Wade Wilson

Anchor beings. Deadpool & Wolverine (film, 2024) introduces the idea that some individuals are so central to their reality that when they die, the universe unravels around them. Logan was the anchor being of the Fox universe.

The post-credits scene, in full, because it's more important than the film. Monica is trapped on the far side of a rift she closed from the wrong side, and wakes in a white medical facility. Her mother Maria Rambeau is beside her — but a variant, wearing the red-and-white Binary costume, who has never had a daughter and doesn't know who Monica is. Her doctor walks in: Hank McCoy / Beast, played by Kelsey Grammer in his Fox-films role. He explains she crossed a tear in space-time, calls it impossible, and mentions that "Charles asked for an update."

Why it matters: this is the first time an established X-Man appears in a Marvel Studios film, in a reality where the X-Men are an active, organised institution. The scene uses John Ottman's score from X2 and Days of Future Past — a deliberate signal that this is the Fox universe. It's the moment the X-Men formally went on the board, ahead of Deadpool & Wolverine doing the structural work.

The answer: those films are not erased. They are another universe — designated Earth-10005 — and Deadpool & Wolverine formally folded it into the MCU multiverse. Which is why Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Kelsey Grammer, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, and James Marsden are in Avengers: Doomsday as those exact characters, decades later.

Deadpool (2016) — Wade Wilson, a mercenary with terminal cancer, undergoes a torture-based mutation programme that cures him, disfigures him, and makes him unkillable. R-rated, and the tonal outlier of the whole enterprise.

"Breaking the fourth wall" is a theatre term: a stage set has three walls, and the invisible fourth is the one between the performers and the audience. Breaking it means acknowledging you're in a fiction. Deadpool talks directly to camera, comments on his own budget, references the actors playing the roles, mocks Fox and Disney by name, and refers to earlier films as films.

Deadpool 2 (2018) — Wade forms X-Force, deals with a time-travelling soldier called Cable, and acquires a time-travel device he uses for petty personal revisions.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) — The bridge film, and the reason this section matters.

And he already knew of Wolverine — in Deadpool 2 he mimics his poses and references Logan's ending directly. The joke is that Wade is a fan.

Deadpool: no — and refusing is the entire plot. Paradox's opening offer is exactly that switch: join Earth-616, the Sacred Timeline, get a shot at the Avengers, and let Earth-10005 be quietly deleted. Wade is briefly thrilled. Then he learns the price is everyone he knows, refuses, breaks Paradox's nose, steals his TemPad, and spends the rest of the film trying to save his own universe instead. He ends the film exactly where he started.

One retcon that causes confusion: this film establishes that Deadpool was always on Earth-10005, the same universe as the Fox X-Men films. The earlier Deadpool films never made that clear and contain inconsistencies with X-Men continuity. Marvel decided it was true and moved on.

Three different "Voids", none related, since the word keeps recurring: the deep space Loki falls into off the Bifröst in Thor (2011); the junkyard at the end of time where the TVA dumps pruned timelines, guarded by Alioth (Loki, Deadpool & Wolverine); and this one, the shadow manifestation of Bob's depression — a psychological entity, not a place.

Tier 1 — the load-bearing fifteen (~33 hours) The Avengers (FILM) → Age of Ultron (FILM) → Civil War (FILM) → Black Widow (FILM) → Infinity War (FILM) → Endgame (FILM) → Loki S1 (SERIES) → Wakanda Forever (FILM) → Quantumania (FILM) → Loki S2 (SERIES) → Deadpool & Wolverine (FILM) → Brave New World (FILM) → Thunderbolts* (FILM) → Fantastic Four: First Steps (FILM) → Spider-Man: Brand New Day (FILM)

Tier 3 — the X-Men homework — all FILMS X-Men (2000) · X2 · The Last Stand · Days of Future Past · Logan · Deadpool 1 & 2

Phase Five (2023–2025): FILMS — Quantumania · Guardians Vol. 3 · The Marvels · Deadpool & Wolverine · Captain America: Brave New World · Thunderbolts* SERIES — Secret Invasion · Loki S2 · Echo · Agatha All Along · Daredevil: Born Again S1