If Deadpool wants to be a true Marvel superhero, is it time he grew up and stopped joking around?

How do you solve a problem like Deadpool in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Deadpool & Wolverine found a way: rather than integrate the bloodthirsty, fourth-wall-breaking merc with a mouth into the rather more sanitised world of Thor, Iron Man and Spider-Man, Shawn Levy’s 2024 film chose to lampoon it from the outside instead. Why bother to make everyone’s favourite chimichanga-munching mutant fit when you can make the fact that he doesn’t the entire joke? Why become another cog in the Marvel machine when you can stand beside it, point out the loose screws and watch the box-office greenbacks roll in like it’s Christmas 2019?

Deadpool & Wolverine made $1.3bn worldwide, becoming the second highest grossing film of 2024 and the highest grossing R-rated film ever. But it did absolutely nothing to introduce Ryan Reynolds’ potty-mouthed antihero into the MCU, unless one counts the several thousand jokes about Kevin Feige. By the end of the movie, Deadpool seems no closer to becoming the saviour of Marvel than Happy Hogan is to wielding Mjolnir. He remains a sarcastic observer from the sidelines, less a vital MCU character than its resident heckler.

Which makes this week’s news that Reynolds is to embark on a sequel intriguing, to say the least. Because really, about what exactly? How do you make another Marvel movie when you have systematically pulled the whole enterprise apart? How could Deadpool emerge as the hero of Avengers: Secret Wars, and perhaps sacrifice himself to stop Doctor Doom from folding the multiverse into one vast Latverian theme park, when he has already treated Marvel continuity as something to be rummaged through for disposable cameos?

Nobody has much inkling of how another Marvel-era Deadpool film might pan out. But some reports suggest the character will play a role in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday, albeit most probably not as part of the titular superhero combo.

A new trailer for Doomsday, released earlier this week, does little to clarify matters. Reynolds is nowhere to be seen, but Channing Tatum’s Gambit, introduced in memorably bizarre fashion in Deadpool & Wolverine, features prominently. Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and Ian McKellen’s Magneto appear to be caught up in the film’s multiversal collision course, while Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique is once again prowling around in blue body paint. All of them belong to the same sprawling, hopelessly tangled 20th Century Fox-era mutant continuity that Deadpool calls home. It’s not hard to imagine Reynolds is hovering somewhere nearby, waiting to burst through the scenery and complain about Robert Downey Jr’s salary.

Best in an ensemble? … Reynolds with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Photograph: Jay Maidment/AP