Deadpool 2 Killing Vanessa Continues Hollywood's Female Character Abuse

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

At its best, Deadpool 2 is a fun sequel that gave representation to the LGBTQ community. For the first time in Fox's X-Men universe, there was an on-screen relationship between two female superheroes, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio. Another source of empowerment in this sequel was Zazie Beetz’s lucky Domino, who was the scene-stealing breakout star of the film. (Seriously, no one would object to giving her a spin-off!)

However, at its worst, Deadpool 2 severely mishandles its other female characters, particularly in how the sequel's writers chose to motivate their male characters. Once again, another comic book movie utilized the tired trope of “fridging.”

What is Fridging?

In the late ‘90s, Gail Simone coined the term “women in refrigerators,” which is now known as “fridging,” in response to an unfortunate Green Lantern storyline where Kyle Rayner found his girlfriend Alexandra’s dead body stuffed in a fridge. Simone realized that female characters in comics and other forms of pop culture entertainment were often killed, maimed or raped in order to give the male hero motivation to act. In essence, a female character dies or is hideously injured so that the male character can be developed. As a plot device, fridging is truly an epidemic in the comic book field; This list covers just some of fridging’s victims.

It's been about 20 years since Simone put a label on fridging, yet it continues to plague the entertainment industry. Avengers: Infinity War, the most recent comic book movie prior to Deadpool 2, had fans and critics discussing Gamora’s death as an example of fridging, for example. To give its villain, Thanos, some shades of humanity, the writers killed a developed, capable female character.

In Deadpool 2, Vanessa, Wade's fiancee, didn’t have as much screen time as Gamora to be fully developed, but there’s no mistake that her death was solely to motivate Deadpool and act as a catalyst for the film’s plot. That is the exact definition of fridging.

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Vanessa is the only person that Wade Wilson loves. He has no family, and his friends are inconsistent with their emotional availability. Wade separated himself from Vanessa in the first film for what he thought was the best. In the second film, to give Wade conflict, the writers chose to kill the one person he loves.

Wade changes throughout the course of the film as he struggles with his identity in the aftermath of Vanessa’s death. He tries to be a hero like the X-Men, but it doesn’t work out. He tries to form a supergroup of his own, but it leads to most of their deaths. Blind Al tells Wade that pain shows people who they really are -- but this pain and its following enlightenment came at the expense of another female character’s life. (The same can be said for Cable and his dead wife and daughter. Their deaths lead Cable on a revenge quest, which is yet another textbook example of fridging.)

To make matters worse, after she dies, Vanessa literally acts as a spirit guide for Wade throughout the film. He sees her in visions, and what she says to him changes what he does in the film. She could have easily given this same advice alive. While Wade does need motivation in the sequel, it could have been done in any number of other ways. In the movie, a repeated meta-line Deadpool makes is “lazy storytelling” in response to something being too easy. Ironically, Deadpool 2’s use of fridging is exactly that -- lazy storytelling.

At the end of Deadpool 2, Wade uses Cable’s time travel device to go back in time to prevent Vanessa’s death... but the fridging was already done. Bringing Vanessa back doesn’t negate the journey Wade made in the aftermath of her death. Reversible fridging is still fridging.

Fridging has been used so repeatedly, audiences are practically numb to it. The repetitive devaluing of female characters cements the notion that women are expendable and “less than” men. When women are repeatedly treated as less human in the fiction we consume, it informs how we perceive women in real life. When women are seen as less than, this affects their pay, their healthcare, and their overall safety.

The Deadpool 2 writers, who are coincidentally all men, have since come out to claim ignorance on their use of fridging. Screenwriter Rhett Reese in a Vulture interview said, “we didn’t really know what fridging was.” However, ignorance is not an excuse. When you break a law, ignorance doesn’t completely absolve you of punishment. And while fridging is obviously not a crime, there have been too many murders of female characters in order to benefit male ones, and in the end, the stories, characters and the audience all suffer for it.

In theaters nationwide, director David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 stars Ryan Reynolds as the titular Deadpool, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, T.J. Miller as Weasel, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Stefan Kapičić as Colossus, Zazie Beetz as Domino, Julian Dennison as Russell and Josh Brolin as Cable.