Wolverine only got to be a split-second teaser in the first Deadpool & Wolverine trailer, but now he’s the star of the second one, fully seen in his blue and gold OG outfit for the first time that wasn’t a leaked set shot.
The new, nearly three-minute spot goes deeper into the storyline of the film, spliced in between jokes. You can see it below, and we’ll talk about it more after that:
The idea here is that Deadpool needs Wolverine’s help to save his own universe, after this appears to be an alternate universe version of Wolverine that has lost his entire world. The two are fighting in “Battleworld,” which in the comics is made up of destroyed realities, and that includes things like the 20th Century FOX logo, getting super meta, but also the helmet and skull of some Ant-Man variant, it seems.
Deadpool is being tasked by the TVA to get Wolverine to help save the universe, but knowing the TVA, they likely have other motives, even if this is in a post-Loki harmony era. This entire thing is meant to be a bridge taking Deadpool into the MCU, and perhaps an unknown number of X-Men like Wolverine himself, if the rumor is that Hugh Jackman’s Logan may indeed have a big role in the upcoming Avengers films. Kang, the current MCU villain, does not seem to be at play here (Marvel continues to sort through the whole Jonathan Majors mess).
The main villain for this film specifically is Cassandra Nova, played by The Crown’s Emma Corrin, and seen multiple times in the trailer. She was presented in the comics as a demented Charles Xavier twin, one with powerful psionic powers, as we can see in the trailer itself where she goes toe-to-toe with Wolverine. There is a long, long list of comic storylines involving Cassandra Nova, though none of them are likely to be directly adapted for her role in Deadpool and Wolverine, as we’re still not clear on what she’s doing there.
It seems very clear that as the only MCU movie out this year, Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be massive for Marvel. Deadpool movies alone have done well, but combined with the return of Jackman’s Wolverine should make this a hit on a scale that moves beyond its (very welcome) R-rating.
I’m most curious about the end result of this, the potential multiverse “merge” of Deadpool and who knows who else into the MCU. It’s the best way they could have gone about it, but I remain wondering if Marvel is ever fully going to recast the X-Men or keeping using as many FOX characters as they can indefinitely, as no doubt Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be full of such cameos. We’ll find out July 26.
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