The official Deadpool and Wolverine trailer is finally here, and yes, it’s awesome

We were already looking forward to the summer release of Deadpool and Wolverine, which will bring together Ryan Reynolds’ R-rated antihero with Hugh Jackman’s iconic X-Man. We’re even more eager to see the film after Marvel dropped the official trailer, which is chock-full of off-color witticisms, meta-references, slo-mo action, and a generous sprinkling of F-bombs. (But no cocaine! Wade promised Feige! “They know all the slang terms. They have a list.”)

“You’re talking about two massive movie stars in their most iconic roles,” Director Shawn Levy (Free Guy) told Screen Rant earlier this month. “It also gave me an opportunity. It’s the third Deadpool movie, but it’s not Deadpool 3. It’s a different thing that’s very much Deadpool and Wolverine. And it’s not trying to copycat anything from the first two movies. They were awesome, but this is a two-hander character adventure.”

(Spoilers for Deadpool 2 below.)

Ryan Reynolds found the perfect fit with 2016’s Deadpool, starring as Wade Wilson, a former Canadian special forces operative (dishonorably discharged) who develops regenerative healing powers that heal his cancer but leave him permanently disfigured with scars all over his body. Wade decides to become a masked vigilante, turning down an invitation to join the X-Men and abandon his bad-boy ways. The first Deadpool was a big hit, racking up $782 million at the global box office, critical praise, and a couple of Golden Globe nominations for good measure. Deadpool 2 was released in 2018 and was just as successful.

Marvel released a two-minute teaser for the new movie during the Super Bowl in February, featuring the trademark cheeky irreverence that made audiences embrace Reynold’s R-rated superhero in the first place, plus a glimpse of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine—or rather, his distinctive shadow. And yes, Marvel is retaining that R rating—a big step given that all the prior MCU films have been resoundingly PG-13.

You may recall that the mid-credits sequence in Deadpool 2 showed a couple of X-Men repairing a time travel device for Deadpool, which he used to save his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin‚—whose tragic death kicked off the film—and kill the “real” Ryan Reynolds, just as the actor finished reading the script for Green Lantern (his first unsuccessful foray into superhero movies).

Deadpool and Wolverine reunites many familiar faces from the first two films: Reynolds and Baccarin, obviously, but also Leslie Uggams as Blind Al; Karan Soni as Wade’s personal chauffeur, taxi driver Dopinder; Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead; Stefan Kapičić as the voice of Colossus; Shioli Kutsuna as Negasonic’s mutant girlfriend, Yukio; Randal Reeder as Buck; and Lewis Tan as X-Force member Shatterstar.

We’re also getting some characters drawn from various films under the 20th Century Fox Marvel umbrella: Pyro (Aaron Stanford)—last seen in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand—and Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, who appeared in the 2003 Daredevil film as well as 2005’s Elektra. Apparently, the mutants Sabretooth and Toad will also appear, along with Dogpool. New to the franchise are Matthew MacFadyen as a Time Variance Authority agent named Paradox and Emma Corrin as the lead villain. There have been rumors that Owen Wilson’s Mobius and the animated Miss Minutes from Loki will also appear in the film.

The teaser revealed that the TVA, first featured in Loki, will play a big role in Deadpool and Wolverine. We saw Wade celebrating his birthday with Vanessa and all their friends, only to then have a group of formidable TVA agents knock on his door. He was tossed through a portal and ended up at TVA headquarters, face to face with Paradox, who offered him a chance to be “a hero among heroes.”

Marvel dropped a new teaser last night, focused on moody black-and-white footage from 2017’s Logan, Jackman’s last on-screen appearance as Wolverine. “Look, eventually you’re gonna hang up the claws and it’s gonna make a lot of people very sad,” Reynolds said in a voiceover. “But one day your old pal Wade’s gonna ask you to get back in the saddle again. And when he does, say yes.”

Based on this new official trailer, set to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” audiences will be so, so glad that Jackman said yes. This version of Wolverine is clearly from another timeline in the Marvel multiverse, drinking away his sorrows in a bar—or trying to, since the bartender insists he’s not welcome there (or anywhere). Then Deadpool shows up to ask for his help. It doesn’t go well. But Deadpool persists because he’s about to lose everything he’s ever cared about. Wolverine insists he’s no hero, and there’s clearly another tragic backstory for this version of Wolverine.

Cue a lot of bloody action, sometimes with the duo fighting each other—including a claw to the groin—sometimes with them joining forces to fight actual adversaries. We don’t see much of Corrin’s villain, but she seems to have Magneto-like control over Wolverine’s adamantium, which should keep things interesting. [UPDATE: As BlakeCoverett points out in the comments—and physicist and comics fan James Kakalios mentioned on X—the villain seems to be Cassandra Nova, who has telepathic abilities much like Professor X/Charles Xavier. So she might be controlling Wolverine’s actual body, not the adamantium fused onto his skeleton.]

Deadpool and Wolverine hits theaters on July 26, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Marvel Studios