How ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ fits into the X-Men movies’ messy timeline

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With Deadpool & Wolverine hitting theaters, the long-running X-Men film series will, once and for all, canonically collide with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to time-travel shenanigans. But how will Deadpool’s latest romp factor into the X-Men franchise’s already confounding timeline? 

Well before Marvel’s multiple realities grabbed a hold of pop culture, the X-Men movies had their own messy continuity, including an ostensible multiverse before this was really a fad. After kicking off with a trilogy set more or less in the modern day, followed by a Wolverine spin-off, the story moved firmly into prequel territory. It soon brought its older and younger casts together through a time travel story, all but erasing its original timeline and starting afresh. However, the desire to retread and retool the film series while also maintaining the appearance of a single, continuous franchise has led to, shall we say, complications.

For instance: How is the diamond-skinned telepath Emma Frost both a teenager in the 1980s, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and an adult in the 1962-set prequel movie X-Men: First Class, released just two years later? Series producer Lauren Shuler Donner claims the two characters are only coincidentally named Emma and happen to share the same powers — okay, sure — but the real answer is that two different filmmakers simply opted to use the character in different contexts, continuity be damned.

These discrepancies haven’t always mattered to general audiences. But in light of Marvel’s new rules about character “variants” and the emergence of timeline “branches,” the fourteenth X-Men entry can’t help but recontextualize these creative decisions. Deadpool & Wolverine also features Marvel’s Time Variance Authority, or the TVA — keepers of continuity introduced in the streaming series Loki — so it only makes sense to dive in and unpack what exactly is going on with the winding X-Men timeline. After all, the much-awaited team-up between Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is actually the second time these actors and characters have crossed paths on-screen, but those were also different versions of each character who have long since died. So, how exactly did we get here?

To see the full timeline grapgic, scroll to the bottom, where slight spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine lie.

X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand : 2000 to 2006 

Established canon: Released in 2000 and set in “the near future,” Bryan Singer’s X-Men introduced a sprawling ensemble of X-Men, under the guidance of telepathic, wheelchair-using headmaster Professor X/Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). When the film series begins, our heroes have been locked in a quiet battle for recognition and rights with both the U.S. government and the antagonistic Mutant Brotherhood, led by metal-bending radical Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen), a survivor of the Holocaust. This premise runs through nearly all the mainline X-Men movies.

The first film is also where we meet Jackman’s Wolverine, a loner with no memory of his origins who soon joins up with the X-Men, a shifting roster that expands with every entry. The mainstays include Professor X, his telekinetic protege Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), the weather witch Storm/Ororo Munroe (Halle Berry) and the laser-eyed Cyclops/Scott Summers (James Marsden). Later entries saw the addition of the metal-skinned Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) in X2: X-Men United (2003), followed by the wall-phasing Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page), the animalistic yet erudite Beast/Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), and the burdened, winged Angel (Ben Foster) in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). 

The X-Men are teachers and students, but they’re also a paramilitary force with their own stealth jets and black leather uniforms. This comes in handy when they fight villains like the feral Sabretooth (Tyler Mane), the shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), the rampaging Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) and the ruthless Col. William Stryker (Brian Cox), an old man tied to Logan’s mysterious origins.

Retcons: Continuity is largely linear for these first three films. Characters recur without much fuss, or disappear between entries — like teleporting circus attraction Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) —and no one is the wiser. The film series’ minor Easter eggs pose only the tiniest of problems. For instance, Beast cameos on a TV screen in human form in X2 (played by Steve Bacic), but by the time Grammer plays him in the third movie, he appears in all his blue and furry glory, and he seems to have been that way for some time.

Deaths and major events, however, all seem to be built with wiggle room, just in case they need to be undone. X2′s ending, in which Jean sacrifices her life to save the X-Men, dovetails into Last Stand, where she’s resurrected under the ”Phoenix” moniker — a powerful cosmic force in the comics, reimagined as an alternate persona. And as the third entry wraps up, it drops hints that its radically altered status quo might not be permanent.   Magneto, who’s been de-powered by a mutant “cure,” appears to move a metal chess piece with his mind in the trilogy’s closing frames. Even Xavier’s violent death is poised to be rewritten in a post-credit scene, when a long-comatose body speaks to Dr. Moira MacTaggert (Olivia Williams) in Stewart’s distinct tenor.

Without a fourth linear X-Men film on the horizon, these were little more than wishes destined to remain unfulfilled, though they would eventually come into play a few entries down the line. In the meantime, the franchise was all set to venture into the past, with a string of origin stories based on specific characters.

The X-Men prequels and spin-offs: 2009 to 2013 

Established canon: In 2009, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the test case for mutant spin-offs. Director Gavin Hood’s poorly received action prequel attempts not only to fill the gaps in Logan’s memory, but also to recast and reimagine several existing characters. 

After detailing Wolverine’s childhood in 1845, X-Men Origins is set largely in the mid-1980s, and turns hints of flashbacks from previous films into their own narrative centerpieces. These explain how Wolverine lost his memory, and how he had the indestructible metal adamantium grafted onto his bones, creating his signature claws, by a middle-aged Stryker (Danny Huston), leader of the Weapon X program. Origins was also the movie that introduced a teenage Emma Frost (Tahyna MacManus), as well as the sword-wielding mercenary Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), albeit as a mute, mind-controlled villain largely ignored by the character’s more comedic entries. 

The plan, at the time, was to follow Wolverine’s solo film with a similar “Origins” story about Magneto. But this idea was eventually folded into Matthew Vaughn’s 1962-set ensemble prequel, X-Men: First Class (2011). While a more colorful film than its predecessors, First Class made distinct overtures towards being deeply entwined with the original X-Men trilogy, beginning with its opening scene of a young Erik in a Nazi concentration camp — practically a shot-for-shot recreation of the first film’s prologue — before focusing, once more, on the ideological rift between Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Shortly thereafter, The Wolverine (2013), Logan’s second solo spin-off, would take the character to Japan long after the events of the original trilogy. There, he loses himself in mourning over a long-dead Jean Grey, and subsequently has his adamantium claws hacked off by a giant robot samurai. 

Retcons: Perhaps the biggest liberty taken by X-Men Origins is its reimagining of Sabretooth — now played by Liev Schreiber — as Wolverine’s half-brother, and his comrade during every American war. That Wolverine has no memory of this in previous entries makes sense, thanks to his amnesia. The fact that Mane’s version of Sabretooth (in 2000’s X-Men) doesn’t acknowledge this either is a gap in continuity that, while irksome, is ultimately forgivable, since it led to Schreiber’s delightfully evil performance. 

X-Men: First Class similarly reimagines Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) as Xavier’s adopted sister; this is another sibling relationship that isn’t acknowledged in films set decades later, and the first of many instances in which the prequel plays fast and loose with continuity. Some of its narrative liberties, like MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) showing up as a CIA agent rather than a doctor, or Emma Frost (January Jones) being an adult character 20-plus years before appearing as a teenager in X-Men: Origins, don’t matter quite as much. However, they start to become noticeable if you’re paying close attention. Some changes to the timeline even fix inconsistencies elsewhere: Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) transforms into his furry, blue form, aligning First Class with Grammer’s later appearance while ignoring the character’s minor human cameo in X2. Other changes, however, have a more adverse impact: while Origins and The Last Stand feature scenes of Xavier walking around in the ’80s and ’90s, First Class ends with him being paralyzed from the waist down for dramatic effect, several decades prior.

Xavier and McCoy’s continuity, however, becomes even more fluid thanks to a future entry — the time-travel crossover X-Men: Days of Future Past — first teased in the post-credit scene of The Wolverine. Logan’s solo sequel is isolated enough from the rest of the series, both narratively and geographically, that it doesn’t impact continuity, but its credit tag promises monumental changes when the character is visited by not only a re-powered Magneto (McKellan), but also a mysteriously resurrected Professor X (Stewart), who warn him of oncoming dangers. 

The alternate X-Men timeline: 2014 to 2017

Established canon: Singer, who helmed the first two X-Men movies, returned to the director’s chair for X-Men: Days of Future Past, and brought with him his signature black leather outfits. In his grim future timeline — a dystopian 2023, about a decade after The Wolverine is set — mutants are hunted and killed, thanks to the domino effects of Mystique assassinating a weapons developer in the 1970s. 

The aged Magneto (McKellan) and Xavier (Stewart) have teamed up once more, and their survival depends on Kitty Pryde using her inexplicable time-travel powers. Logan, who somehow has his adamantium claws back — another unexplained return to status quo — has his consciousness psychically transported by Pryde into his younger body in the 1970s. Here, he meets up with a younger Xavier and McCoy (played by prequel actors McAvoy and Hoult), who have figured out how to suppress their powers. Xavier can also temporarily walk again, while McCoy retains his human appearance, ensuring that any future discrepancies on this front can be easily hand-waved.

The film, in essence, resets the entire X-Men timeline as we know it, erasing the past continuity before our eyes and yielding the ’80s- and ’90s-set sequels X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019). These films, while they don’t feature Wolverine except in a cameo capacity, see the re-introduction of trilogy mainstays, now played by younger characters: Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee). 

Retcons: Despite starting afresh, and having the ability to pull from any corners of the vast comic catalog, this ostensibly new X-Men series retreads characters and concepts already seen. However, the changes it makes along the way don’t always add up. The point of divergence between the two timelines (in X-Men: Days of Future Past) is 1973, which should only affect the future, at least in theory. However, the 1980s-set X-Men: Apocalypse happens to feature a version of Angel (Ben Hardy) as a young adult, around the age he already appeared in The Last Stand in the 2000s. He would have already had to have been born by Days of Future Past for this to happen, which kind of implies that the team’s time-travel antics didn’t just impact the future, but the past as well (cue Michael Keaton’s kooky spaghetti monologue from The Flash).

The new film series does gesture towards a brand new story in some ways, like the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which sees Wolverine waking up in an alternate 2023 where Jean, Scott, and the other X-Men are still alive, though he remembers the original timeline in which they died. The ripple effects of his time travel also mean it’s no longer a young Stryker (Josh Helman) who captured him but Mystique in disguise. Therefore, it ought to follow that Wolverine doesn’t become a subject of Weapon X, but he’s seen right back in its clutches — memory wipe and all — in Apocalypse, the very next entry. The more things change in the X-Men film series, the more they seem to stay the same.

Deadpool, Logan, and the TV shows you forgot: 2016 to 2020

Established canon: It can be hard to remember just how much X-Men media there was between 2016 and 2019 (after which Fox came under Disney’s control). Alongside Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, there was also Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Logan, two seasons of ensemble mutant show The Gifted — which features the daughter of Magneto and young triplet clones of Emma Frost — and a further three seasons of trippy psychic series Legion, featuring Xavier’s estranged son. These shows take a mutable approach to continuity, if only so that they don’t actually impact the movies.

A similar approach is taken in the somber Wolverine spin-off Logan — the question of when and where it takes place could have multiple explanations — albeit with a more story-centric reason in mind. On one hand, since the events of the original trilogy (and the dystopia of X-Men: Days of Future Past) have been deleted from continuity, this rules Logan out as a direct sequel to them. It’s more likely that the spin-off emanates from the alternate future glimpsed at the end of Days of Future Past. But since that version of Wolverine seemed to remember the original timeline, Logan works as a character-centric sequel to those films as well. It’s a neat way for the series to have its cake and eat it too, thus creating an all-encompassing sequel that draws on the audience’s general familiarity with the X-Men movies, whether they’ve been “erased” or not. 

Retcons: At the end of the day, trying to decipher a linear approach to Logan‘s continuity runs counter to the film’s own themes. Its take on the X-Men canon becomes all but explicit in a key exchange between Wolverine and his clone/adopted daughter Laura (Dafne Keen), when she presents him with a series of vibrant X-Men comics. “You do know they’re all bullshit, right?” he tells her. “Maybe a quarter of it happened, and not like this.” 

The movie’s neo-Western lens frames Wolverine as an aged gunman at the end of his life, a man about whom legends have been whispered around campfires over the years. While the events of all the previous movies “happened” in some fashion, whether literally or just in the character’s memory, Logan all but instructs the audience not to get bogged down by these details. The emotional truths therein are what matter most, i.e. that Logan was once an X-Man who went on grand, whiz-bang adventures, but ended up partially (if not wholly) responsible for the deaths of his colorful comrades.

Note: The New Mutants (2020) features fleeting archival footage of Laura, thus setting it in the same continuity as Logan, but chances are you didn’t remember that movie exists until just now.

The past, in the X-Men movies, is entirely fluid. This has long been the case in superhero comics, where writers being selective about decades of continuity is practically a given, if anyone’s going to even attempt a new story. This pliability is a perfect fit for a film like Logan, which captures Wolverine through a mythic lens and treats the X-Men tales as folklore. However, this is remarkably (if unintentionally) similar to how the Deadpool movies treat continuity too, as parodies that don’t bother taking canon too seriously. 

When exactly are Tim Miller’s Deadpool (2016) and David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 (2018) set in relation to the X-Men films? The answer, as with Logan, is “it doesn’t really matter,” since the series is too busy poking fun at superheroes to figure that out. But if you really want to do the math, it isn’t hard.

By process of elimination, they definitively do not take place in the same continuity as X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and thus, the original trilogy), given their more comic-accurate Deadpool and a supporting roster that features much more cartoonish versions of characters seen in other films, like Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) and Juggernaut (Reynolds). And since the main cast of X-Men: Apocalypse makes a brief cameo in Deadpool 2 — albeit as a fleeting gag about how the production can’t afford them — it’s safe to assume the two movies are at least nominally connected, even though it makes no real sense for characters from the 1980s to show up in present day. This places the Deadpool films in the new timeline created by Days of Future Past. Voila!

However, the story of the X-Men movies’ doesn’t end there. As it turns out, Deadpool & Wolverine does actually provide a definitive answer about where the Deadpool movies fit in, where one really wasn’t clear before, or even really needed. 

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) 

In Deadpool 2, Wade uses a time-travel device to save his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), which theoretically creates another branched reality in which she doesn’t die. In Deadpool & Wolverine, the TVA agent. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) clearly establishes that the Deadpool movies take place in the same universe as Logan, since the Wolverine of Wade’s reality is dead and buried in a shallow grave. 

Therefore, Logan theoretically takes place in the new reality where Deadpool’s time-travel antics caused a further shift in continuity, though the Deadpool movies’ timeline fudging do shift around some existing specifics. According to on-screen text in Deadpool & Wolverine, the film is set in 2024, but dialogue in Logan sets that film in 2029. So, when did Wolverine die, exactly? Well, in keeping with Logan, it depends on who you ask — or in this case, which movie studio you ask, since this appears to be a definitive retcon under Disney. 

However, the Wolverine in the yellow suit seen in all the trailers is from another different timeline, which seems to be unconnected to the X-Men movies altogether. However, this “Worst Wolverine” – as Paradox declares him — harbors the same rage and self-doubt as the Logan we’ve seen before.

This is a must, if Jackman’s return is to have any emotional resonance for the audience. For better or worse, the nitty-gritties of the X-Men timeline may actually be important for once, if only to make sense of Wade and Logan’s MCU debuts. 

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​ The series’ labyrinthine continuity will clash with the MCU in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” 

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