From Ryan Cordaro

It’s worth mentioning right off the bat that this is one of my most anticipated movies of the year. It’s also worth mentioning that the MCU has been in a pretty steady decline since they wrapped up the Infinity Saga, even though there are some damn good projects that have come out of their post-Endgame run. Honestly, to pull what I think is a good comparison, it feels like what DC Comics was trying to do after “The Death of Superman” was published; they were trying some stories just to see what would happen, and not all of them worked. I think Marvel Studios is in that space right now, but for this, there’s some added expectations for Deadpool & Wolverine: it’s their only movie releasing this year on top of being the first R-rated MCU movie, and it’s *officially* bringing the X-Men into the live-action fold of the MCU.

Like most of these movies, not much is entirely known about the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine. Out of what I could piece together, Deadpool is pulled out of his quiet life from the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic organization that exists outside of time and space and monitors the timeline, and is forced to team up with a variant of Wolverine to change the history of and potentially save the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Cassandra Nova, known in the comics as Charles Xavier’s sister and, for lack of a better description, his more sadistic counterpart. As I said earlier, there’s a lot of added expectation for this, but I do think that this will be a hit. It feels like it’s aiming to be the FoX-Men equivalent to Spider-Man: No Way Home, and as someone who grew up on a good chunk of those movies (who deeply misses the X-Men and Deadpool in general in live-action), I hope that it turns out well.

The currently-confirmed cast for Deadpool & Wolverine includes Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy, the upcoming IF), Hugh Jackman (the X-Men franchise, The Greatest Showman), Emma Corrin (The Crown, the upcoming Nosferatu), Morena Baccarin (Fire Country, the upcoming Greenland: Migration), Rob Delaney (Catastrophe, Invincible), Leslie Uggams (Fallout, American Fiction), Karan Soni (Miracle Workers, the upcoming Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse), Matthew Macfadyen (Succession, Pride & Prejudice), Brianna Hildebrand (Lucifer, Playing with Fire), Stefan Kapičić (The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Better Call Saul), Shioli Kutsuna (Invasion, the upcoming Death Stranding 2: On the Beach), and Lewis Tan (Shadow and Bone, the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2). Jennifer Garner (The Adam Project, Alias) is also set to make an appearance in some form as Elektra, reprising her role from the Ben Affleck-led Daredevil film and her spin-off movie. In terms of confirmed appearances via this trailer and the previous one, Aaron Stanford (Finestkind, Nikita) reprises his role from the original X-Men movies as Pyro, alongside other X-Men characters Sabretooth, Toad, Lady Deathstrike, and Azazel. For those last names, it’s currently unknown if the actors that portrayed them will be returning. Of course, if you want, you can speculate on who else could show up in the movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on July 26th, 2024.

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