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As of this writing, we're just a couple days away from the release of Deadpool and Wolverine, the film that will see Wade Wilson joining not just the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the Time Variance Authority, the temporal law enforcement agency first introduced in the Loki series on Disney+. While this is an exciting development, there's a little incongruity that it seems the TVA has forgotten about: Wade Wilson represents the very thing they seek to quash.

Some context: the TVA has been a lot of things to the MCU, but on paper, their responsibility is to police the timeline, seeking out and correcting points in history when it diverges. According to the trailers, Deadpool will somehow be valuable in their efforts to do so in the upcoming film, but what everyone seems to be forgetting is that Deadpool owes his (current) existence to a divergent timeline. Allow us to explain.

Deadpools of Future Past

The very first time that Ryan Reynolds appeared on screen as Wade Wilson was in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Through no fault of Reynolds's, the characterization was widely hated by fans for many reasons - his patchwork backstory, Cronenbergian appearance, and serious departure from source material (they took the mouth off the Merc with a Mouth!) all factored into the bad taste the movie left comic readers with. Seven years later, Reynolds would return to the big screen as a far more comic-accurate (and blessedly less edgelord) version of the character, one that so much beloved by comic-book-movie audiences that the first version seemed like a far-off nightmare.

Besides a probably non-canon joke in the mid-credits scene of Deadpool 2, we've never gotten an on-screen explanation as to how Reynolds's character went from lipless lowlife to hooded hearthrob. However, as we've touched on in our explanation of the Fox X-Men movie timeline, most credit Deadpool's change to the timewarping shenanigans in 2014's Days of Future Past - in which Wolverine sends his consciousness back in time and splits the Fox X-Men movies into two divergent timelines... exactly the kind of thing that the TVA would try to prevent. 

But here's the thing - as many questions as the Deadpool and Wolverine trailers bring up, they also seem to provide at least a partial answer as to why the TVA is cozying up to a variant. Namely, that they've got a common enemy.

Related: Are all of Fox's X-Men movies now part of the MCU? What Deadpool & Wolverine might mean for Marvel Studios canon

Alioth on the Line

At about the 1:51 mark in the official Deadpool and Wolverine trailer, fans get a glimpse of a familiar face. Literally, like, it's just a face, because the rest of it is a glowing purple lightning cloud. This atrocity of an altocumulus (some cloud humor for you there) is not just a CGI mystery, but a force that the TVA has faced before. It is Alioth, an entity that exists outside time and has the power to wipe out entire timelines.

Now, we don't know what Deadpool's bringing to the table that could possibly factor into a war waged against a creature of this magnitude (Katanas? One-liners? The power of friendship?). But if there's one thing we're fairly certain of, it's this - whatever's Wade Wilson has going for him in this movie, it's something the TVA needs. And as we've seen before in the case of Loki: when the TVA needs something, they're willing to broaden their definition of an ideal employee. 

Deadpool and Wolverine hits theaters July 26.

Popverse has assembled everything you need to know about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from our MCU watch order to a guide to upcoming Marvel movies and TV shows. Plus, we've taken the time to rank the entire MCU and compile the biggest outstanding questions from Marvel's connected films. Enjoy.