The first Deadpool & Wolverine trailer is one big joke about Marvel’s past

It’s going to take something special to get people as hyped for Marvel’s movies as they used to be, and the first trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine — the studio’s first R-rated cape flick — makes it seem like it has just the thing.

In the new trailer, it’s unclear how much time has passed for Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) and his partner Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) since the end of Deadpool  2, or even if they’re exactly the same versions of those characters who appeared in that film. But when armored troops from Loki’s Time Variance Authority show up looking for Deadpool, he isn’t exactly surprised to see them or to be whisked away through a portal.

Though Deadpool takes a moment to talk directly to the camera about the Disney of it all, TVA agent Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) doesn’t explain what it is that makes mercenary so special. But it’s clear from the trailer that the mercenary’s been recruited to do special work that will send him, among other places, to a battlefield in front of a destroyed 20th Century Fox logo, suggesting that Deadpool & Wolverine will feature characters from Fox’s old-X-Men films. 

Just who all’s going to show up is anyone’s guess, but the way the trailer goes out of its way to keep Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) himself off-camera makes it seem like Deadpool & Wolverine may feature more mutants than we expect when it hits theaters on July 26th.