When the news broke that Hugh Jackman was reprising his role as Wolverine in Deadpool 3, the first question was, understandably, but how? Jackman’s iconic embodiment of the adamantium-clawed mutant came to a brutal, beautiful close in James Mangold’s Logan, dying a very definitive, very noble death. Mangold’s Oscar-nominated film gave Jackman’s Wolverine a hero’s death, as he sacrificed himself to save his young, unasked for protegé Laura (Dafne Keen), a little Wolverine, so to speak, created from Logan’s DNA.

Well, Jackman himself has dropped a major clue on how it’s possible Wolverine returns for Deadpool 3 and joins Ryan Reynold’s Merc with the Mouth—and the answer is the multiverse. But of course! Considering that Marvel has gone all-in on the multiverse, with characters increasingly moving across timelines, from Spider-Man: No Way Home to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it sounds as if this device is how Reynolds’ foul-mouthed, beloved Deadpool will encounter Wolverine.

Jackon revealed this during a conversation with SiriusXM. He says that he wasn’t actively pursuing a return to the role and joked that Reynolds was trying to cajole him for years, “annoyingly,” to come back. But then, when he saw Deadpool, he was struck by an idea of Deadpool and Logan in a kind of Eddie Murphy/Nick Nolte dynamic (from 48 Hours for those of you not hip to 1980s movie references). It wasn’t until, however, the notion of the multiverse came up that Jackman saw a way to finally give in to Reynolds and make a Wolverine/Deadpool movie without messing with Logan. Here’s what he said:

“It’s all because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines. Now we can go back because, you know, it’s science. So I don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline, which was important to me. And I think probably to the fans too.”

There’s also the fact that Logan is set in 2029, and Deadpool 3 is presumably set before that, so, as Reynolds has stated previously, Deadpool 3 won’t interfere with the Logan timeline.

Whatever it takes to get these two together works for us.

Check out the interview clip here: