Marvel’s Best Villain Shares Love Triangle With The Last Hero You’d Expect

In the Marvel universe, the physical embodiment of death is a hot chick who sometimes sports a literal skull for a face. While that’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, as far as Thanos and Deadpool are concerned, she’s a 10. As a result, the Mad Titan and the Merc with a Mouth have developed one of Marvel’s weirdest rivalries.

It all started several years prior to Deadpool’s creation. Thanos, despite having somewhat noble goals in the MCU, was in the comics closer to a Limp Bizkit song. In other words, he did it all for the nookie.

Thanos became smitten with Death early in his life and decided to do anything it took to impress her. This included using the Cosmic Cube—the tesseract for all the MCU fans—to bend the universe to his will, and when that didn’t work, using the Infinity Gauntlet to snuff out half of all life in the universe.

That’s right, while Thanos was motivated by resource scarcity in the MCU, in the comics, he snapped away trillions of lives in order to create a bouquet of souls for his beloved Death. Talk about being a tryhard. Thanos’s methods were never quite enough to earn Death’s love, and when he found out who she did have a crush on, he really lost it.

Deadpool first encountered Death when he was exposed to extreme torture by the Weapon X program. The torture would often leave Deadpool on death’s door, literally. The closer he got to biting the big one, the closer he and Death became until the pair were enamored with each other.

Unfortunately for the two love birds, Thanos was well aware of their affair and decided to break them up—permanently! Using a cosmic artifact, Thanos cursed Deadpool to eternal life, thus preventing him from ever-knowing Death’s sweet embrace and skull-faced kisses. The purple, Ruffles potato chip-chinned warlord made sure that every time Deadpool was impaled, decapitated, or even liquified, he would always reform as good as new.

Eventually, Thanos would win the hand of Death and even have a child with her. That child, known as Rot, was an abstract being that was both alive and dead. It was also a swirling void of nothingness that consumed all it came across, threatening all life in the universe. If you ask us, Deadpool dodged a bullet with that one.

Ultimately, Mommy Death and Daddy Thanos were the only ones who could destroy their unholy spawn. Given how awful Thanos’s biological offspring was, it makes sense that he would prefer to adopt children like Gamora and Nebula instead of making his own.

With Deadpool and Thanos both under Disney’s control, Marvel Studios could totally bring the Thanos-Deadpool-Death love triangle to the screen. They won’t, of course, because some things are just too batsh*t insane for live-action, but still–It would make one heck of a What If? Episode.