Those who have seen Deadpool 2 know that the fate of Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa—Deadpool/Wade/Ryan Reynolds’ love interest—got mixed reviews from viewers.
It turns out that the initial response to Vanessa’s plotline in Deadpool 2 was tweaked last minute, at least in part due to the negative response received online.
Warning: Spoilers for Deadpool 2 reside below.
Vanessa gets killed off early in Deadpool 2 to give our main male character something to feel sad about and spur into action. This is a classic example of the “fridging” phenomenon, where the death of a woman catalyzes the male protagonist to Do Something.
It’s so common of a trope that Catherynne M. Valente wrote a book of monologues from these deceased women, and it’s one that the Deadpool 2 writers should have known about (I say should, because they made clear in an interview that they had no idea that killing women to give men motivation was a thing to think about).
Deadpool 2 does “fix” Vanessa’s fridging in a mid-credits scene, where Deadpool goes back in time to save her. In a recent interview with SYFY WIRE, however, Baccarin revealed that the this moment was added in part because of online blowblack.
“I feel like I got a call from [Deadpool 2 director] David Leitch one day,” Baccarin told SYFY WIRE, “and he was just like: ‘You know, your [scenes] with Ryan are testing so well in this movie, and people are getting so upset [online] that she’s dead, so we’re gonna have to leave the door open for her to possibly come back.'”
The last-minute inclusion of Deadpool saving Vanessa helps explain why the whole plotline doesn’t make much sense. The bright side of things is that the writers and director of Deadpool 2 listened enough to add the mid-credits moment, and that Vanessa is still alive and well. Hopefully she’ll be back for Deadpool 3 (although Baccarin said in the same interview that they haven’t called her yet), and if so, her character will be more than just set dressing.
