Deadpool's Death Timeline: What Actually Happened to Wade Wilson
People keep asking about Wade Wilson's execution date and death timeline. There are a bunch of different canon events across comics and films, and it gets confusing fast. I've tracked this down through several reading sessions and forum debates. Here is the breakdown. The core question usually comes from people reading old Deadpool comic trades or arguing in Discord servers about which death counts. Let me clear this up. In the mainstream Marvel Comics continuity, Deadpool first appears in New Mutants #98 (June 1991) as a villain. His solo adventures didn't really start until Deadpool Vol. 2 #1 (February 1997). But his most famous death happens way before that in a different context. In the 1994 Death of Deadpool limited series, Wade Wilson is captured by the Russian mob after betraying them. The five-issue arc ends with him being executed by shooting. This is the death that kicks off the whole "Deadpool comes back" mythology.
He died around mid-1994 in that storyline, but remember comics don't have precise calendar dates baked into the narrative. The trade paperback collects the issue numbers if you need to verify. Then there is the Weapon X storyline from 2002-2003 where Deadpool's cancer is cured through accelerated healing. This is effectively a second death and rebirth. He was dying of terminal cancer before the procedure. If you count that as a death event, that is approximately year 2002 in publication time. For the movies, the timeline is messier. Deadpool (2016) doesn't feature an execution but shows his cancer diagnosis and the Weapon X treatment. Deadpool 2 (2018) introduces Cable and various time travel stakes without actually killing him. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) gets into TVA stuff and multiverse variants which is a whole separate rabbit hole I am not going to untangle here.
I actually hit a snag when trying to pin down exact comic issue numbers for the original execution. Some online lists show conflicting info because different publishers and reprints have different numbering. What I ended up doing was going to the original Diamond Comic Distributors issue catalog archives and matching the dates to the publication records. That took about three hours. If someone else is doing this research, start with the official Marvel Database at marveldata.org and cross-reference with Grand Comics Database at grandcomicsdatabase.org. Those two sites together cover most of the discrepancies.
Get the Full Details
How to Track These Timeline Events Yourself
Start with the publication dates, not the in-universe dates. Comics are published in order but the stories sometimes reference events that happened years earlier in-universe. That mismatch causes most of the confusion. The Deadpool Vol. 2 series is your primary source. It ran from 1997 to 2002 and contains the most relevant death and resurrection storylines. Issues #1 through #48 are the core run. Then check Deadpool Vol. 3 which started in 2008, and the various crossover events like Evil Deadpool and Deadpool Corps. If you are looking at the MCU specifically, the timeline is much simpler. The films don't address execution directly except for background references. The TVA storyline in Loki crossed into Deadpool & Wolverine territory but kept things vague by design.
One thing people miss when researching this is that Deadpool has died in multiple continuities. The main Marvel 616 universe is one thing. Ultimate Deadpool had a completely separate origin and death setup. Fan works and non-canon stories like Deadpool Kills add more layers. You need to decide which continuity you are tracking before you start. Mixing them creates impossible contradictions. I also recommend keeping a simple spreadsheet. Columns for issue number, title, publication date, in-universe date if available, and whether it involves death or resurrection. It sounds tedious but it saves hours of going back and forth between sources. I went through about forty issues manually before I was confident in the timeline. The biggest problem you will run into is that Deadpool regenerates constantly. Healing factor means "death" is often temporary. Several storylines show him dying and coming back within the same issue. So you need to distinguish between permanent deaths and temporary setbacks. The 1994 execution is treated as permanent in the main continuity. The cancer from Weapon X is also a permanent turning point even though he technically survives it.
For the movies, Fox owned the rights until Disney acquired them. The film continuity has fewer death events than the comics. The 2024 film introduced multiverse variants which complicates things further. There isn't a clean single execution date for the MCU version. Download links for the comics depend on your region and legality. Marvel Unlimited has the complete Deadpool runs for a monthly subscription. That is the most straightforward option. Physical copies are available through Amazon or local comic shops. Back issues from the 1990s sell for anywhere from five dollars to over a hundred depending on condition. The Death of Deadpool trade is usually under twenty dollars new. If you want to skip the research entirely, the Marvel Database wiki page on Deadpool has a chronological story guide. It is not perfect but it covers the major beats. I used it as a starting point before verifying everything against the original sources.
