“Deadpool & Wolverine” settled an argument that “Logan” fans had been having since 2017. The Wolverine who died at the end of “Logan” was not tucked away in some lonely side universe. According to Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), the TVA agent running the show in the 2024 film, that Logan was the anchor being of Wade Wilson’s whole universe. His death is the reason that universe is dying. One line of dialogue turns a closed ending into the foundation of the entire Fox X-Men world.
For years, the word from the people who made these films pointed the other way. In January 2017, before “Logan” opened, Hugh Jackman told Digital Spy that “it’s a slightly different universe.” Ryan Reynolds was just as blunt in 2022. Variety reported him pointing to the 2029 setting of “Logan” and calling it a “Totally separate thing.” Then “Deadpool & Wolverine” made that same death the engine of its plot. It is a big retcon, and it is worth walking through, because “Avengers: Doomsday” arrives on December 18th and the rule it introduced has not gone away. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Logan”.
One line of dialogue turns a closed ending into the foundation of the entire Fox X-Men world.”
Here is the rule as the film lays it out. As Inverse sums up Paradox’s explanation, each universe is tethered to the life of one person. That person is its anchor being. When the anchor dies, the universe does not end on the spot but starts to decay. Paradox tells Wade that his universe, Earth-10005, is doomed for exactly that reason. Its anchor being was Logan, and Logan is dead. Slashfilm points out that the original “X-Men” films, the prequels with the younger cast and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” all sat in that same Earth-10005 reality. So the claim is enormous: one man’s death in 2029 is holding up, or failing to hold up, the whole Fox run.
The film opens on that death. Wade arrives at the X-marked grave from the end of “Logan” and digs it up. He assumes a healing factor should have kept Logan alive, even six feet under. All he finds is an adamantium skeleton, which he then uses to fight off a squad of TVA agents. Looper notes that “Logan” had already explained why there was nothing left. The adamantium coating his bones was poisoning him and wearing down his healing factor as he got older. The joke lands because it is a continuity point. This is the same grave and the same body. In its opening scene, the film tells the audience it is standing in the world “Logan” left behind.
Mr. Paradox does not want to wait for the decay. He has built a device called the Time Ripper to speed up the end of Wade’s timeline. Slashfilm reads it as Paradox trying to prove to TVA management that the agency can be run more efficiently. Wade refuses to lose his friends. He steals Paradox’s TemPad and bounces around the multiverse, looking for a Wolverine who is still alive. Looper’s rundown of the film’s variants shows how badly that goes. Every Wolverine he meets is unhappy to see him. The one he brings back is a depressed Logan who has let down his own universe. In his world, the X-Men were killed and he could not save them.
That is where the anchor rule gets its sharpest edge. Paradox tells Wade that an anchor being cannot be replaced with a variant. In his telling, one Logan is not interchangeable with another. When Wade and the new Wolverine protest, Paradox has them pruned. They land in the Void, last seen at the end of the first season of “Loki”. The Void is ruled by Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), Charles Xavier’s evil twin from a variant universe. She later reads Paradox’s mind and learns about the Time Ripper. Her plan is bigger than his. She wants to use it to erase every timeline and bring everyone under her rule in the Void.
The ending quietly breaks Paradox’s rule. Wade and Logan fight off an army of Deadpool variants and offer up their lives to disrupt the Time Ripper’s energy source, and both survive. Cassandra is destroyed, the TVA arrests Paradox, and the other variants are sent back to their own timelines. Logan decides to retire quietly in Wade’s universe, which has been saved. Paradox never takes back what he said about variants. The film simply shows a borrowed Logan standing in the universe that was supposed to die, and that universe still standing with him. Whether that makes him the new anchor is left for the audience to argue about.
So is “Logan” a separate timeline? The film’s answer is no, and it is hard to argue around. If Logan is the anchor being of Wade’s universe, then the world where he died in 2029 and the world where Wade has been reduced to selling used cars are the same universe. Slashfilm notes that the Marvel wiki files “Logan” under its own designation, Earth-17315, and says the anchor twist “essentially rewrites Marvel history.” That is fair, because it is a retcon. But it is a retcon written into a Marvel Studios film, and that outranks a wiki entry, a press-tour comment or a fan theory. “Logan” was always meant to stand apart in tone. As of 2024, it no longer stands apart in space.
The calendar backs the film up. Reynolds’ own reason for calling “Logan” separate was its 2029 setting. In Binge Rampage’s chronological cut of the whole saga, that is exactly where “Logan” sits, and the “Deadpool & Wolverine” ending follows it in the same branch of the X-Men timeline. Watched in order, the grave Wade digs up is the grave the previous film just filled. Seen that way, the anchor twist is not a cheat but the payoff for watching the timeline straight through.
Kevin Feige has hinted that the idea reaches past one movie. He told Inverse that “there are nexus beings that have been discussed, and in comic books there are omega-level mutants that have been discussed.” He then put the question directly. “The TVA uses the terminology of ‘anchor beings’ and ‘a being of great importance.’ Is that different than those other beings I’ve mentioned, or is it just a different terminology for the same thing? Remains to be seen.” Inverse lists the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) as a nexus being. If those terms describe one idea, the MCU’s multiverse has been running on a single rule for years under several names.
That is why it matters now. “Avengers: Doomsday” opens December 18th, with Robert Downey Jr. back in the MCU as Doctor Doom. One popular fan theory, covered by Inverse, holds that Tony Stark was the anchor being of the main MCU universe, Earth-616, and that he had to sacrifice himself in “Avengers: Endgame”. Feige was asked about that theory directly in an interview with ComicBook. He did not confirm or deny it. That is not evidence. But the rule from “Deadpool & Wolverine” gives the theory a mechanism. A universe can lose its anchor and keep going for a while. It just starts to come apart.
What Do You Think? Is “Logan” now part of the same universe as the “Deadpool” films, or does the 2017 film still stand on its own? Did the variant Logan become his new world’s anchor, or did Paradox’s rule just stop mattering once the Time Ripper was gone? And if Tony Stark was holding up the main MCU, who is holding it up going into “Avengers: Doomsday”?
Catch up properly: every MCU movie and show in chronological order on the MCU+ Universe Tree.
See you on the next binge!
