How Deadpool & Wolverine's Ending Quietly Sets Up Avengers: Secret Wars

Deadpool and Wolverine wraps up its own story in a pretty concrete way, with little to no direct teases toward the future of the Multiverse Saga. But I think there are still some key things this movie does to move that overall narrative forward, starting with the ending itself.

The Ending Continues a Pattern of Marvel Characters Being Stranded in the Wrong Universe

After Deadpool and Wolverine hold hands and use the power of friendship to withstand the energies of Paradox's Time Ripper, in a similar way to how the Guardians of the Galaxy held hands to withstand the power of the Power Stone, the movie ends with Deadpool inviting Logan and Laura to be part of his family on Earth 10005. It is a wholesome, happy ending for everyone involved, but I think it paves the way for Avengers: Secret Wars in a big and inconvenient way, because it continues a trend Marvel has been doing throughout this entire saga: intentionally leaving people behind in the wrong universes.

Logan, Laura and Dogpool are just the latest additions to this trend. It follows Monica Rambeau being stranded in a mysterious X-Men universe with her not-mom in the post-credits scene of The Marvels, and before that, Loki season 2 revealing that TVA agents like Brad Wolfe chose to start new lives in the Multiverse after Kang's deception was exposed. Before that, Miles Morales and MCU Peter Parker were responsible for sending Spider-Man characters to the wrong universes, an alternate universe Gamora stayed behind as a Ravager in 616 after helping the Guardians in Guardians 3, and Ms. Marvel established that a number of Clandestines have secretly migrated to 616 Earth for decades.

Add to that America Chavez and the corpse of Defender Strange remaining in 616 after Multiverse of Madness, the multiversal venom goo left behind at a bar at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi's mother Ying Li leaving Ta Lo to live in 616, and the Watcher letting the Age of Ultron Black Widow live in a different universe at the end of What If season 1. The point is that all of these projects, just like Deadpool 3, show Marvel characters being intentionally moved around the Multiverse, and I think Kevin Feige is letting this happen to pave the way for multiversal incursions.

Why That Pattern Points Toward the 2015 Secret Wars Comic Event

Reed Richards himself laid out the stakes back in Multiverse of Madness: "your arrival here confuses and destabilizes reality, the larger the footprint you leave behind, the greater the risk of an incursion." An incursion happens when the boundary between two universes erodes, destroying one or both entirely. So while the ending of Deadpool and Wolverine looks like good times for everyone, I think Wolverine, X-23 and Dogpool's home realities are now technically at risk of colliding with Deadpool's Earth 10005.

Some might point out that Loki's sacrifice at the end of season 2 should mean the Multiverse is fine now. But all Loki did was replace the temporal loom so branching realities could live in harmony with the timelines that made up He Who Remains' sacred timeline. That sacrifice did not undo the cosmic consequences of inter-timeline mingling, and I think there is a purpose to that.

If you have read the 2015 Secret Wars event and the comics leading up to it, these multiversal incursions eventually lead to the collision and death of every timeline, as countless colliding realities were forced to battle each other for survival, until Doctor Doom intervened and reformed the dying Multiverse into a single domain called Battleworld, ruling as king of everything. If Avengers: Secret Wars is based on this event, as it has been led to believe, then it makes sense for Feige to seed the coming conflict by scattering characters into the wrong homes, because the implosion of the Multiverse seems imminent so Secret Wars can wrap up this saga once and for all.

The Fox X-Men Credits Montage Feels Like a Farewell Before Secret Wars

That theory lines up with Deadpool and Wolverine's end credits, which give a final look at the best moments of 20th Century Fox's entire X-Men franchise before it was acquired by Disney, symbolically marking the end of the Fox era in a wholesome way. I think this montage was made to heavily imply that Deadpool and Wolverine was intended as the last big adventure for this era, before incursions from neighboring universes destroy this universe and everything in the Multiverse gets a new chance at existence through Secret Wars.

If I were a betting man, I would guess the coming Secret Wars conflict ends with an official merging of major characters from across the Multiverse onto one newly rebooted Earth, marking the end of a lot of this complicated multiverse labeling. I believe Sony, Fox and Marvel Studios properties will all be allowed to coexist on a single Earth with their previous history intact.

Johnny Storm's Reed Richards Comment Hints at a Multiversal Council of Reeds

Beyond setting the cosmic stage for Secret Wars, Deadpool and Wolverine also prepares for the arrival of the Fantastic Four. Chris Evans' Johnny Storm was played mostly for surprise and laughs, but his inclusion actually helps prime the Fantastic Four's role in the coming crisis. When Johnny first appears, being transported to Cassandra Nova's base, he mentions that Reed Richards was aware of the Void and its function, apparently calling it "a metaphysical junkyard purgatory where anything useless goes before it's annihilated forever."

That line got me excited because it points to one of two things: either Johnny's Reed Richards knew what the Void was without ever being pruned there himself, or his Reed, Sue and Ben Grimm variants also got pruned into the Void and are hanging out somewhere else in it, unaware Johnny has become a skinless abomination courtesy of Cassandra Nova. Either way, this Reed Richards being aware of the Void points to him having a deep familiarity with time travel and how the Multiverse's timelines function, and I think he has likely traveled across timelines himself with his family, much like we have seen in the comics, possibly even facing a variant of the Pharaoh Rama-Tut Kang somewhere along the way.

That familiarity with the Multiverse would very likely lead this Reed Richards to the interdimensional Council of Reeds from the comics, a group of countless Reed Richards variants who team up to solve any question in the cosmos, though every member has to abandon their families to join. I think an MCU Council of Reeds is exciting and likely, and among its variants I would expect to see Miles Teller's Reed Richards from Fox's 2015 Fantastic Four film.

Why Miles Teller's Reed Richards Could Return, and Possibly Become the Maker

I always thought it was a shame Miles Teller never got the chance to shine as Reed Richards, because that casting was genuinely great in my opinion. Since Feige seems to be on a mission to right the wrongs of Marvel's cinematic past, giving characters like Jamie Foxx's Electro, Jennifer Garner's Elektra, Wesley Snipes' Blade and the never-seen Channing Tatum Gambit a second chance, I think it is fitting for Teller and the rest of the 2015 Fantastic Four to get their own shot at cinematic redemption too.

That possibility feels likely to me given the plot of the 2015 Fantastic Four film had Reed Richards actively traveling across realities with his team as astronauts of sorts journeying into the Negative Zone, so the chances of this version discovering time travel and joining the Council of Reeds seem quite high in my opinion. I am not the first person to suggest this, but I think it would be a waste if Feige did not reintroduce Miles Teller's Reed Richards as the variant who eventually becomes the villain known as the Maker, a transformation that happens to the Reed Richards of the Ultimate Marvel Comics universe of Earth 1610. Teller can play unhinged well, so the Maker showing up as a major threat after being involved with the Council of Reeds would be a compelling obstacle heading into Secret Wars.

Seeing both Fantastic Four teams during this saga seems very likely to me. A multiverse-centric plot could open the door for Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards to be invited into the Council by the end of that film, a Council that would likely be aware of how screwed up the Multiverse has become. If the Council of Reeds exists, they would also likely be aware of the Council of Kings glimpsed at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and with Marvel pivoting away from Kang the Conqueror, introducing the Council of Reeds could replace the Council of Kings as the new looming multiversal antagonist, with Reed's family being the thing that normally keeps him human, meaning a Council that requires abandoning family could form into a dangerous, purely scientific organization, essentially a multiversal Illuminati.

The TVA Is Still Fractured, and Paradox's Rogue Plot Is Its Own Secret War

Another way Deadpool and Wolverine pushes the saga forward is by showing the TVA still in disarray following its restructuring after Loki season 2. Much like I theorized before this film came out, Paradox turns out to be part of a rogue faction of TVA agents who still believe pruning realities is the answer to a stable multiverse, with Paradox overseeing construction of the Time Ripper as a weapon of mass destruction, hoping to one day rule the entire TVA.

Even though his plans go up in smoke by the end of the movie, I think this shows how the MCU's Secret Wars have already begun internally, with Paradox just the latest TVA-affiliated figure trying to manage the Multiverse his own way, following the blood-soaked footsteps of General Dox and Ravonna Renslayer. Even with Hunter B-15 aiming to do better, Deadpool 3 shows there are still people inside the TVA who do not agree with how the Marvel cosmos should be run, so the organization remains plagued with infighting, disorder and selfish ambition.

To me, that is to be expected when flawed people are put in charge, since the allure of power causes people to do messed up and traitorous things in real life. I believe TVA members will pretty much always be involved in internal power struggles with each other now that the illusion of the Time Keeper deities is dead and there is no religious dogma keeping everyone in line, because there are people in the TVA who want to become gods themselves.

Hunter B15's Treatment of Deadpool Raises Questions About Her Own Corruption

The last thing I want to raise is how I think Hunter B-15 may be starting to lose her own way as she grows into her role of authority. After Deadpool and Wolverine save the day and meet up with her, she mistakes Deadpool for a loose part of the Deadpool Corps and orders the TVA to send him back into the Void with the others without much thought, and that line raised my eyebrow.

Throughout Loki season 2, B-15 was all about people being free to live how they want in the Multiverse, but now that she is in a position of power with the health of the Multiverse to think about, she is willing to let people who have improved in the past remain threatened in the Void at all times. To me, that is treating the Void like a cosmic holding pen for beings she personally feels deserve to stay there. She did not build that situation herself, but she has not dismantled it either.

To me, this feels like a piece of character development for B-15, showing how absolute power can start to corrupt even someone with the most noble intentions, putting her on a similar path to Ravonna Renslayer when she ran the TVA. I do not think she is going to start pruning people without remorse anytime soon, but at the end of the day, either you are pro-freedom like you said you were, or you are justifying the suffering of others for the greater good. I am very interested to see how her character keeps progressing as the saga heads toward Secret Wars, because I do not think she can avoid that moral conundrum for long.

How do you think Hunter B-15's arc resolves before Secret Wars arrives?