11 Things We Learned About Deadpool & Wolverine From Our Spoiler Special With Ryan Reynolds And Shawn Levy

It’s finally here. No, we don’t mean Deadpool & Wolverine — the 34th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the first to feature Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth, Deadpool, and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That’s been here since the weekend before last, breaking records at the box office, kicking names and taking ass around the world. We’re talking about the Empire Podcast Deadpool & Wolverine Spoiler Special, which has just dropped. Front and centre of the podcast is an in-depth 45-minute interview with Ryan Reynolds and the film’s director, Shawn Levy, in which they tell us all about the movie’s various twists, turns, cameos and cusses. But if you haven’t got time to listen to it all just yet, here are ten of the things we learned…

*WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine*

The Opening Scene Was A Way Of Tackling Fans’ Biggest Fear Head On

From the moment the film was announced, fans were on tenterhooks to see how Reynolds and Levy would navigate the thorny matter of Logan, the last time Jackman played the character and a film that served as a fitting farewell to the Wolverine. Would they ignore it completely? Would they embrace it with dignity, grace and no little reverence? Or would they kick things off with Deadpool digging up Wolverine’s body and then desecrating the sacred corpse by using all 206 of his adamantium-laced bones to take out a bunch of TVA dayplayers? Very much the latter. “Ryan and I were in an office that we were sharing in New York, and we had this idea of, ‘what if we open at the site of the thing that people are the most worried about?’” Laughs Levy. “And I remember Ryan saying, ‘what if he’s not just at the grave, but what if he maybe uses Logan in ways that are shocking and unexpected?”

They Know The Bit With Wolverine’s Claws Makes No Sense

That opening sequence (soundtracked to *NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’) ends with Deadpool rigging Wolverine’s claws to his arms and popping them, as the parlance goes, to spectacularly incompetent and painful effect. “I never wanted to be proficient with the claws,” admits Reynolds. “Nor does it really make sense from a physiological standpoint.” Levy laughs in agreement. “I can’t wait for the pushback,” he says. “It makes no anatomical sense. But we knew that the last beat would be the popping of the claws. That image, Deadpool as Wolverine, was irresistible.”

Hugh Jackman Helped Shape Wolverine’s Arc

The idea that the Wolverine variant Deadpool teams up with for the majority of the movie would be ‘the worst Wolverine’, a Logan perpetually drowning his sorrows after holding himself responsible for the loss of the X-Men in his world (not to mention the crippling guilt sustained by the rage-fuelled rip-roaring rampage of revenge that followed), came as a result of a long voice memo Jackman sent to Reynolds and Levy. “He was scratching at an idea, all of which came down to, ‘why this Logan?’” Says Levy. “And it really, really asked a question we hadn’t properly asked.” Which led to the idea that he wears his famous blue-and-yellow costume, not because he fancies a spot of superheroing, but as a reminder of his past failures. As Reynolds explains, “He creates the cycle of self-loathing, which we thought tied really nicely into the yellow suit not just being a suit, but a penance or a hair shirt.”

Pulling Off That Blade Cameo Was One Of The Greatest Moments Of Reynolds’ Life

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you may have noticed that the movie has one or two cameos, particularly as Deadpool and Wolverine get pruned by the TVA’s Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) and wind up in The Void. Along the way they meet The Others, a group of survivors from the previous Fox/Marvel universe, comprising Dafne Keen’s Laura/X-23, Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, Channing Tatum’s Gambit, and Chris Evans’ short-lived and foul-mouthed Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch. But perhaps the biggest stir was caused by the arrival of someone not from the Fox universe, but New Line: the hero who arguably kicked off the whole Marvel cinematic universe back in 1998: Wesley Snipes’ Blade. “I get goosebumps even just thinking about it,” says Reynolds, who starred alongside Snipes in 2004’s poorly received Blade: Trinity, and who reached out directly to Snipes with the idea. “There’s no real depth to that idea other than I think people miss him, but don’t know it yet. And one of the top five most gratifying moments in the entire movie is when we hear that lion growl as he crosses into frame for the first time. It was one of the best moments of my life!” Ditto, Ryan. Ditto.

Channing Tatum’s Journey To Deadpool & Wolverine Began In 2016

While Keen, Garner, Evans and Snipes were all returning to characters they had played before, albeit nearly twenty years ago in most cases, Tatum is different, in that he was meant to play Gambit in a standalone movie for the card-throwing Cajun X-Man, only for it to fall through. “I was literally one of probably forty directors who met with Channing a decade ago about directing that would-be Gambit movie, and it didn’t happen,” reveals Levy. Reynolds, who stood on stage with Tatum and various X-alumni at Comic-Con in 2016, saw something of a kindred spirit in the actor. “Channing has a similar story to me,” adds Reynolds, referencing his long battle to get a Deadpool movie made. “He’s just zeroed in on exactly what to do with that character. Along came our chance here in The Void to bring him out of the dark and into the light.”

The Laura Campfire Scene Was Hugely Important (And Once Featured Deadpool)

The first time Levy and Reynolds move the action away from Deadpool comes around halfway through, when Wolverine shares a heart-to-heart with Laura around a campfire. She finally gets to reconcile her grief over losing a man who looks just like this Wolverine, and in return he confronts his own demons. For director and star (both, of course, co-wrote with Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Zeb Wells), the scene was, as Levy notes, “so critically important. We wanted to earn Wolverine’s presence in this movie and give Hugh a Logan to play that he hasn’t quite played.” Interestingly, Deadpool popped up in the scene at one point, looking for smores. “I feel that Deadpool is a really wonderful supporting character,” says Reynolds. “Any time there’s an opportunity to take him out of a scene organically and just let things breathe for a bit is really important to me. Let’s let this be about Laura and Logan.”

Only One Line Was Off Limits — And They Won’t Say What It Was

As you might imagine, Deadpool & Wolverine is studded with incredible, and incredibly sweary, one-liners, many of which take the piss out of Marvel, the MCU, the film’s stars, and Disney. And only one line caused enough of a stir for Reynolds and Levy to rethink matters, leading to one of the film’s funniest lines. “They never said, ‘you have to take it out,’” laughs Reynolds. “They said, ‘we would really, really, really appreciate it if you would consider something else.” While the duo won’t say what the line was, they will happily confirm that the replacement was, ‘Disney is so cheap, it’s like Pinocchio jammed his face in my ass and started lying like crazy.’” Start your speculation now!

Planes, Trains And Automobiles Was A Huge Influence

Both Reynolds and Levy have talked about the influence of the Steve Martin/John Candy/John Hughes classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles on the movie, but here they really explain how overt that influence is. There’s Wolverine’s rant at Deadpool just ahead of their epic fight inside a Honda Odyssey — “that’s Neal Page yelling at Del Griffith in the hotel room,” says Reynolds. But there are also little Easter eggs on view in The Void. “When we’re walking up the hill in The Void and I’m explaining about X-23, we actually walk past the rental car that Del Griffith burned on the road,” says Reynolds. “And his trunk is right there,” adds Levy. For Reynolds, a proud Canadian, tipping the hat to John Candy is a Deadpool tradition. “The book, The Canadian Mounted, shows up in Deadpool one, two and three,” reveals Reynolds, “and every time I have to pay $5000 to fucking Paramount for the use of the book!” You’d have to sell a lot of shower curtain rings to make that money back.

They Crafted The Ending To Work On Multiple Levels

To completely invert the Life Of Brian quote, they’re not naughty boys, they’re the Messiahs. The end of the film sees both Deadpool and Wolverine vying to sacrifice themselves in order to stop Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) from destroying their universe, only to find that their combined energy is strong enough to withstand even certain death. “We knew the final would be a double Marvel Jesus,” laughs Levy. “You don’t know if it’s Deadpool talking to Wolverine, or is it Ryan talking to Hugh,” says Reynolds of the moment the two characters say a temporary goodbye. “I think that emotionality is maybe the most subversive component of this film,” adds Levy.

Levy Always Knew His Final Shot

Villain dispatched, universe saved, Logan winds up in Wade Wilson’s world and finds himself part of Deadpool’s circle of friends (now expanded to eleven, with the addition of Laura). And the film ends with them eating pizza (Feige’s Favourite, of course), and the camera finding their two masks. Happily ever after. “I have to give it to Shawn, he saw that the movie has to end on iconography,” says Reynolds. “I think there is a power of nostalgia and legacy to those masks that is more profound than any face or line could be,” adds Levy. “And I knew that’s where this story should end.”

They Were Able To Resist The MCU’s Clarion Call

Speaking of endings, another assumption, when the movie was announced, was that Deadpool & Wolverine would officially introduce its title characters to the MCU. Instead, they end the movie on Deadpool’s world, and other than a couple of cameos here and there from the likes of Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan, Wunmi Mosaku’s B-15 and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, it’s relatively free of connections to the Sacred Timeline. “The intention was to stick a landing, not be servicing a great agenda,” says Levy. Given that one of the film’s running gags is Deadpool’s obsession with finding out why Thor is holding him and crying in a video glimpsed at the TVA, the creative partnership weren’t interested in presenting a solution to that. Yet. “We talked about pretty massive MCU cameos,” admits Reynolds. “We probably could have pushed it through, but I like that the closest he really gets to the MCU is Happy Hogan.”

And for more — much, much more — on the film, including certain other cameos and some of the hoops Reynolds and Levy had to jump through, as well as Team Empire doing a two-hour deep dive into the film, check out the spoiler special podcast. If you don’t subscribe already, that’s very easily remedied here, and also gives you access to our incredible array of spoiler special podcasts and interviews, including every MCU podcast we’ve ever done, the Christopher McQuarrie Mission: Impossible epics, and much, much more.