Something that helped the otherwise irreverent and crude first Deadpool movie stay relatively grounded and touching was Wade’s relationship with Vanessa, so a lot of fans were miffed when Morena Baccarin’s character was killed off in the pre-titles sequence of Deadpool 2. Whatever way you cut it, this was an example of “fridging” of the highest order – the female love interest was killed just to propel the male hero’s story forward.
It’s interesting to know, then, that the love of the Merc with a Mouth’s life wasn’t always destined to die in the film. Earlier drafts only featured her leaving Wade, which caused him to hit rock bottom and go on the journey he goes on across the movie. Director David Leitch revealed the interesting tidbit while speaking on the commentary track for the sequel’s home video release, saying:
“We had versions where they broke up and she left him – instead of dying.”
Leitch went on to add that this was changed, however, as he didn’t feel that their break-up was enough of a powerful motivator for DP and so it was switched to her much more dramatic death by Russian mob shoot-out. This is much the same as what the filmmaker said before when discussing why he didn’t think the accusations of fridging were fair.
Of course, though Vanessa did die in the final version of the movie, there is an upside to it: the time-travelling post-credits scene sees Wade manage to resurrect his fiancee thanks to Cable’s timey-wimey wrist-watch. Due to the fourth-wall breaking nature of Deadpool, we weren’t sure if this counted as canon at first but it’s since been confirmed as being a genuine part of the movie’s narrative. So, it looks like Vanessa will be back for X-Force, after all.
While that’s all well and good, it still leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth that the character was treated this way in the first place. If nothing else, it’d certainly be interesting to read the original Deadpool 2 script to see if Leitch is right and Vanessa’s death really was necessary, don’t you think?