his misaimed knife throw to kill the last of the assailants from the start and saving his lover in the process. Wade then goes back to the X-Force massacre, saving the well-meaning, powerless Peter (but leaving the others to their humiliating fate). There's more afterward, of course, but this alone raises questions.

Are Peter And Vanessa Alive (And Did Deadpool 2 Even Happen)?

The big question here is whether what just happened is canon and these characters indeed survived. The presentation of these two moments definitely implies that, and for fair reason: it would make sense to save Vanessa and bring Morena Baccarin back for whatever's next (X-Force if not Deadpool 3), although doing so does make the general fridging of her character and its weird place in the narrative all the more problematic. As for Peter, he was an undeniable standout in the late stages of the marketing and if any of the parodic X-Force actually belong in a proper movie version of the team, it's paradoxically him (the writers have even said they want a Peter standalone).

However, for either of them to survive raises big questions of how much of Deadpool 2 actually happened; if Wade saved Vanessa (and/or Peter), then events surely unfold differently (and he's the only one who remembers the original timeline)? Possibly, although X-Men canon may excuse a lot of this. Regardless of what happens to Vanessa, Cable still comes from the future and needs to be stopped, and Peter surviving is fittingly a minor shift. More importantly, the nature of Deadpool 2's best-fit time travel makes it very easy to shrug off things realigning. Indeed, X-Men: Days of Future Past introduced the notion that time is a river, with things eventually following the defined track.

Of course, to apply too much thought to this aspect of the franchise's continuity feels a bit fruitless at this point, especially when there are bigger changes to be made...

Page 2 of 2: Wade Kills Origins Deadpool And Ryan Reynolds

Deadpool Erases Origins: Wolverine

After rewriting Deadpool 2, Wade sets his sights on a movie that's in more desperate need of fixing. We cut to stock footage of the infamous scene in X-Men Origins: Wolverine where the abused version of Deadpool - a "pool" of powers with his mouth sewed up - shows down against Logan, only for the newer Mr. Pool to come out and riddle the bastardization with bullets, explaining to Wolverine that he's fixing the timeline.

The Origins "interpretation" of Deadpool - credited as Reynolds, although played post-transformation by Scott Adkins - became immediately despised in 2009, completely undermining the character (even if the movie's end-credits scene did bring his fourth-wall breaking to life) and serving as a major blow to the hopes of a proper solo movie. The stench still lingered when the first Deadpool released in 2016, leading to several jabs at Fox's expense - the sewed up mouth was mentioned and an action figure of the barely-Deadpool tossed aside - but this time Reynolds and co. have gone all out, actively killing the mistake.

This would seem to resolutely confirm - as their different time period and backstories already suggested - the two Wades are indeed totally different people (despite the movie-star looks and quipping). Yet once again we come to questions of the timeline, spurred on by Deadpool's own comments, although this time it's much more flippant. Origins: Wolverine has technically already been erased from the current X-Men movie continuity by Days of Future Past's reset, with X-Men: Apocalypse detailing a different escape story for Logan. This almost adds to the joke, with Deadpool's murder of his previous iteration ultimately fruitless and more personal bitterness... something that makes the final scene extra hilarious.

Deadpool Kills Ryan Reynolds Before He Can Make Green Lantern

The final timeline correction takes Deadpool to some time in 2009 when Ryan Reynolds was reading the script for Green Lantern. Reynolds proclaims this will take him to the A-list, only for Deadpool to sneak up behind him and shoot him in the head.

This joke is, obviously, a little more personal, with Reynolds once again poking fun at the overall failure of his DC movie (it has a lower Metacritic score than Origins: Wolverine) in uproariously gory fashion. Deadpool already showed the actor's regret for the at-the-time-ambitious-yet-totally-unconvincing all-CG costume, but here the entire movie gets a blood-soaked, non-verbal takedown. It's just a shame there was no similar dig made at Blade: Trinity.

The Cut Deadpool 2 End-Credits Scene

In the finished film, that's all we get - Reynolds' corrects his biggest mistakes and the movie's over, go home. However, as originally planned things would have gone a little crazier. The final stinger had Deadpool going back to 1889 to kill Adolf Hitler in the crib: Wade would um-and-ah over pulling the trigger, shout at a crying baby "Shut up Ira, you’ll thank me someday" (yes, a Holocaust joke) before strangling Hitler from the baby's POV.

A realization of the popular time travel question of going back in time to kill Hitler - something Deadpool already called out earlier in reference to Cable's plan to kill Russell - the scene understandably got a harsh reaction from test audiences and so was cut.

Holy Sh*t Balls - He’s the Juggernaut

The Juggernaut looks up, confused, in X-Men: The Last Stand

In lieu of baby Hitler, there's no extra scene at the end of the credits. However, there is still one final treat for fans: an unimpeded rendition of Juggernaut's theme. The track "You Can't Stop this Mother F*****" plays twice in the film - during the slow-motion truck crash and later during Juggernaut's fight with Colossus - but both scenes are so loud and busy it's quite easy to miss that there are lyrics to the song. Thankfully, the chorus is here in full.

It's hardly subtle, but the song is pretty hilarious: the main vocals say, "You can’t stop him. He’s the Juggernaut. You can’t stop this mother f*cker", with choral accompaniment singing, "Holy Sh*t Balls". Does this mean Juggernaut will be back or is it just a chance for the song to sit by itself? Only time will tell, but one thing is clear: we're a long way from Vinnie Jones.