Not even 30 seconds into Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds’s Deadpool asks the question that anyone with any sort of emotional investment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has probably asked themselves in the leadup to the release of Shawn Levy’s film: Will it be dumb enough to ruin the poignancy and grace that James Mangold at long last afforded the tired, tortured Logan (Hugh Jackman) in his eponymous swan song?

Mere moments after asking that question, Deadpool is ripping Wolverine’s newly exhumed, rotting skeleton apart, and mutilating jackbooted thugs from Loki’s Time Variance Authority with the adamantium-laced bones while he dances to Nsync’s “Bye Bye Bye.” Somehow, after all that, the answer to the question is still a vehement “no.”

Just as in Deadpool and Deadpool 2, buried beneath Deadpool & Wolverine’s never-ending sea of psychosexual scatological humor, splatter-punk absurdities, fourth-wall breaks within fourth-wall breaks, and superpowered Jackass-like gags is a massive,...