I’ve said for years and maintain to this day that the colossal success of Deadpool at the beginning of 2016 was a clear harbinger of the election of Donald Trump later that same year. The country decided to celebrate a lousy, broadly drawn character that cracks the very lowest low-hanging-fruit jokes about buttholes, vaginas, and peckers—and then we elected the same kinda solipsistic asshole to be president mere months later. I don’t think this is a coincidence. (And to be clear, I’m not taking an anti-butthole-joke stance here. I’ll laugh at a fart. I’ll laugh at piss. But Deadpool movies think I’m some trained monkey who will slap my knee for any old toilet joke, any old cum jest. I won’t. I refuse. You have to earn my cum chortles, Deadpool.) Now, despite the box office success of Wade Wilson’s latest self-aware slog, I’m choosing to have some hope for the upcoming election. I’m choosing to believe the pattern won’t continue in the year 2024. Let this franchise die. Let Trump’s aspirations die. Once and for all, let this period of national buffoonery come to an end.

Update (Nov. 6, 2024): lol oops looks like the buffoonery’s just gonna keep goin forever. Deadpool remained a harbinger in 2024.