Is Deadpool immortal? Why Wade Wilson never stays dead

Is Deadpool immortal, and if not, how do you kill him? Our answer: Deadpool is immortal but not unkillable. He can die in all kinds of ways and even visit the afterlife briefly, but he always comes back. That glitch traces to his strange relationship with death and with Thanos in Marvel Comics.

This was the big question we took on. In Deadpool 2 (2018), Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson went through a memorable suicide montage and a near death experience that ended as a parody of Logan, followed by a time travel montage. He later crossed into a cinematic universe that takes death very seriously, which made the question worth asking.

How Deadpool's regeneration works in Marvel Comics

Wade Wilson became Deadpool through Weapon X experimentation. At least, that's what he was told: the program was supposedly trying to cure his cancer. Instead it gave him rapid regeneration powers in the style of Wolverine. He can regrow limbs, and he can even reattach his head if it's close to his neck.

According to comics canon, though, if his head is detached from his body for 12 minutes, his brain will run out of oxygen and he will die. So the short answer is yes, Deadpool can die. He's a slightly more durable than average human being, so any way you can kill a durable human, you can kill Deadpool.

The many ways Deadpool has died, from the Punisher to Carnage

The comics are full of examples. Frank Castle, the Punisher, shot Deadpool right in the head and also crushed his skull. Deadpool briefly went to heaven before being ripped back down. Carnage tore through his midsection and caused him to bleed out. His arteries have been ripped out of his body, he's been burned alive, he's been shot through the brain several times, and he's been decapitated many, many times.

The films have shown some of this too. The Deadpool 2 montage opened with him blowing himself up into pieces. He drank Drano, dived off a tall building and threw himself into a polar bear pit. Here's the catch, though: Deadpool doesn't stay dead. We pulled a little semantics trick there. He can die and he does briefly go to the afterlife, but he always comes back.

Whether that makes him immortal depends on how you define immortality. Does it mean you can't die and can't leave this plane, or that you don't fully stay in the next one? Deadpool is caught in an in between stage, with a glitch when it comes to transitioning to the afterlife.

Thanos, Lady Death and the Infinity Gauntlet

In Marvel Comics, death isn't just a thing. It's a cosmic entity, a female being, and Thanos is in love with her. In The Infinity Gauntlet storyline, which the Infinity War and Endgame event was based on, Thanos snaps half of all life from existence in order to woo Lady Death.

Infinity War changed Thanos's motivation. Lady Death was removed as an entity, at least so far, and his drive was based more on population control, a form of ecoterrorism. When we discussed this, the idea was that Deadpool could have the opportunity to bring in Lady Death as a character and put himself in a love triangle with her and Thanos, as his own interpretation of the Infinity War conflict, even if Thanos wouldn't acknowledge it.

That's essentially how it works in the comics. Deadpool's place in the love triangle wasn't always part of the narrative. He's a total party crasher, and he could be a party crasher in the MCU in the same way, reframing the story in his own jokey, satirical way.

Thanos's curse gave Deadpool his immortality

In those comics, Deadpool falls in love with Lady Death. He considers her his girlfriend, and she's into him as well. That angers Thanos so much that he curses Deadpool so he can't get anywhere near death. The result is a cosmic loophole in which Deadpool can never fully die. In effect, his immortality comes from a metaphorical restraining order.

In a later comic, which I think is from 2015, Thanos closed that loophole. While beating Deadpool, he monologued about his past choice to restrict him from death and give him eternal life, and declared that he was officially giving him back the gift of death. The comic then has him bring Deadpool back with cosmic science and necromancy, but either way, the curse is officially undone.

Why comic book characters rarely stay dead

Pretty much all comic book characters are at least narratively immortal. No one stays dead, with the exception of the ones who inspire a hero's origin story, like Thomas and Martha Wayne or Uncle Ben. Bucky was considered permanently dead for a while until Marvel Comics brought him back, and the MCU brought him back too. Mar-Vell was a Kree warrior who died, and Carol Danvers became Captain Marvel. Either way, the predecessor has to die so the successor can take over.

Deadpool carries a special distinction, both in the comics and in the Ryan Reynolds films. His function in his world is completely divorced from the stakes of life and death that govern everyone else. He isn't really a living, breathing human character, even though we relate to him and he has moments that can make you tear up. He's a meta cartoon designed chiefly to comment on and satirize his universe.

The ultraviolence his body endures is part of that parody. It's an element of his character that he must die. He's like Wile E. Coyote, dying again and again. His repeated deaths and extreme injuries desensitize the reader and viewer so we can get past that and appreciate whatever else he's trying to accomplish. His deaths are also a commentary on how comic characters die all the time over the decades and are just brought back. Deadpool is the living embodiment of that commentary on how goofy and ridiculous it is.

How the MCU could explain Deadpool's immortality

At the time, the expectation in our discussion was that the MCU would at first maintain the immortality curse, and there were a couple of ways that could be done. One was Infinity Stone logic, since that tends to be how the franchise justifies all kinds of things.

Another involved the Living Tribunal, the cosmic universal judge. The Infinity War screenwriters wanted a trial where Doctor Strange dragged Thanos in front of the Living Tribunal, which judged him guilty during their wizard duel. That didn't end up happening, but there is a staff of the Living Tribunal in the Doctor Strange artifacts collection, enough to say that judge exists somewhere in the cosmos. Maybe Deadpool, as a result of all his crimes, could get a plea deal where he can only die a certain number of times, like lives in a video game.

The simplest route is to follow the comics and make Lady Death a personified goddess in this universe. It seems a little crazy, but Deadpool himself is crazy enough that if you put him in that conversation and drop him into the MCU, we're going to go along with it.

The Meredith Quill and Lady Death theory

There were theories that Meredith Quill, Peter Quill's mother, could be Lady Death, and that this was the big Easter egg James Gunn was hiding in Guardians of the Galaxy. That would pose some hilarious spats between Star-Lord and Deadpool. At the time, Gunn had, I think, shot down the exact terms of that theory.

However, he had also hinted that we had gotten very close with our various interpretations of Meredith Quill. There is something to her. It might not be Lady Death, it might not be Eternity, and it might not be the other figures that have been discussed, but there's some secret with her that Gunn was brewing. All the pieces were in place to justify Deadpool's nature closely to the comics without weirding audiences out, while delivering laughs along the way.

Can a lightsaber blade be split in half?

A second question was whether a lightsaber blade can be broken in half. When a hilt is damaged, the blade shuts off, as when Obi-Wan sliced Maul's saber in The Phantom Menace, or when Anakin's lightsaber was damaged by machinery on Geonosis. In The Last Jedi, Kylo and Rey both tried to Force pull Luke's lightsaber in opposite directions, and it broke in a flash of light. Rey later repaired it.

The question seemed to ask whether a blade could be split lengthwise, like slicing a hot dog the long way. A lightsaber houses a crystal chamber with kyber crystals, which power it, give it its color and are unique to the Jedi or Sith who built it. A generator converts their energy to plasma. Near the tip of the hilt, a magnetic field emitter contains that flow as a tightly looped arc of plasma, which passes through a magnetic stabilizing ring that shapes the blade and holds it in place.

Another lightsaber can't split the magnetic field itself; blades repel by counteracting that field. But damaging the stabilizing ring would remove the field while plasma kept streaming out, blasting extreme heat in all directions, melting the handle and destroying the crystal chamber and generator. So no, you can't cleanly split a lightsaber in half, but you can bust one up so badly that everyone in the room burns alive.

Tommy and Eric's near death experiences

Staying on the theme, Tommy recalled a near death experience at 14. After having his tonsils removed, he began coughing up what he thought was phlegm, until he vomited blood all over the mirror. An artery had ruptured in the back of his throat. At the emergency room, a doctor used a huge syringe to paralyze the artery before it was stitched. His mother told him, "just don't die you can have whatever you want," and he asked to watch Monday Night Raw. He was bedridden for about a month, and it taught him human beings are fragile.

Eric's story was less dire. At 13, and technically a black belt in tang soo do, he taunted his older brother Matt by blocking the TV during a March Madness game. Matt dropped him, and Eric broke his collarbone, missed his next belt test and wore an awkward sling. He was prescribed Vicodin and says he almost got addicted. None of us are immortal. Deadpool is immortal, but not unkillable.