SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses all kinds of major plot details, including the post-credits scenes, in Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine,” currently playing in theaters.

Throughout “Deadpool & Wolverine,” Ryan Reynolds’ titular Merc with a Mouth exposes the Marvel Cinematic Universe to many things it’d never experienced before: rampant blood and gore, incandescent vulgarity, gleeful references to drug use and effusive descriptions of sexual practices between two men.

Perhaps most surprising, Deadpool’s self-aware snark is never sharper than when it’s slicing through the MCU. It may be the best thing that could’ve happened to Marvel at this moment in its history.

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After Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) welcomes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to the MCU, he adds that it’s happening at a “low point” for Marvel, a piercing reference to the studio’s misbegotten 2023. Later, Deadpool groans about the multiverse and how underwhelming it’s been as a narrative engine for the post-“Endgame” MCU. The film even finds time to fit in a joke about how impossible it’s been for Marvel to bring “Blade” back to movie theaters, courtesy of one of the best surprise cameos in “Deadpool & Wolverine”: In his return to the iconic role, Wesley Snipes declares not only that there’s only ever been one Blade, but there will only ever be one Blade.

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Part of what has made the MCU so endearing is how often its movies will goof on themselves, from Doctor Strange listening to Beyonce to the Avengers using “Back to the Future” to argue over the mechanics of time travel. But Deadpool’s ability to break the fourth wall elevates that irreverence to galaxy brain-levels of franchise maintenance: These jokes work best if you’re deeply invested in the MCU and in superhero cinema as a whole, but they also make space for audiences who regard phrases like “the sacred timeline” as kind of silly to enjoy themselves as well.

Put another way, Deadpool is a gargantuan Marvel fan — you’d have to be in order to know why it’s so funny to ask Channing Tatum to play Gambit. He takes the piss out of the MCU only because he cares so much about being a part of the Marvel family, so much so that his movie becomes an R-rated love letter to why audiences have been so devoted to superheroes for so long. After two years of bad headlines (and, to some, worse projects), not just for Marvel but for comic book adaptations in general, audiences needed a reminder that it’s OK to just have a good time at a superhero movie. By making wicked fun of superheroes, “Deadpool & Wolverine” makes superheroes fun again.

That dedication translates all the way to the film’s end credits: Rather than interrupt them with a teaser for what’s coming next in the MCU, Reynolds and director Shawn Levy put together a montage of behind-the-scenes footage from all of the Marvel movies made by 20th Century Fox, set to the Green Day classic “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” There are shots from the sets of the “X-Men” movies, the “Deadpool” movies, the “Wolverine” movies, the “Blade” movies, “Daredevil,” “Elektra” and the “Fantastic Four” movies — yes, even the objectively terrible 2015 reboot. 

We see a quick interview with Reynolds during the press tour for 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” in which he almost sheepishly admits to feeling a “kind of kinship” with Wade reading comics as a kid. “I just thought, I’d like to play that guy some day,” he says. Later, a shockingly young Jackman on the set of 2000’s “X-Men” shares how “nervous” he is playing a beloved character in his first ever studio movie. “Everyone was saying, ‘Who’s this guy?’” he says. “There was a lot of, ‘Is he going to deliver?’ You can feel all that kind of pressure.”

If MCU post-credits scene are meant to look ahead, this is instead an earnest farewell to a bygone era of superhero filmmaking, and the people — well, predominantly the actors — who participated in it. By the end, it tugs on heartstrings that some theatergoers may not have even realized were there, a gentle reminder that, yes, it’s OK to care about these characters and this kind of storytelling.

As if they suddenly remembered that this is still a “Deadpool” movie, Levy and Reynolds follow all that sweetness with a riotously tart chaser in the form of the film’s only real post-credits scene. Midway through the movie, Deadpool and Wolverine encounter a coterie of forgotten comic book characters living in the Void, first among them Chris Evans as his first Marvel character, Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four. When they’re all captured and brought before the film’s villain, Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), Deadpool tells Cassandra that Johnny unleashed a torrent of invective about her, which Johnny desperately denies until Cassandra rips off all of his skin, reducing him to a pile of blood, bones and muscle.

After all the credits have rolled, Deadpool reappears to announce that “I’m tired of these absolutely vile rumors that I got Johnny killed” and then calls up footage of Johnny first explaining to Deadpool and Wolverine who Cassandra is.

“[She’s] a megalomaniacal psychotic asshole, a finger-licking, dead-inside, pixie-slapping, third-rate, dime-store nut milk,” Johnny says. “I’ll tell you what she can do…”

“I’m listening,” Deadpool interjects.

“She can lick my goddamn cinnamon ring clean and kick rocks all the way to bald hell,” Johnny says. “In fact, I don’t give a shit if she removes all my skin and pops me like some nightmarish blood balloon. If the last thing I do in this godforsaken, cum-gutter existence is light that fuck box on fire, I still won’t die happy.”

“Holy shit girl, you crazy,” Deadpool says.

“That’s right,” Johnny replies, positively gleeful at the chance to vent so openly. “I won’t be happy until I’ve urinated on her freshly barbecued corpse and husk-fucked the charred remains while gargling Juggernaut’s jugger nuts.”

“Whoa,” Deadpool says.

“And you can quote me.”

This is, in other words, the anti-post credits scene, a bewitchingly smutty palate cleanser to shake off the unhealthy pressure for Marvel to relentlessly tease new storylines that may never see the light of day. It’s telling that Deadpool — who already satirized post-credits scenes in 2016’s “Deadpool” — never once goes meta about them in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It’s pretty much the only thing about the MCU that Deadpool doesn’t reference in this movie, actually. Even he knew that, perhaps, it was time to give them a rest.

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