WARNING: The following article includes spoilers for Deadpool 2, in theaters now.


In the third act of Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson stands outside Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, holds up a miniature boombox and serenades his bestest friend Colossus into forgiving him. Wade has once again screwed up his chances of being an X-Man and this time he did it so publicly this nicest-ever version of Colossus is mad at him - but not for long. He, of course, shows up in time for the film’s climactic battle. No matter how much of a fuckup Wade is, or how inappropriate he gets, Colossus can’t help but forgive him. He cares about, and perhaps more importantly, believes in Wade too much not to.

Deadpool established Wade as a no-homo sexual harasser, equal opportunity with boundary-crossing jokes and touches, and Deadpool 2 leans still further into this, suggesting maybe (tee hee) some aspects of Wade’s sexuality have gone unexamined. Maybe… homo?

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The film builds on Wade and Piotr’s sort-of friendship from the first film to give them something more substantial. This time, there’s a sense of real care between these two, or at least of more time spent together than Deadpool suggested. The film does it by mining '80s teen movies and romantic dramas. Wade is bridal-carried by Piotr when he’s injured, Wade serenades Piotr, and Piotr does more than tolerate Wade; in this film, he seems to actually like him, no matter how annoying Wade gets. Theirs is a bromance constructed wholly out of romantic tropes, with no real bro moments in sight. It's all high stakes drama, and no sitting on the couch watching Golden Girls.

In the last act, as Wade prepares to let go of a temporarily ghostly Vanessa, he jokes that she can’t ghost-sleep with Elvis in the after life. She responds by joking that he can’t actual-sleep with Colossus. “Wait, what?” is his reaction. It’s a shock to him, despite his spending two whole movies joking about how attractive Piotr is. For this Wade, being genuinely attracted to men, as opposed to criminally harassing them, is a joke. It’s foundational, even, a joke that props up his juvenile distancing routine. A way to ensure he will never have a real relationship outside of Vanessa, that no one will ever take Wade the person, as opposed to Wade the killer, seriously. Wade’s inappropriateness is as much a defense mechanism as it is an ill-grown sense of humor.

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This exchange is a perfect example of what makes Wade and Vanessa’s relationship work, and who they are as people. She meets him quip for quip with no topic or target off the table. On their first date, they exchanged tragic backstories, anteing up with ever-increasing trauma in some weird jackass-mating dance that just barely conceals deeper truths. They’re terrible people for joking about these things, but everything they joke about is, at the very least, truthy. When they joke about having bad backstories, that’s true. When Wade jokes about wanting to experiment in bed, that’s true. And when Wade jokes about being attracted to men, well, that’s true, too.

That thing Wade did that drove a wedge between him and Piotr, was murdering people he suspected of being child abusers. He, Piotr and Negasonic Teenage Warhead head to a mutant school that’s all Matilda by way of a feverish, fundamentalist church, to help contain a young mutant whose had something of an episode. Pyrokinetic Russell is out of control, and now he’s fighting the cops. It takes only one exchange for Wade to determine that Russell is being abused at the school, and to react by killing every single school employee in his sights. “You can always tell,” he says of Russell. The situation goes pear-shaped immediately, and Wade and Russell find themselves indefinitely confined to mutant prison, without ever having a trial.

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Wade manages, somehow, to not be sexually inappropriate with Russell, or Negasonic and her new girlfriend Yukio. Though he does make enough cracks about the specific dangers that a teenage boy faces in a prison of adult men that the old joke about his being a survivor of child sexual abuse doesn’t seem so much like a joke anymore. I say "somehow," but really, it’s because the screenwriters recognize that Wade’s ceaseless sexual harassment wouldn’t come off as funny if it were directed toward the film’s teenage characters.

Likewise, they ensure his relationship with Domino is about as respectful as Wade can get, because in order for her to function as they need her to, as a carefree badass, she can’t also be his victim. So instead of harassing any of these characters, he protects them, with extreme and violent prejudice.

The Deadpool 2 team can parse why these are rivers the audience won’t cross with them, but the same isn’t true of Wade harassing Piotr, or the new to the franchise Cable. Sexually harassing and even assaulting Piotr and Cable is funny because Wade isn’t gay and he doesn’t really mean it, right? It’s all just guys being bros, humiliating and threatening each other, as guys are wont to do. And if he was gay, well, Wade just has an unusual style of flirting, right?

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Deadpool 2 makes these jokes knowing that much of their audience, swimming in the same stew of toxic masculinity and insecurity, will find them funny, and even normal. The “maybe” in Wade’s sexuality stays a distant and foggy possibility to avoid alienating this part of the character’s fanbase, but also because it helps sustain a form of humor the creative team doesn’t want to let go of. It’s what lets them tap an essentially homophobic and violent vein of humor and not have Wade read as a villain.

That big screen Wade might be pansexual like his comics counterpart is kind of a trick. Star Ryan Reynolds and director David Leitch have both said they’d be down for portraying a Deadpool who is openly queer, but two movies in, you’d think if they were going to do it, he would have come out on film already. The "maybe" lets them coast in their bro-homo status quo while collecting some queer cred by proxy, Dumbledore-style. But the "maybe" is also a trap that limits what they can do with the character, and how the franchise can grow.

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Deadpool 2 ends with Wade having found himself in quite a few real, human relationships, outside of Vanessa. During her short absence, Wade is forced to reflect on his life and what he wants from it. Vanessa’s ghost urges him to move on and be the best Wade he can be, and, somehow, he goes and makes a family. Wade and Piotr’s friendly relationship has settled into an actual friendship (and maybe more?), and he’s got the start of something just as validating and positive with Domino and Cable. Russell, Negasonic, and Yukio round out this family, with Wade acting variously as their mentor/shitty older brother. Even cabby and accidental apprentice Dopinder has found a place in this happy, violent, family-to-be. T.J. Miller’s Weasel, though, is left out.

Once Wade’s only bro, by the end of Deadpool 2 Weasel is little more than an unreliable acquaintance. Where new teammates Domino and Cable come through for Wade, Weasel betrays him without remorse. And where literally every other cast member nudges Wade, in one way or another, toward being less of an asshole, Weasel tugs him back in the opposite direction. Weasel is Wade’s bro - the only character who reflects back all of Wade’s nastiness with his own.

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Wade’s relationships with Piotr and Russell are far more sincere and at times operatic. There’s even more substance to Wade’s interactions with extended joke Peter, an ordinary nice guy that Wade goes back in time to save. If every character in Deadpool 2 exists to be funny or bring something out in Wade, Weasel exists as the sum of Wade’s inherited and cultivated toxic masculinity. He represents the world Wade came up in, from his childhood in the system, to his time in special forces, through to working as an assassin for hire. He shares all of Wade’s worst qualities but none of his better ones - and I think it’s telling that Deadpool 2 leaves him behind thematically. What’s less encouraging is that it lets him linger.

Wade Wilson is never going to be the good guy, but "goodish" might be within reach. The film certainly wants us to think so, at least. But given that the Deadpool 2 shows no remorse for keeping real life abuser Miller in the film (even joking in the credits that Christopher Plummer had no interest in taking the role), and no interest in backing away from sexual assault and no homo humor, we aren’t anywhere near goodish.

I don’t really believe that Deadpool 3 or X-Force or whatever film follows this one will see Wade back away from these jokes and come to better terms with himself -- but I still want that to be the case. What frustrates me most is that having Wade come out would be the best possible resolution for so many not yet fully explored character threads. Wade is a violent man who is scared of knowing himself. That Wade is a child abuse survivor and that he has complicated feelings about his own sexuality is at this point clear. That his one and only coping mechanism is to laugh through his trauma is one of his most defining character traits.

The path to a better Deadpool story, one that doesn’t feel hostile to me or other queer fans is clear. Trauma and toxic masculinity driving Wade to self-hatred and staying in the closet is the most interesting Deadpool story they’re never going to tell.