Logan: 13 Spoiler-y Questions Answered

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

As regular readers know, X-Men movies tend to leave you with a lot of questions that need answering. Logan is no different. Here, we’ve tried to put together a set of As that will satisfy all of the Qs you have after watching Hugh Jackman’s last and probably greatest performance as Wolverine.

Beware: this article is riddled with spoilers for Logan, and spoils part of the comic Old Man Logan. Read at your own risk.

Why were no mutants being born?

You can certainly piece together the truth from what’s in the film: the genetically modified corn syrup crops that Logan is shown earlier in the film have been altered – possibly by Zander Rice – to supress the mutant gene. This leaves his team with the sole ability to create and control mutants, which they plan to do so as weapons.

The good news is that this means the extermination of the mutant race can be reversed. The bad news is that no-one who could stop it knows that it’s happening…

What’s going on with the timeline then?

This movie takes place in 2029, and a year after the death of (most of?) the X-Men. That does place it six years after the decimated future seen in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, though presumably in the other timeline given that Wolverine’s working as an Uber driver rather than fighting Sentinels.

But let’s be honest, attempts to place the X-Men movies into any kind of coherent chronology are doomed. As far as I’m concerned, Logan doesn’t directly follow on from any of the previous movies. It’s just another What If.

But…

Well, okay, there are nods to previous movies but even then it’s very light on actual continuity. Wolverine has a katana in his room, and it’s a safe bet that it’s intended to be the same one from The Wolverine – but even that’s one of a very small number of easter eggs in this movie. Any continuity that’s happening is more or less in your head.

Is X-23 anything to do with the X-Men: Apocalypse stinger?

I’m going to say no to that, though your interpretation may vary. Where Zander Rice got Wolverine’s raw genetic material from is up for debate – it certainly could be the same stuff obtained in the 1980s by ‘Essex Corp’ – but in the 40-odd years between then and this movie there would have been plenty of chances to get a chunk of Wolverine DNA.

Who were the other kids from Rice’s experiments?

As near as I can tell, none of them were existing X-Men characters. One did sign his name ‘Rictor’ on a note to Wolverine, which could suggest that he’s Julio Richter (aka Rictor) of the New Mutants/X-Force – in the comics, he is a Mexican mutant after all. As for the rest of them… it would seem to me that they’re all original characters. If they’re not, they’re certainly so obscure that I’ve never encountered them, and I’ve read a lot of X-Men comics.

Worth noting: in the comics the other experiments numbered – X-1 to X-22 – were failed clones of Wolverine, so that’s not the same here.

Why did X-23 have claws in her feet?

The film makes some very basic attempt to explain this away as being related to her gender, suggesting that in nature female lions use the claws in their rear feet for defense (no idea if that’s true) but I don’t think there’s any kind of canonical explanation in the comics as to why that is. She’s not a direct clone of Wolverine, so any differences can all be explained by that alone.

How did Wolverine die?

There were several causes, and they all just caught up with him. He was old and tired, and too worn out to free himself from being impaled. Even if he could have done that, his healing factor was too strained to bring him back from an injury that massive. In the comics he’s come back from worse, but for this version of the character it was just too much all at once.

Part of the reason for that is that he was suffering from Adamantium poisoning. In the comics, his healing factor is one of the reasons he can survive the Adamantium bonding process – because it’s constantly working to counteract the metal poisoning him – but once his healing factor starts to slow down, the poisoning becomes more pronounced.

So wait, how old is he here?

The earliest date I’m aware of for the movie Wolverine being alive is given in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which shows his powers manifesting in 1845. It’s hard to say exactly how old he is in that movie, but it’s a safe bet that he was older than 6 and younger than 16, which means he was born in the 1830s at the latest. That puts his age comfortably between 190 and 200 years old in this film. Old Man Logan indeed.

Why did Zander Rice hate Wolverine?

I’m not so sure he hated Wolverine, so much as saw the potential of his powers and abilities and had zero hesitation about treating mutants as less than human. But at the same time, his father Dale Rice was part of the Weapon X program and Wolverine probably did kill him. So there’s that. For reference, Dale Rice is not a character from any of the previous movies, and was only introduced retroactively in the comics.

Where were the X-Men?

A year prior to the events of this movie, Professor X’s powers go haywire and he kills probably all the remaining X-Men, as per the radio broadcast Wolverine quickly switches off. Interestingly, in the Old Man Logan comics this very loosely adapts, it’s not Professor X who kills the X-Men, it’s Wolverine.

Why were they trying to go and live on a boat?

It’s never stated outright, but I think the plan is for Wolverine to take Professor X somewhere remote so that he can live out his natural life without his powers killing any more people. The film establishes that Wolverine (and later X-23) are able to resist Xavier’s telepathic attacks where other people can’t, so if it’s just him and the Professor on the boat, Wolverine can care for him until the end knowing that no-one will get hurt.

Where did Logan get that Adamantium bullet?

I don’t think we ever saw it happen. Stryker had a bunch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine which already proved that they’re dangerous to him, so it’s presumably one of his. Of course, the fate of X-24 proves that Logan was right to hang onto it in case he wanted to die, because it totally did the job.

Was that the same Caliban from X-Men: Apocalypse?

I mean, you’d imagine so. Obviously time has ravaged his one-youthful looks, but also he’s managed to learn to stop talking about himself in the third person (which was probably a pretentious affectation, in retrospect) and also let his natural West Country accent out. Still, the basic look and powers are the same, but personally I wouldn’t try to make it make sense. I refer you to my answer to Question 2.

And that, we think, just about covers it. But feel free to leave any more questions you have in the comments and we’ll see about answering them there…!