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Just a heads up before we get started: This article is full of spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine, and will provide details on every cameo in the film. If you don’t want to know about this stuff, you should leave now. Or if you actually want more spoilers, you can read our spoiler-filled breakdown of the film’s plot here.
Deadpool & Wolverine is an odd movie, because it’s caught in between several different worlds. Obviously, the big two are the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the old, dead X-Men franchise, but more broadly it also covers every Marvel movie property that didn’t come from Sony or Marvel itself. It’s a lot of stuff that has never had any connections to each other. Even Fox’s Daredevil and Punisher movies, released 14 months apart two decades ago, managed to be completely unrelated stories. Putting a bow on all that with a single film is too much to ask, even with Deadpool’s ability to break the fourth wall–but Deadpool & Wolverine makes a solid effort thanks to its cavalcade of cameos that cover a lot more of those old Marvel flicks than I would have expected–including a couple that were never even made.
The in-universe story conceit behind these appearances is that a large stretch of it takes place in the Void–a place at the end of time that’s full of variants of heroes and villains alike, which the Time Variance Authority has exiled for one reason or another. Just as this setting allowed the Loki series to pull in a bunch of amazing alternate Lokis, the Void allows Deadpool & Wolverine to include whatever past Marvel folks it wanted.
In all, Deadpool & Wolverine covers nearly the full breadth of Marvel on the big screen, including the X-Men films. Though, oddly enough, it lacks any actual X-Men that we know already–all the characters from those films who pop up here are villains. It’s hard to know what that means, but hopefully it’s that they’re saving those folks for when the MCU’s franchise plot finally kicks back in after spending the last several years on a bunch of different standalone story threads.
In any case, I’m not sure how many more cameo appearances Deadpool & Wolverine could handle, since it’s got a ton of them as it is. It can be tough to remember them all, so we’ve made the list below to help you keep track. Take a look.
