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How do you know when your movie is the hottest thing about San Diego Comic-Con? Judging by what happened for Marvel Studios Ultimate Deadpool and Wolverine Celebration of Life panel, the answer is, “if it causes utter chaos outside the convention center as fans attempt to enter the event.” (Somehow, we think that Wade Wilson would be somewhat proud.)

To be fair, plans for the Thursday evening event were very ambitious. The invite-only event, which is almost certainly one of the panels of the annual five-day event in Southern California, required that Hall H had to be emptied out in its entirety at the end of its “last” panel of the day — What We Do in the Shadows’ Farewell Tour Kick-Off, which ended at 4:30, at which point an announcement was played over the system saying that programming had completed for the day — only for the entire room to be refilled in time for what was initially a 6pm kick-off for the Deadpool and Wolverine panel.

All 6,100 people who’d be in the room. Popverse believes that around 6,000 fans had been invited via a lottery system for the panel, with the remaining space being made up of people specifically invited by Disney and Marvel. (Lottery winners also received free Deadpool and Wolverine popcorn buckets, because of course they did; almost immediately, people were selling said buckets online, because again, of course they were.) It was the first Hall H lottery in the history of San Diego Comic-Con, making what was already an event even more of one — even if it was somewhat overwhelming in therms of logistics.

Fans were lining up for the panel hours before its original start time, never mind the revised start of 6:30 that was quickly communicated to attendees via email; one of Popverse’s sources suggested that around 2,000 people were in line before 4pm, with the line stretching around the entire convention center. Crowd control — handled by Comic-Con International staff and volunteers, not by Marvel directly — proved to be difficult as soon as Hall H was emptied out, with one attendee sharing their confusion on social media: “We were told we can only leave by going to the right because the left exit is closed, and yet the right exit isn’t moving at all,” he wrote at one point. (The left exit was closed, apparently, because it was being used as a waiting area for those in line for the Deadpool and Wolverine panel.)

Even as the exiting Hall H audience was leaving, however slowly — causing a sudden influx and bottleneck into the convention center at entrances F and G, as they re-entered the center proper, with around 6000 people suddenly entering the building — the lines for Deadpool and Wolverine had mutated, with conflicting advice being given out by those attempting to crowd control. At one point, there were no less than three lines attempting to enter the area where badges and invites were being checked, leading to more confusion about where attendees who hadn’t been waiting in line for hours should be headed.

Amongst the problems witnessed by this writer: volunteers announcing that they represented “the end of the line,” as opposed to the end of specific groups being shuttled across the road in an attempt to bring them inside; confusion about where ADA visitors should wait (or whether they had already been admitted; there was also seemingly some confusion about what “merited” an ADA distinction); people in line who did not have an invite, but wanted to purchase them from those who did, especially if those with passes had +1s that they weren’t using; whether or not general admission would be allowed if there was space in the room by a certain time before the panel began. In some cases, no answer about such concerns was available, in others, contradicting answers were given.

The problems led to a curious feeling amongst those in line — a mixture of excitement about the panel itself, frustration about the process of getting into Hall H and how long it was taking, and confusion about whether or not what was actually happening at any given moment. It was, if nothing else, the start of a night to remember for everyone involved — and, perhaps, the start of some reflection about how successful the lottery experiment turned out to be in its first outing.

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?