Deadpool and Wolverine Co-lead Hugh Jackman is 55, and over the course of his acting career he’s aged like any normal guy who happens to be drop-dead gorgeous and absurdly wealthy. That wouldn’t be a problem if he played virtually any other comic book character. But he’s now spent nearly 25 years as Wolverine, the guy whose most notable talents (aside from the whole claw thing) are aging slowly and healing quickly. Jackman’s perfectly normal aging is a sticking point for some fans, who have loudly proclaimed that he’s too old to be a credible Wolverine.
Luckily for Jackman and his seemingly eternal passion for the role, Marvel Comics has offered him an escape. For the past 15 years, the publisher has been obsessed with the idea of an old Wolverine.
Jackman, who has played the role since the first X-Men film in 2000, is probably Marvel’s most loyal live-action star. He has bravely fought and struggled through, from the boom phase of the franchise in the early 2000s under 20th Century Fox to Wolverine’s most recent film appearance, now under Disney. At the end of Deadpool and Wolverinehe and his wisecracking nemesis Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) have more or less entered the MCU’s far-flung multiverse version, meaning there’s a chance he could show up in Marvel Studios’ next big crossover event. Avengers: Secret Wars is definitely a candidate for a Wolverine cameo – even though the film is scheduled for release in 2027, a full 10 years after Jackman hung up his claws and retired from the role.
Image: 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios
But Logan — a film about the farewell to Jackman’s Wolverine — made it perfectly fine for Jackman to proudly show off some salt and pepper in his sideburns. The film takes many of its inspirations from one of the most famous Wolverine comics of the last 40 years, Old Man Logana self-contained arc from 2008 to 2009 on the pages of the wolverine Comic. Set in a parallel universe in the distant future, this story sees Wolverine/Logan living in retirement in a desolate apocalyptic wasteland. The world is ruled by elderly, deranged supervillains. Most of the hero population, including the X-Men, has been wiped out.
It is later revealed that Logan killed his teammates while Mysterio deceived him with an illusion, a fact that completely destroyed his little faith in heroism. So when he is called back into action, he is so emotionally traumatized that he refrains from even extending his claws for a while.
Although the film Logan shaves a lot Old Man Logan‘s further Marvel setting details (and names Charles Xavier as the culprit behind the death of the X-Men), Logan stays mostly true to the pathos of the comic arc. Wolverine has a bottomless backstory in the comics, mostly because his powers allow him to live – or have already lived – as long as the writers want.
But by leaving him to his inner turmoil and slowing down his healing factor, Old Man Logan must truly confront Wolverine’s biggest, most recurring issues: his purpose and his identity. Is he a killing machine? A teacher? A father figure to a found family? A lost soul doomed to vacillate between vengeance and mercy? With death coming a little closer and knocking on his door, both Old Man Logan And Logan give him a crash course in dealing with these questions and teach him to come to a conclusion: Although he will probably never see himself as perfectly good, his ultimate goal is goodness.
Old Man Logan Author Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven did not invent the idea of aging a superhero to provide a deep insight into the meaning of his existence: Frank Miller’s iconic The Return of the Dark Knight They did the same with Batman in 1986. Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom come offered an entire aged DC Universe in 1996, and writer and artist Kaare Andrews gave Spider-Man a grim future in the 2006-2007 arc Spider-Man: ReignBut while the continuation of the The Dark Knight Returns Universe are largely limited to what Frank Miller wants to do with it in his own corner of DC Comics. Old Man Logan was not allowed to remain as an alternative view of Wolverine’s future. Like Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverinehe was drawn into something much bigger.
The comic Wolverine of Earth-616 (who was considered the central continuity of Marvel Comics and the MCU for most of the time) spent much of the 2010s dead. He lost his healing factor to a virus in Charles Soules and Steve McNiven’s Death of Wolverine series, tracked down the crazy Weapon X doctor who had “created” him, and then died after the fight. His super colleagues did not take it very well, and X-23 (the Wolverine clone who also appeared in Logan And Deadpool and Wolverine) took over his mantle for a while. But thanks to some multiverse shenanigans in the 2015 version of Secret Wars (another Marvel crossover/continuity cleanup attempt), a version of Old Man Logan from a slightly different timeline was thrown onto Earth-616. There, he wore his cool brown jacket, teamed up with the X-Men, and tried to prevent the terrible future of his own original continuity.
This was not a short stay. Old Man Logan appeared in various other mutant titles, and his return spanned several volumes of the Old Man Logan Comic. Volume I ran for five issues as Brian Michael Bendis led him through the trials of the Battleworld in Secret Wars. This was followed by a 50-part Volume II, the first half of which was written by Canadian wunderkind Jeff Lemire and the second half by Ed Brisson. Then came his (for now) final appearance in Brisson’s 12-part series. Dead Man Logan.
And that doesn’t even include the additional volume of Declan Shalvey and Mike Henderson’s Deadpool vs. old Loganwhich confirms that Deadpool and Wolverine, no matter what universe they come from, are destined to argue, fight, and somehow make up in the end. The new adventure of Old Man Logan was far from an isolated incident, spanning the second half of the 2010s. Dead Man Logan #6 Wolverine, who has just been resurrected from Earth-616, can even be seen asking his greyer counterpart for advice, thus underlining the importance of the latter even in comparison to the “real” version.
Wolverine’s Marvel friends didn’t seem to see old Logan’s run on Earth-616 as a major oddity. They accepted him as the real one pretty quickly, especially because he was able to suppress some of the anxieties that made the “real” Wolverine so consistently prickly. That’s pretty much where we meet the “old but not ‘Old Man Logan’ version of Logan at the end of Deadpool and Wolverine: He has partially come to terms with his trauma and his belief that he is a grieving outsider and has joined a new family.
The comics made it clear that no one was worried about Logan’s age, no matter what continuity he landed in, and the MCU seems to have followed suit with Hugh Jackman. Both characters become one and the same: a grizzled partner/mentor to a modern-day group of heroes, bringing with them a lesson in dealing with trauma and discovering rebirth. That’s handy in any medium. In short, both the comics and the movies decided it was OK to just let Logan be old man Logan.
Jackman’s tenure in the role will not last forever. Many of the current crossovers (including Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, who Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Kelsey Grammer’s Beast appears The miracles‘ mid-credits scene) finds Disney struggling with the 20th Century Studios-produced Marvel films now under its umbrella and trying to incorporate mutants into its gigantic franchise plans. All signs point to the company eventually wanting to form its own X-Men series rather than using a number of famous characters from a previous company. Even in incorporating previous Spider-Men into the MCU in Spider-Man: No Way HomeDisney took a moment to confirm that Tom Holland, the MCU-specific Spider-Man, is “Peter 1.”
But thanks to previous comics and Jackman’s aggressive portrayal of the character in Deadpool and Wolverinehis age – originally the cause of thousands of fan discussions about recasting – seems to have been shelved as an issue. We don’t need a “new” Wolverine yet – at least not because the current one has gotten too old. Old Man Logan is as valid a character as any other iteration of the guy, and can offer emotional perspectives that a younger, reboot-friendly model can’t. A few more wrinkles on his forehead while he huffs and puffs around his Marvel colleagues is no reason to panic. If Jackman wants to hop on the Smith machine and wear yellow spandex for a few more years, we don’t have to worry about him failing to live up to some ideal of Marvel youth. He’s one of the most comic-friendly portrayals of Wolverine we’re likely to ever get.
