Deadpool 2: Mid- and Post-Credit Scenes (Spoilers Ahead!)
**Warning Spoilers for Deadpool 2 Below**
If you haven’t seen my non-spoiler review for Deadpool 2, you can check it out here. The film has garnered praise from comic book fans and critics. Deadpool 2 currently sits with a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, at a roughly 85% positive rating from both critics and audiences. Metacritic users give it an 8.1 out of 10, and the film is expected to hit an impressive $130 million opening weekend according to Variety. The film could very well topple Avengers: Infinity War’s box office #1 spot, ending their three-week reign at the top.
If the title wasn’t enough warning, I’ll give you ample warning here again. The following contains spoilers for Deadpool 2, so if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now!
No Post-Credits Scene
At the end of the movie, everyone sat back, watching the credits roll, eagerly awaiting a hint at what could be coming in the future for the franchise. The amount of jobs that the film provided showed on screen, the lights came on in the theater, and everyone just sat stunned for a second. There was no post credit scene. The cleaning crew came out and started sweeping everything up. I sat there, waiting and stunned. I kept thinking I was just getting trolled and the post-credits scene would happen five or ten minutes after the credits ended.
Nothing.
And a lot can be said of nothing. When someone remains silent when asked a very poignant question, it indicates a certain amount of deep knowledge that they might be afraid to reveal. Or a certain amount of guilt. So the movie doesn’t say anything at the end about what more to expect for the future of the franchise.
This could mean a lot of things. We talked earlier last week about Ryan Reynolds being unsure about a third installment of Deadpool. This could be an indication of that hesitation. There’s also the Fox/Disney deal to consider as any plans for future films by Fox Studios has to work around that.
A Mid-Credits Scene
To explain some of the mid-credits scenes, we would have to account for events in the movie.
It all starts with the death of Morena Baccarin’s character Vanessa. Deadpool leaves a criminal alive and his actions lead to members of the mafia coming after him in his home. Vanessa gets caught in the crossfire and she ends up taking a bullet to the chest.
There’s some cryptic messaging from Vanessa in the afterlife, and Wade Wilson can’t get to her, as much as he tries to die. Through some inner soul searching, he ends up a cellmate with a young kid Russell Collins played by Julian Dennison. The kid becomes the target of Josh Brolin’s character, Cable, because of some evil he does in the future. And thus the plot of the film is revealed.
What follows is Deadpool making a number of mistakes throughout the film that lead up to him sacrificing himself to save Collins. Ultimately, Wade Wilson wants to die, so he could be reunited with Vanessa in the afterlife. Cable shoots at the kid, and Deadpool jumps in front of the bullet. Wade Wilson dies, the kid has a change of heart, and Cable’s future is changed for the better.
Cable realizes the error of judging the kid before he had done anything wrong, and uses the last of the power in his time traveling device to save Deadpool from the fatal bullet wound.
What follows is kind of a traditional happily ever after ending, with Cable deciding to stay in Deadpool’s time period to ensure the world stays on the right track. Some of the credits roll.
Correcting the past
Mid-Credits we get a scene where Negasonic Teenage Warhead and her girlfriend/teammate Pulse are working on Cable’s time-travelling device. Wade comes in and asks about the device and they get it functioning properly again. Wilson takes the device against the fair warnings of Negasonic and Pulse, and goes on a montage of fixing mistakes he made throughout the film. Cher’s “If I could turn back time” starts to play as background music.
Saving Vanessa
The first mistake he corrects is by slightly angling his knife throw a bit more to actually kill the guy who shot Vanessa with a fluke shot. In this version, the bullet never leaves the chamber. Deadpool leaves on another past mission and happily exclaims they are naming their first child Cher.
Saving Peter
Another scene involves his newly formed X-Force team. The team has a mission to infiltrate a convoy. The group parachutes down to a convoy to extract Russell Collins. High winds prevent most of the members from participating in the mission with most of them meeting grisly ends on landing. The only members who make it out somewhat unscathed are Deadpool, Domino, and Peter.
Peter lands safely nearby. Zeitgeist unfortunately lands in a wood chipper, and Peter attempts to pull him out. Zeitgeist has a mutant power of secreting a deadly acid. His acidic vomit gets on Peter when more of his body enters into the wood chipper. Peter dissolves and dies with the rest of his team.
In his second course correction, Deadpool returns to that specific period of time. He tells Peter to walk away from Zeitgeist, and to go back home to his family. It’s worth mentioning that Peter is the only member he tries to save. He leaves Bedlam, Zeitgeist, and Shatterstar to their fates.
Saving Comic Book Audiences
His third trip to the past involves going back to the first appearance of Deadpool in a film when Reynolds played him in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We all cringe remembering how Fox Studios slaughtered that character’s origin story. Deadpool steps out from the other side of the doorway and shoots the Origins version of Wade Wilson in the head. Repeatedly.
His fourth trip takes him to the home of Ryan Reynolds, as the actor looks over a script for Green Lantern with enthusiasm. Deadpool shoots Reynolds in the head and exclaims, “You’re welcome, Canada” before the rest of the credits roll.
What a Mid-Credits Scene means
Like the Time Stone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the mere existence of a MacGuffin like a time traveling device negates any permanent consequences like death. So, yeah of course he goes back in time to save his girlfriend.
Yet, we have to consider Deadpool’s motivations for taking on the mission of saving Julian Dennison’s character. Saving the kid, meeting Cable, joining the X-Men, forming the X-Force, the entirety of the film even, are all rooted in Vanessa’s death. By saving her, does he undo all of that and create a time paradox?
Maybe delving into such a subject is too deep for a film franchise. Considering the first Deadpool came to be as a hail-Mary attempt at breaking the rules of superhero films. Or maybe there are some legitimate arguments here that will play out in a future Deadpool/X-Force film? We’ll just have to see what 2019 holds for the franchise.
If you haven’t seen it, Deadpool 2 is out in theaters now.
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