The Significance of Wolverine’s Fights with Deadpool and Sabertooth in Deadpool & Wolverine

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine. 

In Deadpool & Wolverine, which hit theaters on July 26, the titular characters finally make their long-awaited debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This introduction is five years in the making after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion in 2019. With the merger, the media conglomerate gained access to the IP rights for a whole host of new characters—exciting heroes and villains alike—finally giving them a chance to get a proper place in the MCU canon.

There’s a lot to remember and watch (if you’re committed to the Marvel franchise at large) to know where Deadpool & Wolverine picks up in both of these characters' timelines. But if you need a refresher and don’t feel like watching hours of movies, we’ve got you covered. In the newest edition of the MCU, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is taken in by the Time Variance Authority and is told that the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in his timeline was the “anchor being” and that without him, his timeline (and thus all of his friends) would perish. He sets out on a mission to find a Wolverine in a different reality to replace the lost one to keep his timeline from disappearing. He comes across a Logan variant in a different reality, who drinks away his feelings after most of the X-Men in his reality die and he fails to save them.

Deadpool takes the variant to the TVA and Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) tells him he can’t just replace an “anchor being” and the two of them end up being “pruned” and sent to the Void. It’s here when two major fan-service fights happen—right before they happen, Deadpool breaks the fourth wall and says, “People have waited decades for this fight.” Here’s what he means by this—and why the two fights are significant.

Deadpool and Wolverine

Soon after the titular characters get sent to the Void, the two argue and Wolverine unsheathes his claws. Right before they fight, Deadpool looks straight to camera, addressing the excited fans, and says fans have waited years for this fight and if they were gonna do it, they need to do it right. We get a slow-mo of Deadpool showing off as he reloads his guns and they brawl. 

Deadpool and Wolverine—specifically played by these two actors in the Fox timeline—have a long history. The two characters met in the comics in 1994 in Wolverine #88 and appeared throughout the years together as frenemies, fighting and slashing each other. Audiences got the first live-action iteration of Wade Wilson/Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. However, this version of Deadpool had his mouth eventually sewn shut and it wasn’t until Deadpool’s standalone movies that fans actually enjoyed how he was portrayed. He’s called Merc with a Mouth for a reason and it angle off multiple members of the X-Men, including Wolverine in the new movie. Now that they are finally in a movie together, fans were excited to finally see the two mutants who are incapable of dying battle it out and see who comes out alive. Spoiler alert: they don’t kill each other.

Wolverine and Sabertooth

One of the trailers revealed that fans of the Marvel franchise will be getting a fight that they’ve long been waiting for: Wolverine and Sabertooth. After Deadpool and Wolverine almost tear each other to shreds in the Void, they encounter a Mad Max-style gang filled with tertiary level Marvel characters like Pyro, Toad, and Sabertooth—a character with a history in the comics who was depicted by two different actors.

The earliest iteration of the character and his debut in the X-Men franchise came in 2000’s X-Men, who was portrayed by Tyler Mane. Mane reprisest the role in Deadpool & Wolverine for the major fight. However, he’s not the only actor to done the claws of Sabertooth. Liev Schreiber assumed the role of Sabertooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine—the same movie in which Deadpool makes his debut—and in this version, he’s Wolverine’s half-brother. The two have had multiple run-ins throughout the length of the MCU timeline and fought in both X-Men and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. They go head to head in the new movie for the first time in years, which is why Deadpool makes the comment that fans have been waiting for this match-up.