The ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ Super Bowl Spot Teases Meta Hijinks Galore

Marvel Studios

With the release of the first official trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine during the Super Bowl this past Sunday, the plot of the Merc with the Mouth’s third outing has come into sharper focus, and it seems like our mindless speculation is correct: In Marvel Studios’ only theatrical release this year, Deadpool will try to save the Marvel Universe, both literally and metaphorically (but only after making what is presumably the first pegging joke in what is technically a Disney movie.)

In the trailer, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is pulled from his own birthday party and pegged recruited by new-to-the-MCU character Paradox (Emmy award winner Matthew Macfayden) to perform an unspecified mission on behalf of Loki’s Time Variance Authority. “This is your chance to be a hero among heroes,” Paradox says, while showing Deadpool footage of the rest of the MCU’s best and brightest to inspire him to…kill a bunch of his fellow Fox castmates to make right his own timeline shenanigans from the end of Deadpool 2, or fend off another impending incursion event? It's not totally clear.

There’s an immediate payoff to the Fox side of things: Trevor Devall’s Pyro, from the Fox X-Men films, makes a brief appearance towards the end of the trailer, and there are not one but two different teases of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (shoutout to all my Patch heads). (Also, blink and you’ll miss Deadpool fighting in front of what looks to be rubble shaped like the old Twentieth Century Fox logo.)

But other signs perhaps indicate that Wade—and by extension, this movie— might have more crossover with the MCU than we think, including a glimpse of a sequence set in a snowy forest not unlike the one from the Hydra-base raid that opened Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is, after all, the film Marvel views as “the most important project for the studio outside of anything with Avengers in the title,” per a THR report from last fall. A key indicator of that importance, visible in the wide shot right before Wolverine pops his claws in silhouette? A tattered yet conspicuously-placed issue of Secret Wars, specifically the fifth issue, with a steely Doctor Doom on the cover. It’s likely less of an indicator that the Fantastic Four villain will arrive and more of a hint as to how critical this movie will be in setting up the Secret Wars film Marvel has set for 2027. Nevertheless, the first trailer’s commitment to highlighting Wade’s journey throughout a film in which he shares a title is notable; it appears that Reynolds and director Shawn Levy won’t lose focus on the character in the face of a larger multiversal scope.

Deadpool is also going to be critical to Marvel Studios' bottom line. After the poor performance of The Marvels—and with the comic-book genre as a whole seemingly on the wane, something Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged last week when he stated there would be a “reduced output” of Marvel content from a studio in need of “a little focus”—the MCU needs Deadpool and Wolverine to be not just a hit, but a massive, record-breaking hit like MCU films of yore. When Wade proclaims himself “Marvel Jesus” in this trailer, the quip isn’t so much a joke as an outright mission statement.

Originally Appeared on GQ