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Deadpool & Wolverine: How Does The Movie Connect With Loki? Explained
As part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Deadpool & Wolverine is in an odd place. The film itself is a raunchy comedic celebration of the 20th Century Fox branch of the Marvel Multiverse.
Deadpool & Wolverine is a comedic film celebrating the 20th Century Fox branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the most direct connection to the MCU coming from the Loki series. Both Deadpool and Wolverine are menaced by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), and the connection between these stories is left to fans to parse.
Deadpool & Wolverine is a Marvel film that connects to Loki in a carefully crafted way, but open questions remain about its place in the MCU. The two-season series following the Loki variant from Avengers: Endgame enriches Deadpool's story and the motivation of Mister Paradox, one of the chief antagonists. For casual moviegoers and fans, the main focus is Deadpool's individual story, the general purpose of the TVA, and the existence of other Marvel characters' stories separate from the current shared universe.
Does Deadpool & Wolverine take place after Loki?
The Marvel Multiverse's timeline is challenging for audiences to understand after the Loki series finale. The show's inciting incident occurs in 2012 and 2023, following Avengers time-travel to collect infinity stones. The TVA has a linear timeline separate from the Sacred Timeline, allowing characters like Mobius and Ouroboros to exist before He Who Remains created the Sacred Timeline and after Loki and Sylvie recreated the multiverse.
At TVA, the Marvel Multiverse was once a sacred timeline, but after Loki took over for He Who Remains and the Temporal Loom, the multiverse existed from the beginning. This means pre-MCU film universes like X-Men, Blade movies, Daredevil, and Elektra happened after Loki rebooted the multiverse in his show's finale. Thus, Deadpool & Wolverine technically takes place after the Loki series.
Even though the X-Men films and both Deadpool movies were released before Loki, from the TVA's point of view, all those things happened after Loki ascended his new throne. The clearest indicator this is the case is the inclusion of Wummi Mosaku's character Hunter B-15. Last seen in the Loki series finale, she has since been promoted to a role similar to the one Judge Ravonna Renslayer held in Season 1. She is clearly superior to Matthew McFayden's Mister Paradox. He tells Deadpool that the TVA used to simply prune branch timelines, a practice that ended once the multiverse was allowed to exist.
How does the TVA run after Loki?
Deadpool & Wolverine's Marvel Multiverse lore is significantly influenced by Wade Wilson's universe, where Deadpool is taken from Earth-100005 for unknown reasons. Paradox suggests saving Deadpool, but his operation is not sanctioned by the TVA's leadership. This conversation establishes the concept of an "anchor being" who stabilizes a branch of the Marvel multiverse, with Logan being the anchor being in Earth-100005's case.
Logan's death caused the multiverse branch to fade out, with Paradox claiming it could take thousands of years. He plans to hasten the universe's demise using his "Time Ripper" device. This connection between Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine is visually heightened when Cassandra Nova tries to destroy Earth-100005, highlighting the unraveling of Earth-100005's entire timeline, unlike pruning in the previous Loki episode.
Paradox's motivation for this destruction is put down to a mixture of boredom and, possibly, a preference for the way He Who Remains ran things. After all, he still refers to the sacred timeline. A central theme in Loki Season 2 is that all timelines are sacred in their own way. However, Paradox wasn't assigned to save Earth-100005 but to merely observe its degradation over time.
This tells MCU fans that while the new TVA protects the Marvel Multiverse, it also allows branch timelines and realities to die once its anchor being meets their fate. The TVA is apparently only meant to step in if a branch of reality is threatened by an outside force.
Deadpool & Wolverine's TVA isn't meant to match Loki's
Logan's death occurred five years after the present in Deadpool & Wolverine, suggesting a simpler solution to save Earth-100005. Instead of searching for a replacement Logan, Wade could have gone back to the time when he was taken by the TVA, four years before Logan's "Westchester Incident" killed the X-Men. Deadpool could have changed history to prevent his universe's end.
Wade's actions in Deadpool & Wolverine could have made the movie less enjoyable. While Loki doesn't share Deadpool's metatextual references, Wade's adventures with Wolverine create a thematic connection to him. In the series finale, Loki travels through his timeline, trying to undo events leading to the multiverse's unraveling. Both characters emphasize the absence of "do-overs."
The things these characters do matter, both within the narrative and to the audiences who watch them. In both stories, the characters can only move forward, accepting their past failures and becoming better because of them. Both show audiences that even flawed, failed people can be an "anchor" for their world, whether it's a cinematic universe full of heroes or just the people they love.
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