BoJack Horseman has returned to Netflix for part 1 of its sixth and final season, which references and takes shots at various aspects of Hollywood - including the Deadpool movies. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, and starring Will Arnett as the titular equine, BoJack Horseman has become one of the streaming service’s best shows, deftly mixing comedy and drama, with a blend of visual gags, puns, and commentary both satirical and deadly serious.
Despite its quality, BoJack Horseman is ending with season 6, which gives the first eight episodes a greater sense of finality, but that doesn’t mean things are changing too much. This is still very much the BoJack fans know and love, which goes from the season’s themes - which looks at BoJack’s attempts to get better, combined with the reckonings due from his past - to its humor, part of which addresses the current state of Hollywood (or rather, Hollywoo).
It’d be tricky to do that and not include the ever-expanding slate of superhero movies. BoJack Horseman tackles this in a couple of ways, including a direct shot at Deadpool. The moment comes in season 6, episode 5, “A Little Uneven, That’s All”, during a phone call between BoJack and Todd (Aaron Paul). When BoJack calls Todd, the phone is answered by the latest member of “Team Chavez”. Todd mentions to BoJack that he has a new assistant, and when BoJack questions him on it, he responds: “Well, yeah, but assistants are like Deadpool movies. I couldn’t just stop at one, even though I probably should have. Now I have 12!”
Deadpool, of course, was a big success when the first movie released in 2016. So much so that, despite years spent trying to get it made into the first place, a sequel was quickly put into development, with Deadpool 2 releasing in 2018, complete with a much bigger budget. While Disney’s purchase of Fox has since complicated matters for the franchise, it’s nonetheless expected that at least one more Deadpool movie will happen in the not-so-distant future. Whether or not you agree with Todd that Deadpool should’ve just stopped at one movie is a matter of taste, but he does have some semblance of a point there, and it makes for a fun gag all the same.
It’s also not just a comment on Deadpool, but using that as the chosen movie with which to highlight perceived problems with the entire comic book genre. It’s something BoJack Horseman season 6 does later in the season too, when following a female director’s attempts to make a superhero movie (which is, of course, a female superhero movie). One exchange is about how said director can make it because it’s about a female superhero, which is followed by the studio exec saying: “I’ve been saying for years: as soon as we run out of popular male characters, and we’ve given them each two sequels, we have to make a movie about Fire Flame.” No names are mentioned outright here, but it can be seen as a criticism of how long it took Marvel to make a female superhero movie in the MCU.
More: Why BoJack Horseman Is Ending With Season 6: Did Netflix Cancel The Show?
