Deadpool 2 Fixes All The X-Men Movie Timeline Problems

The X-Men timeline has always been the messiest of the superhero movie franchises, but now Deadpool 2 may have actually fixed the continuity concerns. That's no easy task; whereas the problems with Marvel Cinematic Universe's broken timeline stand out due to how tight their continuity usually is, Fox's mutant series hasn't made sense for well over a decade, and even though recent movies like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Logan have tried to streamline the continuity, they've only really made more bumps.

Now, Deadpool 2 is pretty confusing on its own thanks to the introduction of Cable's time travel. The film doesn't lay down any real mechanics for how the time travel works, and regardless breaks what it sets up. By our calculating, the film's working with at least five different timelines, with the fates of multiple characters completely unclear.

However, thanks to cameos, references and the larger ramifications of that time travel meddling, Deadpool 2's timeline impact goes well beyond its two-hour runtime. The movie is bigger than the original, and that goes to its complicated relation to the parent series.

This Page: How The X-Men Timeline Broke
Page 2: How Deadpool Breaks (And Then Solves) The Timeline

A Brief History Of X-Men's Timeline Mistakes

At their core, the X-Men continuity confusion is more down to the franchise being a product of a different era than it is storytelling oversight (contrast to the MCU's ever-correcting timeline). The first movie released in 2000, at a time when making one movie based on a comic was a major achievement, let alone an inter-connected franchise. The original X-Men trilogy was set in "the not-too-distant future", distancing it from real-world concerns, and was for the most part pretty consistent; there were minor flubs with character ages and the like, but for the most part it was as good as could be expected for the time. Even X-Men Origins: Wolverine slotted in fairly well by nature of narrative distance; the major issue there was an inconsistency in the Weapon X program's presentation with X2, yet nothing contradicted enough to be a problem. Ultimately, it was pre-shared universe storytelling done fairly well.

The cracks become problems with X-Men: First Class, a proper prequel that truncated presumed major events - Professor X and Magento's friendship that is so strong they remain close despite battle lines was a short excursion - confused character ties - Cyclops' younger brother was a member of the team in 1960s, while both Emma Frost and Moira McTaggart had counterparts in the original fun - rewrote prior movies - Xavier and Mystique were suddenly childhood friends - and overall ignored Wolverine. The adjustments were all for the benefit of Matthew Vaughn's film, but considering one of its primary franchise purposes was to tell the "origins" of the core team and the cohesion of the MCU was making continuity a key concern, it fumbled it.

Days of Future Past existed primarily to fix everything, and the solution was a novel one: rather than bending over backward to explain the inconsistencies, it created a new "best fit" timeline that explicitly wrote out the events of lesser films (Origins and The Last Stand) and left the specifics of the rest open to audience and future filmmaker interpretation. Of course, even to get there holes were made - The Wolverine's mid-credits setup ignored the future threat, somehow Professor X was alive after The Last Stand, Bolivar Trask had turned from Bill Duke to Peter Dinklage, and the 1962 characters hadn't aged a day in the following decade - and the fix wouldn't last regardless.

X-Men: Apocalypse basically ditched any notion of the new timeline and acted as if it were tying directly into the original X-Men trilogy, and with its recasting of Angel, retconning of Havok to Scott Summers' older brother and Jean Grey's Phoenix powers (among others), created a host of new problems itself. This was all so messy that for Wolverine's final go-around, Logan jumped far into the future with only passing reference to continuity (and still had confusing moments with what exactly happened prior and the recast of Caliban).

It's worth noting that at no point has this been a problem in any artistic sense. Bar Days of Future Past, none of the movies are incredibly fussed with continuity, and whether the notoriously inconsistent franchise lines up or not has had little bearing on the success of respective movies. However, in contrast to the likes of the MCU, it's become a recurring gag - something Deadpool's more than in on.

Page 2 of 2: How Deadpool Breaks (And Then Solves) The Timeline

The First Deadpool Almost Solved The Problem

So we come to Deadpool. The first film was deemed something of a gamble, only greenlit after test footage leaked, and so its connections to the wider universe were slight: the only X-Men were secondary-at-best (although it's worth noting that Stefan Kapicic's Colossus contradicted the Daniel Cudmore version from the original trilogy and Days of Future Past) and any greater references were in Deadpool's fourth-wall breaks. It was clearly set in the present day based on technology (and pop culture references) but not evidently in any version of the X-Men timeline (although Wade's very existence implied Origins, thankfully, didn't happen).

In fact, the movie seemed to adopt an alternate approach to shared universes: instead of being in a single continuity, it took part in some baseline version of the universe - with mutants, an X-Mansion, and whatever other flavor was required - that was then adapted to the story at hand. You know, like the comics. It was more a product of forced distance that it was a concerted effort for "fixing", but given how the approach was somewhat co-opted by Logan a year later, it definitely felt like where Fox was heading.

Deadpool 2 (Willingly) Messes It Up Again

Thanks to the original film's success, Deadpool 2 is properly let off the leash. This leads to a better film, but also means it comes into much closer contact with the lives of Charles Xavier and co. Whereas the deepest the cameos went first go around were Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman's mask, this time some really big and famous faces appear. Juggernaut presents something of a question mark given how he's completely different to the Vinnie Jones version, but that's really a similar timeline version switch-up akin to Deadpool himself from Origins to his own franchise.

Most relevant to this discussion, though, is the core X-Men cameo. Ostensibly a gag at how the comedy spinoff barely glances with the main continuity, during Wade's first visit to the X-Mansion we see the Apocalypse/Dark Phoenix vintage X-Men - Professor X, Beast, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and Quicksilver. It's a humorous case of fortuity, presumably the result of Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix filming at the same time, but creates problems. Deadpool 2 is set in the modern day, yet this iteration of the X-Men come from the 1990s (and, given how McAvoy still looks the same as in First Class, technically the 1960s). Whereas before the X-Men were abstract in Deadpool's world, now we have a time-displaced confirmation.

Deadpool 2 goes all in on this with its end-credits scene, not only using confused time travel mechanics to rewrite the previous two hours but having Deadpool go back and kill the Wolverine counterpart in a bid to "fix the timeline". Tongue-in-cheek it may be, it does literalize at least some of Deadpool's self-deprecating jokes and lines up with the multiple timeline fiasco enough to be given some weight.

Deadpool 2 Is The Final Stage Of X-Men's Timeline Unshackling

Deadpool with New Mutants and Dark Phoenix

But while it may seem needless and self-destructive to have Deadpool kill Deadpool, this complete disconnection from stable continuity - let's not forget the film also undoes its own inciting incident at the end, with Vanessa fridged before being brought back to life in the mid-credits scene - is really an extension of what Deadpool 1 was trying to do. X-Men continuity isn't a timeline, it's a place. Movies don't need to connect up, character threads don't have to stretch across all the sub-franchises, and there needn't be a big team-up to consolidate it all. Just look at how Thaos-parallel big bad Mister Sinister has been set up in movies spanning four decades without any cohesion.

When Deadpool pulls the trigger on himself and tells Wolverine he's fixing things, that's not a just a wry acknowledgment of how crazy this continuity have gotten. He's smashing the fourth wall so vigorously that any pretense of treating this seriously can't be applied in the future. Deadpool 2 broke the timeline to fix it.