Will the real Wolverine please stand up? After time traveling to the past to save the future in 2014 and going on a road trip with Professor X and his daughter (and then dying) in 2017, the X-Man formally known as Logan is back once again. But in the forthcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film Deadpool & Wolverine, Hugh Jackman is technically not playing the “our” Wolverine. Instead, he’s a variant of the character from a timeline the movies, which began in the year 2000, haven’t ever depicted before.
So is this the third cinematic Wolverine? The fourth? Is it Wolverines all the way down? With the release of the new trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, it seems the canon of this beloved mutant is getting rebooted, but also, that the older adventures aren’t being changed at all. Let’s dive in.
Deadpool & Wolverine trailer reveals new Logan
In the first full-length trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, we learn very quickly that Hugh Jackman is playing a version of Logan from a different timeline than what we’ve seen in X-Men movies since the year 2000. Wade Wilson/Deadpool mentions that Logan’s “world went to sh*t,” while a TVA agent says, “This Wolverine let down his entire world.”
If you’re wondering when this happened in any of the existing live-action X-Men, or Wolverine, or Deadpool movies — which includes 12 films released by Fox from the year 2000 to the year 2018 — don’t feel bad. The world this yellow-suited Wolverine comes from is not one we’ve seen in any of those movies. Rather, we’re dealing with a variant of Wolverine from a universe that has never been revealed, either in the MCU or the previous Fox movies.
This fact neatly explains why, back in 2022, Ryan Reynolds said the 2029 setting of Logan made it a “totally separate thing,” and that relative to that continuity, the new film is “not touching that.” Now we know what he means. It’s a totally separate thing because this Wolverine is from a totally separate timeline.
How many Wolverine variants are there?
Which Wolverine is this again?
If we consider Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine as the same character, from the same canon for all the X-Men movies up until Logan, that would mean this trailer is showing us the third cinematic version of Logan. Then again, if we think of Logan as being in the same timeline as the other X-Men movies, albeit told through a different narrative lens, then perhaps this new Wolverine is only the second on-screen version of the character.
However, considering the fact that Wolverine made a brand new timeline at the end of Days of Future Past (2014), you could argue there are already at least two versions of him in all the movies prior to X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). But prior to Days of Future Past, there were already some timeline inconsistencies between X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and Fist Class (2011), so, even before this new Logan variant, we could have had two or maybe three different Wolverine timelines in play prior to this moment.
But none of that matters anymore. Because for now, as Wolverine and Deadpool enter the canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is the Wolverine we’ll be focused on. At least until he gets rebooted all over again.
Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on July 26, 2024.
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