If Deadpool wants to be a true Marvel superhero, is it time he grew up and stopped joking around?

Ryan Reynolds’ sarcastic superhero is rumoured to be in Avengers: Doomsday – but how is he going to fit in the MCU proper when he spent all of his previous film mocking it?

How do you solve a problem like Deadpool in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Deadpool & Wolverine found a way: rather than integrate the bloodthirsty, fourth-wall-breaking merc with a mouth into the rather more sanitised world of Thor, Iron Man and Spider-Man, Shawn Levy’s 2024 film chose to lampoon it from the outside instead. Why bother to make everyone’s favourite chimichanga-munching mutant fit when you can make the fact that he doesn’t the entire joke? Why become another cog in the Marvel machine when you can stand beside it, point out the loose screws and watch the box-office greenbacks roll in like it’s Christmas 2019?

Deadpool & Wolverine made $1.3bn worldwide, becoming the second highest grossing film of 2024 and the highest grossing R-rated film ever. But it did absolutely nothing to introduce Ryan Reynolds’ potty-mouthed antihero into the MCU, unless one counts the several thousand jokes about Kevin Feige. By the end of the movie, Deadpool seems no closer to becoming the saviour of Marvel than Happy Hogan is to wielding Mjolnir. He remains a sarcastic observer from the sidelines, less a vital MCU character than its resident heckler.
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