On the surface Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine and Justin Baldoni’s It Ends With Us don’t have much in common apart from the fact that the lead actors in both films are married. However, the hit MCU film hasn’t been spared from the ongoing labyrinth of lawsuits involving Baldoni and Ryan Reynolds’s wife, Blake Lively.
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In the latest lawsuit, Badoni’s Lawyer, Bryan Freedman, has angered millions of Deadpool & Wolverine fans by claiming that Reynolds used Nicepool to mock Baldoni, causing a meltdown on messaging platforms.
“Honest question: who is Justin Baldoni? I had never heard of him until his claims about Nicepool started popping up,” one Redditor asked in a thread about Baldoni’s lawsuit.
Their question is just one of thousands in the Reddit thread full of Deadpool & Wolverine fans, most of whom had never heard of Baldoni before and struggled to understand how a whole Deadpool variant was created to mock him.
“Nicepool was really nice to a fault the whole time. And I figured from the overpowering Canadian accent they were making fun of Reynolds or Canadians in general. This Baldoni [guy] is a putz,” another Redditor responded in the thread. The two are part of thousands of fans who don’t believe Deadpool & Wolverine had anything to do with the Jane The Virgin star.
The meltdown started when Baldoni’s fiery lawyer, Bryan Freedman, filed a $400 million lawsuit on January 16th, naming Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as defendants alongside their publicist Leslie Sloane. The lawsuit is in response to a CRD complaint and subsequent lawsuit filed against Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer Studios, over their treatment of Blake on the set of It Ends With Us.
Disney and Marvel have also been dragged into the storm through a legal hold letter sent by Baldoni’s lawyer on January 7th. According to THR, the letter alleges that Reynolds worked on Nicepool while Baldoni and Lively were in a disagreement on the set of IEWU and that the character was used to retaliate against Baldoni.
Freedman’s letter, which also mentions Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel’s Kevin Feige, laid out several demands including the preservation of all materials relating to Baldoni and the Deadpool & Wolverine character Nicepool.
While Baldoni’s lawyer doesn’t say how Nicepool is connected to Baldoni, fans have connected the dots with the character’s lines that refer to Ladypool which would be Blake Lively.
In the film, Nicepool says, “Oh my goodness, wait ’til you see Ladypool, she is gorgeous. She just had a baby, too, and you can’t even tell,” to which Deadpool says, “You can’t say that,” and Nicepool says he can since he identifies as a feminist. According to the Internet sleuths, the line refers to Baldoni who also identifies as a feminist.
According to the sleuths, Baldoni believes that Reynolds used Nicepool as Baldoni’s avatar, painting him as a self-professed nice guy who is still a creep. In a different cut of the film, Nicepool says he has a “calling to one day start a podcast that monetizes the women’s movement,” a statement fans believe refers to Baldoni’s Man Enough podcast, which has since been canceled.
Other fans in the thread also deduce that Nicepool wears a Manbun sometimes, something Baldoni also does. However, the Manbun is not mentioned in Nicepool’s official description by Marvel.
“I would not be surprised at all if Ryan was like this f-ing guy (i.e., Baldoni using feminism to enrich his nice guy image while blatantly mistreating women). And that feeding into a character who is ‘nice’ in the worst kind of way,” another Redditor summarised the frivolity of Baldoni’s claims.
“And then got the satisfaction of watching that character be blown to bits. If that’s true I kind of love it. But there is nothing remotely illegal about satirical jabs at self-righteous nice guy ‘feminists.’ And for Baldoni to not only pick up on those vague hints but then demand it to be proven that [it is] him…[it is] pretty hilarious,” they added.
Most fans in the thread simply dismissed the claims as Baldoni grasping at straws or trying to make himself famous at Reynolds’s expense.
“I laughed at the joke when I saw the movie. I had no idea who Baldoni was at that point. Actually, I still don’t really know who he is other than someone who seems determined to ruin what looks like a career about to take off. Not anymore, tho'” another Reddit user said.
“From what I gather, in lieu of any actual evidence relevant to the case being argued, he’s trying to discredit Blake by painting her and Ryan as ‘out to get him’ with the argument of ‘they deliberately mocked me in Ryan film, [I] am the victim here!’,” said yet another comment almost replicating Lively’s response to Baldoni’s lawsuit.
“[It is] a desperate and deeply silly Hail Mary to try and make himself look like the victim of a targeted bullying attack (coz these types love to project their own behaviour onto others),” it’s added.
While Marvel hasn’t officially responded to the letter, sources told THR that Nicepool was one of the earliest variants of Deadpool to be created. That means the character doesn’t appear in the comics, and his creation had nothing to do with Baldoni’s on-set dispute with Lively.
However, the sources also mentioned that some Nicepool scenes were shot after the SAG/AFTRA strikes in 2023 putting them in the heart of Baldoni’s dispute with Lively. Reynolds hasn’t publicly responded to the lawsuit.
Blake Lively’s lawyers said via Us Magazine, however, “This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation, and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
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