One Storyline in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Means a Lot to Those Who Have Lost Our Fathers
I wasn’t prepared to head into Deadpool & Wolverine and find myself crying, yet getting to see Logan (Hugh Jackman) back in action with Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) was an emotional rollercoaster. One moment really stuck out for me above the rest, and it is all because of Wolverine.
Spoilers ahead!
I am a card-carrying member of the Dead Dad Club. I make a lot of jokes about it (mainly to cope), and I never know how to react to the comment “Sorry for your loss” when I tell people about him. He’s dead, looked like Jeff Bridges, and loved music. That’s all I have for you. But I still do have a heart and get incredibly emotional when I think about the movies and things he doesn’t get to watch with his kids.
My brothers and I had to sit through countless viewings of the 2011 Green Lantern because he loved it. Real Steel was a classic to him. He’d love everything about Deadpool & Wolverine, so watching as Laura, a.k.a. X-23 (Dafne Keen), saw her own father again, just in a different font, wrecked me. I couldn’t help but cry at the idea of going through that.
Laura is in the void with Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Gambit (Channing Tatum). Throughout the movie, Wade continually makes note of the fact that his universe’s Logan had a daughter made in lab named X-23 who was somehow meaner and more aggressive than he was. But what we see when Laura comes into the movie is a reserved girl who has learned from her loss. She’s learned from Logan telling her “Don’t be what they made you.”
This version of Logan isn’t hers, but we get to see what her relationship to him means to her.
Having another conversation with your dad
The moment that this Logan and Laura share is heartbreaking. He says that she’s got the wrong guy, and Laura turns to him and says, “You were always the wrong guy.” There is something deeper to it, but more than that, they have a whole conversation about how he was all of these negative things, and yet she clearly loved him.
This wasn’t her father; Laura knew that. But the idea of having to see your parent who died again, and get to talk with them, and it isn’t really them? That hurts beyond belief to think about. I’d give anything to talk to my dad for a minute, and while Laura and Logan’s relationship was strained, she clearly took what he said to her to heart, and I think she would feel similarly about the situation.
Laura helped inspire Logan just as her Logan inspired Laura to be a better mutant. That scene means so much to me because I wish I could show my dad now what his lessons taught me. And yes, sure, that’s not that Logan’s daughter, but I don’t really think that matters. I think he’d love her and care for her as his own (and as we see in the end of the movie).
Laura getting to find another chance with her father has its emotional adamantium claws in me, and I don’t think I’ll ever recover from it.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
