Being An Avenger Didn't Work Out For Deadpool

I saw some pages from Deadpool #35 last week. Deadpool had been working against HYDRA in small ways up to then, but is fully onboard with helping bring them down. Unfortunately, Maria Hill is in no mood to work together, and ultimately parks a van full of explosives on him and then blows it up, along with him and the parking garage they were in.

During the fight, Hill comments that Captain America putting Deadpool on the Avengers should have been the first sign something was wrong with Cap. Hill is not the first person to say this. Black Panther said the same thing during the Civil War II tie-in issues (and got smashed in the head with a toilet a page later, which I would pay good money to see happen to Maria Hill). Lots of us have  made similar comments, although mine attributed it to the onset of senile dementia.

Of course, the Steve Rogers who originally recruited Wade wasn't HYDRA Cap; it was Steve Rogers when he'd become an old man. He wasn't changed to a HYDRA mole until after the sentient Cosmic Cube kid made him young again - which, as Deadpool points out, was Maria Hill's fuckup. Try to contain your surprise. But nobody's going to remember that, or if they do, they'll doubtlessly dismiss it for one reason or another.

It's a little sad that's how Wade's tenure on the Avengers is going to be remembered: As the big, blaring warning sign everyone ignored. He wasn't the best Avenger, maybe not even in the top half, but damn it, he tried his best. He bought into the mission, he funded the team, he worked as a team player in the face of the doubts the scorn, Spider-Man quitting the team rather than work with him. By the end, maybe he earned some grudging respect. None of it matters now.

Wade screwed up. He trusted Captain America too much - not a mistake exclusive to him, but certainly one he made. Trusted that if Captain America said shoot somebody, they needed to be shot. By the time Cap's connection to HYDRA was in the open, and Wade began actively questioning that, he had to protect his daughter. He acted against HYDRA, but in small ways, ones that wouldn't point back to him, or put Ellie at risk. He may have killed Phil Coulson, and I don't know where Preston's consciousness is right now (I suspect the Monster Metropolis). He turned openly against HYDRA too late; no one buys it as a genuine recognition he was on the wrong side and trying to fix his mistake.

So kiss being an Avenger good-bye. The endorsements and merchandising deals, too. He's a wanted man. Daughter hates him, her adopted family hates him (with good reason). Money's gone, home is gone. His marriage and his friends were already all mostly gone, in part because of the demands put on him being an Avenger. And now Stryfe's going to make him kill Cable. If Wade succeeds he'll be out a wife and a husband.

Being an Avenger was always going to end tragically for Deadpool. Because it was something he really wanted, it maybe a sign he really was being the good person he believes he is. Things like that always end badly for him. He had more to lose this time than ever before, though, so this may set the record for the most damage he's done to his own life.