Deadpool & Wolverine is a Toy Story movie

Since acquiring 20th Century Fox, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has repeatedly used the multiverse to reference its Marvel franchises, with the versions of Spider-Man played by Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield showing up in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Patrick Stewart’s version of Professor Charles Xavier making a cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But Deadpool & Wolverine moves the needle on cross-universe shenanigans: Its crossover cameos include entire cinematic realities.

In Deadpool & Wolverine, heroes and villains from non-MCU-canon Marvel movies are relegated to The Void, the Time Variance Authority’s wasteland at the end of time. There, they chafe under the tyranny of Professor X’s sister Cassandra Nova and the threat of the cloud-monster Alioth, while they hope for a chance to jump into action once again. Their meta narrative is meant to spark empathy with the viewers — anyone who’s seen these decanonized movies and has positive feelings for them will connect with the characters’ feelings of being forgotten and discarded. Which feels exactly like the way the Toy Story movies portray toys. But that isn’t all the new Deadpool movie has with Pixar’s flagship animated franchise.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for both the Toy Story franchise and Deadpool & Wolverine.]

Image: Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection

Deadpool and Wolverine in this movie effectively speedrun a lot of the beats of the relationship between Woody and Buzz Lightyear in the first Toy Story. Deadpool (and Woody) is used to being the center of his own universe, but he’s also anxious about his possible irrelevance. His insecurity is magnified when he encounters a more beloved hero who’s going through his own existential crisis. (Buzz’s version: He struggles to acknowledge he’s actually a toy. Wolverine’s version: He struggles to acknowledge how, as the “worst Logan” in the multiverse, he let his home X-Men down.)

The unlikely duo have to team up, with Deadpool/Woody desperate to get back home to the people they love, and Logan/Buzz processing their trauma, lowering their barriers, and accepting the invitation to share in that joy and acceptance.

The later Toy Story movies show Woody just how special he is. In Toy Story 2, he has to choose between being put on display as a rare collectible, or returning to a life with his owner Andy, who may eventually break or discard him. In Toy Story 3, he has the chance to be the one toy Andy takes to college as he leaves all of his other playthings behind. Both are similar to the pitch TVA sub-villain Paradox gives Deadpool: an invitation to acknowledge his specialness and uniqueness, and abandon his dying universe in order to join the TVA.

Photo: Jay Maidment, Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection

Logan made for a touching swan song to the 20th Century Fox X-Men series, but Wolverine’s death in that movie dooms Deadpool’s timeline. Without more Wolverine stories to tell, the universe has no further purpose, because its existence is defined by us, the viewers, and the stories we’re going to watch. But Deadpool/Woody are both driven by their love for their friends and their beliefs about their own true purpose. Woody wants to stay with his friends and be played with, not just admired at a distance. Wade wants to save his friends and his timeline, not step to safety and leave them all behind. (Even if that does mean abandoning his quest to be worthy of the Avengers’ universe, meaning becoming an MCU mainline canon character.)

The toys in Toy Story are repeatedly at risk of destruction or abandonment, with being discarded under a bed, sent off to a daycare, or packed up in the attic portrayed as a terrible, traumatic fate. Likewise, the discarded characters in The Void eke out a miserable existence in a barren Mad Max-esque environment, caught between being minions or being food.

Both these images — once-beloved entertainments, tossed on the scrap heap and pining for revival — are powerful plays on viewers’ nostalgia. They both assign agency and emotions to fictional characters, letting them feel pain and angst about being lost to the passage of time. At the same time, the Toy Story movies and Deadpool & Wolverine both tell viewers who have been watching these franchises for decades that it’s OK to move on from old playthings and embrace whatever comes next.

Toy Story 3 begins with Andy’s toys desperately trying to get his attention, and ends with the joy of one last play session, as Andy shares the stories he’s given each of his old toys with their new owner, Bonnie. Likewise, the parade of cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine gives numerous Marvel film characters one last hurrah in a meaningful battle. It’s a fanservice feast, with a final grudge match between Sabretooth and Wolverine, Pyro taking on the Human Torch, and Channing Tatum showing off what he might have looked like if he actually appeared as Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Jennifer Garner’s version of Elektra and Wesley Snipes’ Blade get one last taste of glory as they face down a host of evil mutants. (Blade will supposedly be back soon, but played by Mahershala Ali.)

Image: Buena Vista Pictures/Everett Collection

Just as most of the individual toys in Andy’s eclectic playroom get less identity and individual screen time in each movie in the series, Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t pay much attention to who these characters are or how they got there. They’re treated like action figures in a game of make-believe, lumped together regardless of franchise. They’re all given the same basic goals and personalities in spite of their individual origins and settings.

The teary sendoff Andy’s mom gives him as he heads to college in Toy Story 3 and the upbeat montage from 20th Century Fox Marvel films that plays during Deadpool & Wolverine’s credits, set to Green Day’s high-school-graduation chestnut “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” are perfect sentimental endings for these respective franchises. Yet the sequel-hungry Disney released Toy Story 4 in 2019, and has a fifth installation planned for 2026. Deadpool 4 hasn’t been announced yet, but Deadpool & Wolverine’s startling box-office take makes it seem inevitable — as Deadpool acknowledges during the movie, where he jokes about how Disney will force Hugh Jackman to keep playing Wolverine until he’s 90.

Hopefully that isn’t true. Wesley Snipes calls himself the one and only Blade, a cutting reference to the troubled MCU reboot, but many of the characters and actors appearing in the Void have already moved on to better places. Evans didn’t light the world on fire as the Human Torch, but became an MCU anchor as Captain America. It’s certainly entertaining to see Tatum flashily blowing people up while talking in a questionable Cajun accent, but the last stand of Wolverine & Deadpool’s Gambit pales in comparison to the emotional power of the one Gambit had earlier this year in the X-Men ’97 episode “Remember It.” Elodie Yung and Charlie Cox did justice to Elektra and Daredevil in Netflix’s Daredevil in a way Garner and Ben Affleck never did in their 2005 movie.

Even the MCU will someday be consigned to The Void, though Deadpool & Wolverine’s success will certainly keep its sacred timeline going a little longer. The most powerful message of Toy Story 3 was about sharing joy with the next generation, telling your story, then letting young people come along and reshape it in their own ways, adding new characters and new roles for existing ones. Disney isn’t likely to take that to heart as it figures out what to do with the new collection of Marvel toys it’s purchased from 20th Century Fox. But given all the ways their latest hit feels like one of their most popular animated franchises, they’re really going to have to work at missing the point.