Deadpool & Wolverine makes the MCU the villain — and not in a good way

polygon.com:

Being a Deadpool defender can be difficult. In just about any media where he appears, the character is exactly what his strongest critics think he is: an anti-hero with a strong affinity for irreverent violence, and a juvenile, obnoxious vessel for meta asides and a bushel of dick jokes. (“A bushel of dicks” would be a pretty solid Deadpool-ism.) I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for finding all that off-putting, because it is. But there’s also more to the character. Deadpool comes with a deep pathos. When that’s used effectively, it’s resulted in endearingly odd stories about those who are deemed (or feel) unlovable. That’s a potent emotional space for a summer blockbuster to inhabit. Deadpool & Wolverine — the third movie in Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool trilogy, and the first under the Disney banner — pays lots of lip service to that pathos. Then it punts it out of our multiverse, to Alioth-knows-where.

Look at that, I made a reference! Just like Deadpool! I can swear like him, too.

Deadpool & Wolverine has been billed as a Marvel Cinematic Universe story, but it isn’t, really. Apart from a brief gag scene early in the film, Deadpool never sets foot in the MCU’s Earth-616 for any Deadpool-y derring-do. Instead, the film is just MCU-aware — the mainline MCU is one more subject for Deadpool to joke about and pine for while he has a characteristically vulgar adventure somewhere else. In some ways, the MCU is more of a villain than the film’s actual villains.

But before all that, the story starts in Deadpool’s pre-existing corner of the multiverse, which is dying. Abducted by the Time Variance Authority from Loki, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynolds) learns his universe is slowly fading away, due to Wolverine’s death at the end of 2017’s Logan. That’s because the former X-Man is an “anchor being” — someone so significant that their timeline falls apart without their presence. But TVA agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) says his superiors have deemed Deadpool as special, and worth