With all his foul-mouthed bluster and propensity for extreme violence, it’s easy to miss just how lonely the Deadpool character is. In his first two vehicles, Ryan Reynolds’ motor-mouthed mercenary spends a lot of time alone and separated from the people he cares about, be it the consequence of his own actions or those who have wronged him (if not both). We tend to spend a lot of time talking about the series’ more outrageous moments, like when Wade Wilson gets (consensually!) pegged by his girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) or waddles about with a pair of baby legs after being torn in half by Juggernaut. Less attention is showered on the scenes where Wade is too insecure to let Vanessa know he’s still alive after a life-saving experiment renders him heavily scarred or trying (and failing) to kill himself while mourning her temporary death.
You’ll just have to watch the third “Deadpool” movie, “Deadpool & Wolverine” (read /Film’s review), and decide for yourself whether the Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover retains the emotional undercurrent of the Fox-backed films before it. However, the most moving moment in the movie — one that also holds true to the themes about the value of unconditional love and choosing your own family in the previous two “Deadpool” films — comes during its end credits in the form of a dedication to Raymond Chan and Henry Delaney. The former is the movie’s late production designer, who passed away on April 23, 2024, at the age of 56. The latter is the son of “Deadpool 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” actor Rob Delaney, who died from cancer when he was two and a half years old in early 2018.
Raymond Chan was a longtime MCU artist
Chan’s career spanned more than 30 years. He spent much of the ’90s working as an assistant art director on various films before being upgraded to a supervising art director at the start of the 2000s. With movies such as “Alien vs. Predator,” “National Treasure,” “Children of Men,” and Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” under his belt, Chan caught the attention of Marvel Studios just a few years after “Iron Man” launched the MCU in motion. Starting with “Thor: The Dark World,” he became a trusted creative on the franchise, lending his skills to many of the MCU’s Phase 2 and Phase 3 films. He also acted as a production designer on “Avengers: Endgame,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” prior to working on “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Reynolds said Chan was “as valuable a creative force on ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ as the writers, director and stars” in a social media post. He added:
“I don’t pretend to know every chapter of Ray’s heart, but I know it’s unusual to encounter someone with that level of artistry who simultaneously moved through the world with such indelible humanity. He built worlds from scratch — and did so in the most collaborative and inclusive ways. Ray was peerless. He’ll be missed by so many, but most of all by his family.”
Reynolds also shared an anecdote about his final encounter with Chan, stating, “One of [the] last things I said to him was that he makes magic, and there’s nobody on Earth like him. He and I would also give each other a lot of good-natured s**t. So … of all the last things you could say to someone you adore, that’s a little scrap of consolation I’ll hang onto forever.”
Rob Delaney loves to talk about Henry
Rob Delaney, who first appeared as the only non-super-powered member of Deadpool’s short-lived X-Force team, the affable Peter Wisdom, in “Deadpool 2,” publicly announced the death of his young son Henry back in 2018. He wrote in detail about Henry’s life and his and family’s grief after his death in the memoir “A Heart That Works,” which was published in 2022 and went on to become a best-seller.
Appearing on Today with Hoda & Jenna on July 22, 2024, Delaney called Henry “just the sweetest little most wonderful guy” (via People). He added:
“We say that about all of our kids but Henry was better than other children. And he was so funny and his brain tumor was in the back of his head near his brain stem, so it brought him a lot of physical disabilities ’cause that stuff is controlled back there. But his frontal lobe was fine so he was very funny and smart and charming and gorgeous and flirty and silly and brilliant. He learned sign language cause he couldn’t talk cause he had a tracheostomy.”
Calling the grieving process a “nightmare,” Delaney said he wrote “A Heart That Works” in the hopes of showing people “that my family is okay now but I didn’t want to prescribe it like, ‘It’ll all be fine.’ Cause a lot of things aren’t fine.” He also emphasized that he loves to talk about Henry all the time:
“He’s my son, I’m his dad. His brothers miss him, his mom misses him, and he’s part of our family, so I don’t know how to not talk about him.”
“Deadpool & Wolverine” opens in theaters starting tonight. Consider the tribute to Raymond Chan and Henry Delaney (two people who left us far too soon) one more reason to stay for the film’s end credits, should you find yourself able to.
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