Secret Wars Has The Perfect Answer To The MCU’s Deadpool Mystery

Deadpool 3 is happening in the MCU, and Marvel’s Secret Wars could be the key to explaining where the talkative mercenary has been all this time. Following Disney’s purchase of Fox, Deadpool and the mutants are coming to Marvel Studios to have a major role in the next phases of the MCU. After a period of speculation about what the future of the Deadpool franchise would be now under the Disney umbrella, a Deadpool film in the MCU has been confirmed with Ryan Reynolds set to return and The Adam Project’s Shawn Levy as the director – but with still no indication as to how and when the character will be introduced.

Like the X-men and the Fantastic Four, Deadpool’s arrival in the MCU is challenging in terms of storytelling. The MCU will soon have to decide as to when and how such important parts of the Marvel universe will be integrated into the already established franchise. Between showing those characters’ origins again or saying that they have always been there, options abound to explain the arrival of big names like Doctor Doom and Deadpool – each with its pros and cons.

If the MCU somehow adapts Secret Wars or at least continues to delve into the Multiverse idea, then the franchise already has the perfect way to introduce Deadpool. As with the 2015 retelling of the Secret Wars event, the MCU can establish that Deadpool has always been there, but that the entire world has forgotten about him in the aftermath of a multiversal event. In the comics, this happened due to The Wasp regretting her time with Wade and using her granted wish to forget about Deadpool, erasing everyone else’s memories of him in the process. Considering the self-satirical nature of the character, something like what was done in Secret Wars being used to explain the appearance of Deadpool in the MCU would make a lot of sense. More than offering a solid, in-universe explanation for the addition of a new character to the franchise, establishing that Deadpool has always existed in the MCU but that someone was so repulsed by him that they ended up making the entire universe forget about Wade’s existence would be most fitting for the Merc with a Mouth. Furthermore, given the shocking memory wipe revelations revealed in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a similar such approach for Deadpool would both make chronological sense and suit the series meta approach.

The mixture of satire with sci-fi explanations for plot points is already part of Deadpool’s legacy on the big screen. In Deadpool 2, thanks to Cable’s time travel technology, Deadpool was able to revisit and rewrite important parts of history – including the birth of X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s Deadpool and the moment Ryan Reynolds was about to sign up for Green Lantern. Of all the mutants and other heroes that the MCU will have to introduce, Wade Wilson is the one that best bears a more cynical explanation as to where he has been all this time. The memory-erasing explanation would also ensure that Deadpool was able to witness MCU’s biggest events, and maybe even interfered with them. In the upcoming Deadpool 3, there could be a scene similar to Deadpool 2 in which Wade is going through different points in history except for this time he would be living through different MCU events.

Ryan Reynolds’ version of Deadpool is close to being the definitive version of the character, meaning that an in-universe, almost satirical explanation for Deadpool’s arrival in the MCU can work much better than rebooting or retelling the character’s origins. There are few names in the Marvel universe as malleable as Deadpool when it comes to interacting with a larger universe, not least because of his ability to break the fourth wall. Deadpool is not the most pleasant company in the Marvel universe, and that may have been enough to make the whole world forget about him up until Deadpool 3.