Deadpool & Wolverine Has A Really Weird X-Men Plot Hole

Before I can fully dive into this Deadpool & Wolverine plot hole, it’s important to review the teasing nature of the film’s trailers. We were quickly clued in that this was a Wolverine from a reality we hadn’t seen before, one who might be less heroic than expected. As the trailer tells us, he is a hero who “let down his world,” and fans have had months to speculate about what that could actually mean.

In the film, we discover that the man giving us all this helpful exposition is Mr. Paradox, a rogue TVA agent. However, the scene where Deadpool first meets Wolverine reinforces this assessment of the X-Man and, coincidentally, highlights the plot hole we’re about to dissect. The bartender seems completely disgusted by the very presence of Logan, which lets us know that most people seemingly know that this washed-up hero somehow let down their world.

Later on in the film, we finally get Wolverine’s dark backstory: he apparently went out to get drunk one fateful night, meaning that he wasn’t at the Xavier mansion when human vigilantes invaded and killed everyone. He came back to find their dead bodies and went on the predictable berserker rampage of revenge. The desire for vengeance caused him to kill both innocent and guilty people, forever sullying the public perception of the X-Men.

Now, this makes for some sad Deadpool & Wolverine backstory, but it also creates a plot hole. You see, it’s tragic that the X-Men got killed and all, but even if Wolverine had personally killed all of them, the loss of one super-powered team wouldn’t be enough to “let down” the world. Obviously, the chill bar scene from earlier reveals that this isn’t a world where supervillains have taken over (like the one briefly glimpsed in the Old Man Logan scene), so it’s hard to see how Logan screwed over the world by “letting” his team die.

If we only had the words of Mr. Paradox to go by, it would be one thing, but the mood in the bar towards Wolverine shows that the world agrees with the idea that the X-Man let them down. But that doesn’t really make any sense, especially because this is, presumably, another reality where the X-Men fight for a world that fears and hates them. 

This Deadpool & Wolverine plot hole creates something of a paradox (no relation to the agent): if the public hates mutants, then nobody would hate Wolverine for letting a bunch of them die. This could be a world that loves mutants, of course, but then it wouldn’t make sense that a bunch of human vigilantes got together and, without any superpowers, took out a team of professional heroes. For that matter, how important to this reality could the X-Men really be if they could be taken out by a bunch of human hillbillies the moment Wolverine hits the bar?

Somewhat cynically, I can only assume this Deadpool & Wolverine plot hole exists because Marvel executives wanted to have an ominous line for the trailer, one that would justify calling our titular protagonist “the worst Wolverine.” But the blunt reality is that even if the X-Men’s death is his fault (and it’s not), the end of this team didn’t spell doom for the world, nor did Logan destroying the team’s reputation. A major part of the movie’s essential plot makes no sense, but, hey…that’s easier to forgive when it still manages to be this hilariously entertaining from beginning to end.