The very first Deadpool & Wolverine trailer has finally graced us courtesy of the Super Bowl, revealing not only the official title of Marvel Studios’ marquee release of 2024, but what might also be the MCU turning point (for real this time!).
Indeed, with more faces — both old and new — than we can count and a familiarly-weighty premise spruced up by Deadpool’s cheeky, foul-mouthed, bloody smashing of the fourth wall, this is one trailer that has no doubt whetted many an appetite.
And where there’s a whetted appetite, there’s even more hunger; as per usual, we’ve all come out of that first new-Marvel-movie trailer with far more questions than answers, and these seven are firmly at the forefront of our minds.
Where’s Elektra?
We’ve known that Deadpool’s third outing was going to rope in some cinematic legacy characters by the armful, but none can claim to be quite as big a wildcard as Elektra, who Jennifer Garner will be stepping back into the boots of after last playing the assassin in 2005’s Elektra film.
And perhaps it was bold to assume that we’d catch a glimpse of her in the first trailer, but it’s nevertheless impossible to ignore the fact that Elektra’s role in Deadpool & Wolverine‘s shenanigans remains just as big a mystery as ever. Of course, given her street-hero associations and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin gaining more and more prominence in the MCU, it’s probably safe to say that the site of Elektra’s biggest impact has yet to be revealed anyway.
How will the rest of the mutants come into play?
Speaking of confirmed characters, we know that the mutant rep will go far beyond Wolverine, Colossus, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead; indeed, with X-Men baddies Sabretooth and Toad already set to appear, and now Aaron Stanford’s Pyro officially in the mix as of the trailer, the remnants of the Brotherhood of Mutants are going to need something to do.
That something is almost certainly going to involve giving Deadpool and Wolverine a headache or two, but exactly what stake they have in this particular game still isn’t clear yet, and we’re now eagerly awaiting trailer number two to learn exactly what their beef is.
What’s the story behind Agent Paradox?
One question that was answered in this trailer was the identity of Matthew Macfadyen’s mysterious character, who we now know as Agent Paradox of the TVA.
This, of course, leads to a number of questions: What position does Paradox hold in the TVA that gives what appears to be unrestricted access to a case seemingly as lucrative as Deadpool’s? And why are we only just hearing about him now? Could it be that there are multiple TVA branches that we’ve yet to learn all about? Indeed, Paradox could very well be first stepping stone to a brand new field of MCU academia.
Is this TVA pre- or post-Loki?
What’s more, the TVA is looking awfully functional considering what went down in the second season of Loki, which leads us to wonder exactly where Deadpool & Wolverine falls on the timeline. Does it happen concurrently with Loki’s acclimation to god of stories, or is it a bit more complicated than that?
Whatever the answer is, it will be hard to involve the TVA in any project going forward without giving a nod to the Loki situation in some way, shape, or form, so we can probably just check that off as another thing to look forward to.
What happens to Deadpool’s friends and family?
So, we know that Deadpool got kidnapped by the TVA, but let’s not forget that he had a sizeable posse of allies, around half of them mutants, right behind him. Might they have reacted to the commotion outside and had a run-in of their own with the TVA, or at least checked to see where Wade went?
This could easily be explained away by the TVA dipping out before anyone had time to react, but it’s just as important to note that Morena Baccarin — who portrays Wade’s wife Vanessa, who’s of course present at Wade’s apartment prior to the TVA’s invasion — looks to be pretty high on the casting bill, so it’s no great assumption to say that she’ll take up her fair share of space in the film, further implying that the rest of Deadpool’s allies will show up well beyond the inciting incident.
Whether that involves some aggressive pruning at the start of the film is anyone’s guess, but it’s safe to say that Wade’s sudden disappearance won’t go completely unnoticed, nor without retaliation.
Why has Deadpool been having “a tough couple of years?”
If the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer has made one thing abundantly clear, it’s that things aren’t quite going as expected for Wade Wilson. That, however, is apparent even before the TVA shows up at his doorstep.
Cast your mind back, if you will, to the end of Deadpool 2, where he and a recently-resurrected Vanessa are discussing the possibility of children, to say nothing of storing up an infinite supply of euphoria by slaughtering Fox’s interpretation of Weapon XI before saving Ryan Reynolds from a doomed Green Lantern turn. He certainly had the momentum back then, so where is this apparent struggle coming from now?
If Marvel is dead set on leaning into the Jesus bit, maybe Wade is just having a pretty dire existential crisis that he hasn’t quite conquered yet (being a vehicle for meta humor – and even then, one that actually works – probably does a number on your mind). Whatever the case, his struggles are going to spike in a big way over the course of the film, so here’s hoping he packed his game face before being dragged off by the TVA.
What’s Emma Corrin’s villain plotting?
Despite being confirmed as the main antagonist, the only information we got about Emma Corrin’s character is an ominous shot of the back of their head — a head that we aren’t even 100% sure belongs to Emma Corrin (but like, c’mon).
Whispers of them portraying Cassandra Nova — the genocidal foil to Charles Xavier — look to be right on the money, but the fact remains that we still have no idea how the main antagonist ties in to Deadpool & Wolverine, which is perhaps the best indulgence of in-universe intrigue that Marvel has exercised in some time.