Warning: This article contains spoilers for the 2017 film Logan.
With many comic book movie fans getting hyped at the possibility of Wolverine coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe sometime in the near future — with Disney acquiring the rights to the character when it bought out 20th Century Fox — some are wondering if it might be best to continue the story of a new character that was set up to carry the torch after the departure of Hugh Jackman’s Logan.
In the excellent 2017 send off to Jackman’s adamantium-clawed hero, Logan, we’re introduced to a new hero seemingly poised to take his place within the X-Men cinematic universe, Dafne Keene’s Laura, AKA X-23.
Warning: Spoilers for Logan to follow.
In case you haven’t already seen it, Logan takes place in the future, where mutants are mysteriously no longer being born. The plot of the film centers around our titular hero transporting a young girl named Laura to a storied refuge, Eden, where the first mutants to exist in 25 years are rumored to be hiding out. By the end of the film, Logan sacrifices himself at the hands of Boyd Holbrook’s Pierce, while his evil band of Reavers attempt to kill off Laura and the other remaining mutants, to cover up the misdeeds of the biotechnology corporation Alkali-Transigen.
Laura has powers very similar to Logan’s, including sporting adamantium claws of her own and having rapid healing abilities. It’s also revealed Laura is Logan’s biological daughter, due to being a genetically engineered creation using Logan’s DNA in a lab for the purposes of being used as a weapon.
So, the question arose from Reddit user u/Tornado31619 on the r/MarvelStudios subreddit whether people would be interested in having that same X-23 actress, Dafne Keen, return as a rebooted version of her character from Logan.
Many fans agreed that it would be cool to see X-23’s continued development in the MCU.
A fan pointed out how the “constant recasting of Peter Parker” in the Spider-Man movies was one reason he started tuning them out, believing that bringing Keen’s X-23 back would definitely side-step the reboot fatigue issue so many superhero movies have.
Another user remarked how awesome it would be to see X-23 engage in the kind of hand-to-hand martial arts that made Shang-Chi such a hit with fans. Wouldn’t it be awesome to see Laura show up as a contender at the Golden Daggers Club underground tournament — where we saw Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi duke it out with his sister, Meng’er Zhang’s Xu Xialing — in a sequel?
In the comics, Laura is an older adult. One fan observed that since Keen has aged quite a bit since Logan, she may be a good fit for the role, in terms of her character lining up with the source material.
Not everyone agreed the MCU ought to bring back the legacy mutant actors, with one user saying they hope new iterations of the characters can be created instead.
The idea of Keen returning as X-23 certainly gives Marvel fans a lot to think about. With the recent re-introduction of Charlie Cox’s Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in Hawkeye, it seems entirely possible for Disney to cherry-pick other previously established properties in their original form.