In a landmark merger, Disney recently acquired 21st Century Fox and all of its intellectual properties, including the rights to the X-Men characters, which have now reverted back to Marvel Studios, which is also owned by Disney. Marvel is planning to reboot all of the X-Men characters that had been run into the ground by the Fox franchise, which is to say, every single one except for Ryan Reynolds’ immensely popular take on Deadpool.
The Merc with a Mouth’s third standalone outing will have to somehow fit into the pre-existing MCU. Luckily, he has an ace in the hole: self-awareness. So, here are 10 Ways To Set Deadpool 3 In The MCU.
Deadpool explains the Disney/Fox merger to the camera
This could even be a parody of The Big Short. In Adam McKay’s Oscar-winning satire of the 2008 banking crisis, actors like Ryan Gosling occasionally interrupt a scene to explain financial jargon to the viewer, sometimes bringing in celebrities to keep the viewer’s attention.
Deadpool could do something similar in explaining the Disney/Fox merger to the audience. If Deadpool 3 is the MCU’s first movie featuring an X-Men character (which it’s looking like it will be), then ‘Pool lecturing the audience on the economics of Disney buying Fox, thus allowing Marvel to reboot the X-Men films, it’ll be an on-the-nose way for Kevin Feige to illustrate his plans to casual moviegoers who don’t follow the inner workings of the MCU as closely as diehard fans.
Deadpool binge-watches the MCU to catch up
The great thing about the Deadpool character is his self-awareness because it means that the writers (which, from the second movie onwards, includes Ryan Reynolds himself contributing to the script) have the freedom to do pretty much anything. Integrating Deadpool into the MCU after spending two movies in Fox’s X-Men universe will be a difficult challenge, but there couldn’t be a more perfect character to be in this situation.
The opening scene of Deadpool 3 could literally be ‘Pool, sitting on the couch with some popcorn next to a pile of DVDs, binge-watching the MCU and critiquing its artistic merit (maybe even mentioning Scorsese’s recent comments) directly to the camera.
Kevin Feige appears as a character
Kevin Feige is the monolithic overlord behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As an expert business strategist and a diehard Marvel fanboy, Feige architected an entirely new kind of movie franchise that pleases both worshippers of the source material and millions of newcomers.
Even though he’s not in the movies, he almost feels like a character in that universe, because he’s played such a huge part in its foundation. Deadpool 3 presents a great opportunity for Kevin Feige to appear as a character (not necessarily played by Feige himself), maybe with Deadpool actually going to his office in Hollywood and negotiating his place in the MCU.
Deadpool mentions MCU events like he was there
Since he’s coming from a different franchise, Deadpool could bring up past MCU events a lot more than the average character would, to make it look like he belongs. If he says things like, “Hey, remember how crazy it was when half the world turned to dust?” that no one who was actually in Infinity War or Endgame would say, then the filmmakers can wink to the audience a little bit.
To movie audiences, Deadpool will seem out of place in the world of the MCU, simply because we’ve been following him for two movies in a completely different world. This would be a fun way to smooth things over.
A team-up with an MCU hero
The quickest way to establish Deadpool becoming a part of the MCU would be to pair him up with one of the MCU’s most beloved established heroes. Such a team-up is also the first thing that fans will want to see in a Deadpool movie set in the MCU.
Seeing ‘Pool become a sarcastically toxic anti-father figure to Peter Parker or trade barbs with the God of Thunder on the Benatar would be a real treat. It would also be great to see ‘Pool team up with characters that you wouldn’t normally associate him with, like Black Panther or Nebula.
Deadpool switches universes via the multiverse
The problem faced by the MCU’s Deadpool 3 is that it’ll have to somehow explain how ‘Pool moves from one universe (the one in which Fox’s X-Men franchise was set, in which even the character himself was confused by the parallel timelines) to another (the one in which Tony Stark announcing himself as Iron Man kicked off a series of events that culminated in the Battle of Earth).
Thanks to the existence of the multiverse in the MCU – initially confirmed in Doctor Strange and blown wide open by the time travel in Avengers: Endgame – these two universes can be depicted quite literally in Deadpool 3.
The first two movies took place after Endgame
The first two Deadpool movies didn’t really explore what was going on in wider society, which would help to retcon them as taking place after Avengers: Endgame. (They weren’t made this way, but the MCU is notorious for retconning things to better fit their continuity.) The carefree, anything-goes, live-in-the-moment attitudes of characters like Wade, Vanessa, Blind Al, and Domino, and the nonchalant approach to the inevitability of death, would make sense in the context of a post-Snap world.
This would give Deadpool a chance to hit the ground running in the MCU’s Phase Four. It would explain why he didn’t show up to help in Infinity War or Endgame; he wasn’t a superhero yet, so he was just living a regular life as a workaday mercenary when Thanos showed up.
Deadpool gets meta with a PG-13 rating
A big roadblock for Deadpool with regards to joining the MCU is that the Disney-controlled franchise tends to play it safe with a PG-13 rating. Fox and DC have rolled the dice on R-rated comic book blockbusters like Joker, Logan, and the Deadpool franchise itself. Disney hasn’t taken the plunge yet.
If the MCU requires Deadpool movies to be rated PG-13, he should get really meta with it, like finding himself physically unable to swear. It comes out as TV-friendly alternatives when he tries to swear (i.e. “melon farmers” instead of “motherf****rs”), a la The Good Place.
There’s minimal blood in the violent scenes, no matter how much Deadpool slashes bad guys with his swords. Being censored would really bother Deadpool, and if Disney deems it a necessary business decision, the silver lining is that it could be hilariously meta.
The characters just shrug off the franchise change
Deadpool doesn’t really need to do anything special to join the MCU. He could just wake up one morning and see something about Wakanda on the news or find a monument to Tony Stark in the town square and say to the camera, “Well, I guess I’m in those movies now,” and that could be the end of it.
Simply because this is Deadpool, switching franchises doesn’t have to be a big deal. The Deadpool movies are so meta and self-aware that they’re above needing to explain things like this. The audience understands what’s going on, so the movie doesn’t have to pander to them and give them a story reason for a corporate-mandated change of universe and timeline.
Deadpool reboots his own franchise
If Deadpool 2 parodied the tropes and pitfalls of superhero sequels, then Deadpool 3 can do the same for reboots. Reboots of superhero movie franchises are becoming more and more common, and Deadpool is the perfect character to lampoon them, especially since business interests have forced the franchise to reboot itself anyway.
Throughout the movie, Deadpool could toy around with different creative directions – from a dark, gritty, Nolan-esque tone to recasting a couple of characters – before realizing that his franchise was fine as it was (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) and going back to normal before the big finale.