With Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight set to launch this year on Disney+, the character’s introduction to the MCU makes the inclusion of a similarly dark property like Deadpool more likely. A former mercenary given a second chance at life by the Egyptian moon god Khonshu, Marc Spector’s story features brutal violence and a depiction of dissociative identity disorder. Also a mercenary, Deadpool’s crass wisecracking and meta-humor led to two highly successful R-rated movies starring Ryan Reynolds before the sale of Fox to Disney. Despite this success, the specifics of Deadpool’s future inclusion in the MCU have been uncertain, perhaps until now.

With all MCU theatrical entries so far having secured PG-13 ratings to appeal to the widest possible audience, projects like Moon Knight and Deadpool are a risk to their business model. Although Moon Knight will debut through a Disney+ series, this introduction will surely have consequences for MCU feature films. The high stakes and grim tone of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame have perhaps prepared audiences for this, but so far, the raunchy humor and exaggerated violence of a property like Deadpool has not been seen in the MCU.

Related: Moon Knight's Biggest Batman Difference Is The MCU's Hardest Challenge

By debuting Moon Knight on an all-ages platform like Disney+, Marvel is signaling that they are open to greenlighting properties that do not necessarily appeal to “all ages,” but feature more mature subject matter. With the success of Fox’s Deadpool movies, Moon Knight could set a precedent for exploring darker material alongside more family-friendly properties. The inclusion of characters like Moon Knight and Deadpool in the MCU would make the franchise more graphically violent, but would also create a broader range of tones than what have been featured so far in the occasionally formulaic MCU.

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Sending Moon Knight to Disney+ sets a precedent for which audiences Marvel will target in the future. A strength of the Harry Potter franchise, for example, was that its tone evolved over the course of eight films. As the cast aged, so did the audience, and the movies tackled more mature themes. Similarly, the MCU has existed since 2008, and although it has tackled a variety of source materials, it has settled into a limited range of tones. Moon Knight signals a willingness to branch out beyond this, and Deadpool could be one of the most exciting additions that would expand the MCU beyond its current tonal boundaries.

Perhaps one of the strongest reasons for including Deadpool soon in the MCU is that Deadpool now has fourteen years of MCU continuity to reference. While the character’s meta approach would have struggled to take root in a young franchise, his self-referential humor will serve the increasingly convoluted continuities and introduction of a multiverse in the MCU very well. Moon Knight and Deadpool would not bring the rest of the MCU into a hyper-violent, gritty world with them, but would allow for the MCU to explore topics and tones beyond what it has previously tackled, allowing it to continue to grow in new and interesting ways.

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