Hugh Jackman may have ruled himself out of a full-time return as Wolverine despite the opportunities that having the character under new management as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe could offer, but there’s been still constant speculation that he could be tempted to return for a brief cameo under the right circumstances.
While fans would no doubt get a huge kick out of seeing him show up in the MCU alongside some of the Avengers, the best place for him to make one final appearance in his career-defining role would be as part of Deadpool 3, given that it would both give him the chance to square off against Ryan Reynolds in a nod to their long-running online battle and the meta nature of the Merc with a Mouth’s movies wouldn’t take anything away from the emotional impact of Logan‘s final moments.
Wolverine’s third and final solo outing is one of the greatest comic book movies ever made, and brought the title character’s arc to a fitting conclusion as the Australian actor drew a line under what might very well be the single most iconic run of performances that the genre has ever seen. And in a recent interview, director James Mangold explained that the decision to have Wolverine fail to survive the movie was done to stop any ambiguity about a possible return, while also drawing a definitive line under Jackman’s legendary tenure.
“It seemed logical, that if it were going to be his last film, that he’s either going to ride off onto the horizon or die, that you need to have some kind of curtain on his story. You either have the Shane ending where he rides off on the mountain to parts unknown, which had largely been the way his character was resolved in every preceding movie, or you’d kill him. But the reason the choice was at our feet was because you needed the sense of closure. You needed some sense of an ending if you were going to end, if you were dealing with the legacy of Hugh’s many performances and many films, and trying to set this part in some definitive way.”
Mangold also surprisingly revealed that Fox were onboard with the filmmaker’s decision to kill off one of the studio’s most popular and bankable characters, presumably because they knew that seeing Jackman playing Logan for the final time would result in a healthy uptick in box office takings, which it ultimately did.
“Frankly, even the studio didn’t even have nervousness about it, because it felt like an event. It gave the movie, on a simple level, the reality that while it many not feature as flamboyant or expensive action as some other movies, that the must see of the movie was going to be because it would be the end of a legend.”
Even though the rumor mill will no doubt continue to turn until Marvel either announce that they’re recasting Wolverine for their X-Men reboot or Jackman does agree to sign on for one more outing, with Fox’s time at the helm of the mutant franchise no longer official canon, the ending of Logan will lose none of its emotional impact as a fitting finale for a true icon of superhero cinema.