When & Where Do Both ‘Deadpool’ Movies Take Place?

Deadpool doesn’t have as many standalone movies as Batman and Spider-Man, but two movies with him as the main character that were released so far were more than enough to establish Ryan Reynolds as the ultimate Deadpool actor, redeeming that mocked version of the character in 2009’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine.’ The eyes of all Deadpool fans are currently feasting on the upcoming ‘Deadpool 3,’ which holds many surprises for viewers, and while we’re waiting for the threequel, let’s take a look at when and where the first two ‘Deadpool’ movies take place.

Neither of the two ‘Deadpool’ movies specifically says in which city Merc with a Mouth operates. While both movies were filmed in Vancouver, Canada, the movies take place in an unknown fictional city. However, it’s known that Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, aka X-Mansion, which also appears in both movies, is located in Westchester, New York. As for the time of the plot, the movies take place in the present day at the time of their release, so in 2016 and 2018, respectively. However, the flashback scenes of the first movie take place two years prior.

While Deadpool primarily operates in his fictional city, the second movie also depicts him going around the world and fighting all sorts of criminals, traffickers, and mob bosses. Each of those sequences comes with an on-screen location card that shows in which city each sequence takes place. However, in his hometown’s case, the location card says only “Home Sweet Home,” which smells like the movie purposely doesn’t want to say in which city Deadpool lives and operates.

We tried to figure out Deadpool’s city using road signs. Here’s how that went.

Movies can sometimes hide some hard-to-reach answers in the backgrounds of their sequences. Since we know one of the first scenes of the original Deadpool movies takes place on a highway, we wanted to take a look at road signs, hoping that it could help figure out in which city Deadpool operates. However, that try proved to be unsuccessful, but still interesting in some way. And here’s why.

As we can see in the image above, some of the places in Deadpool’s city or around it are Fort McGuiness, Ditko Avenue, and Wernick Parkway. Now, it would be easy to Google any of those places to see where they are if those places existed in real life. Yep, these names are also completely fictional, and they serve as Easter Eggs to people who worked on this movie or were associated with Deadpool in some other way.

“Fort McGuinness” is surely a reference to Ed McGuinness, an American comic book artist who worked on Deadpool and all the other comic book characters in his career. “Ditko Avenue” is obviously a call-out to Steve Ditko, a legendary comic book artist and writer who is best known as the creator of Doctor Strange and co-creator of Spider-Man with Stan Lee. Last but not least, “Wernick Parkway” is a call-out to Paul Wernick, a screenwriter who worked on both ‘Deadpool’ movies and also returned to write the upcoming ‘Deadpool 3.’

When and where are ‘Deadpool’ movies set?

The events of the original ‘Deadpool’ movie are set in the revised timeline after 2014’s ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ erased everything that happened in the ‘X-Men’ movie franchise before, including that bad and mocked version of Wade Wilson in ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine.’ Ryan Reynolds’ second attempt to give us a true on-screen Deadpool turned out to be a major success.

In the original timeline, Wade Wilson was a mercenary and a member of William Stryker’s Team X alongside Logan during the 1970s before he was subjected to the Weapon XI program, which turned him into that not-Deadpool. In the revised timeline, however, Wade Wilson was born in 1975, and the experiment that turned him into Deadpool didn’t happen before he was diagnosed with cancer in 2015.

The main plot of the first ‘Deadpool’ movie takes place in 2016, the year in which the movie was released. However, the titular character also takes us back two years before, when he worked as a “bad guy who gets paid to F up worse guys” and when he met Vanessa. After one year of relationship with Vanessa, Wade proposed to her shortly before he found out about his cancer.

Wade left Vanessa and applied for a treatment that turned him into a mutant with healing abilities and an unrecognizable face. Not wanting to return to Vanessa like that, Wade spent a year looking for Francis, aka Ajax, who experimented on him, which leads us to 2016, when the events of the first ‘Deadpool’ movie happen.

After his reunion with Vanessa at the end of the first movie, Wade continued his Deadpool work. Two years later, he went international, tracking and killing many mass murderers, gangsters, and mob bosses in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sicily, Biloxi, and “Home Sweet Home.” The plot of the second ‘Deadpool’ movie is spread throughout multiple locations, including The Ice Box, a super-human prison located in Canada, and Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation, which is located in New York City.

When and where will ‘Deadpool 3’ take place?

At the of this writing, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are still ongoing in Hollywood, which means the production of ‘Deadpool 3,’ which began in May 2023, is still on hold. The plot is kept under wraps, although everything indicates that the movie will use the Multiverse and Deadpool’s forth-wall-breaking ability to bring the character to the Marvel Cinematic Universe smoothly.

Hugh Jackman has been confirmed to return as Wolverine, and although that sparked some questions among fans, Reynolds and Jackman promised that the movie won’t touch Logan’s death from the ‘Logan’ movie, which takes place in 2029. The movie will also see the return of Karan Soni, Leslie Uggams, Morena Baccarin, Stefan Kapičić, Rob Delaney, Brianna Hildebrand, and Shioli Kutsuna. Jennifer Garner will reprise the role of Elektra from 2003’s ‘Daredevil’ and 2005’s ‘Elektra.’

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