Deadpool Might Not Be Able to Exist in the MCU After All Thanks to a Small Detail
Deadpool came out in 2016. Deadpool 2 came out in 2018. In a normal universe, Deadpool 3 would be out by now. If there’s anything the last few months have made clear, we are not living in anything resembling a normal universe.
Right now, Deadpool 3 has nothing resembling a release date. Even if a script were ready to go, it couldn’t be shot right now given the pandemic. So fans are left wondering if time travel could help bring out Deadpool 3 – or if it could only keep it at bay.
‘Deadpool 3’ is stalled even more than most superhero movies
By now, every superhero movie, whether it’s Black Widow, Wonder Woman 1984 or Venom 2, has been either pushed back to later this year or 2021 and beyond. But Deadpool was having issues even before the coronavirus began wreaking havoc.
One of these was Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, which has the rights to Deadpool, X-Men and Fantastic Four. The latter two’s most recent movies both bombed, but the Deadpool movies were big hits, with the first making $363 million, here, which was better than most people expected. Deadpool 2 did a little less well, making $324 million, but it was still good enough that a third seemed to be in the bag.
Not only did the Fox purchase stall Deadpool 3, but questions have swirled around how the movie could move forward. More than a few fans thought Disney would neuter the foul-mouthed antihero to a PG-13 rating, although multiple people have stated this would not happen. There’s another loophole, in the form of that eternal storytelling crutch, time travel.
How does time travel affect Deadpool?
On a Reddit thread, a topic-starter asked, “I just watched Deadpool 2 and saw one small but very important detail. Time Travel. It literally breaks the rules of time travel set in Endgame. This is because Cables daughters teddy bear changes as an outcome of changing the past. In Endgame this would be impossible as it is clearly set that you can’t change the present in the past because the present becomes your past.”
Endgame famously called BS on Back to the Future time travel logic that says you can change the future by changing the past. As another fan explained, Endgame uses quantum time travel that plays by different rules. And Deadpool, both as a character and a franchise, is about nothing if not breaking rules. Just think of the wisecracks Deadpool could make about quantum time travel, and the fact that Cable looks a lot like Thanos, because both are played by Josh Brolin.
So time travel shouldn’t preclude Deadpool being part of the MCU, because the Deadpool movies take themselves none too seriously. As one fan put it “Dude. It’s Deadpool. They can just make it so DP1/2 were all a dream if they wanted too. Like have him wake up and be really confused. Or accidentally travel to the MCU. Literally Anything is possible with his character.”
What’s really holding ‘Deadpool 3’ back?
Anything may be possible with the Deadpool character, but that doesn’t mean it will make the third movie easy to get off the ground. Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld stirred up controversy recently when he seemed to throw Marvel Studios under the bus for the Deadpool delay.
According to Gizmodo, Liefeld clarified his comments to say, “”Do I know that there is no movement on a Deadpool 3 right now? I know that. Yes,” Liefeld said. “And does that worry me? No. Not at all. What I did was I answered a question honestly. And what I learned this week is just lie. Just tell people everything is lollipop and unicorns and rainbows and you’ll be better off in your life because people want to be lied to. Just because some guy goes, ‘Yeah, We’re still moving along’ that’s code for ‘There’s nothing to see here.'”
That’s another way of saying “Don’t hold your breath” when it comes to Deadpool 3. It will almost certainly arrive at some point, but it will be later rather than sooner. And that’s no different than any other movie release these days. Deadpool fans will just have to wait longer. And they probably wish they could use time travel to fix that.
