Hugh Jackman may have bowed out in equally graceful and spectacular fashion as Wolverine, with Logan quickly gaining a well deserved reputation as one of the greatest comic book movies ever made, but even with the actor drawing a line under his career-defining tenure as the iconic character, there still appeared to be a future for adamantium-infused mutants under the Fox banner.
Dafne Keen’s Laura was the crux of Logan‘s plot, with the young actress giving an incredible breakout performance that saw her comfortably stand toe to toe with Jackman’s grizzled warrior, and soon after James Mangold’s blockbuster was released to widespread critical acclaim and almost $620 million at the box office, it was announced that the filmmaker was in the early stages of developing a spinoff for X-23.
Of course, Disney’s acquisition of Fox put those plans on ice, but in a recent interview, Keen admitted that she’s crossing her fingers to be invited into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the recent announcement that Deadpool 3 had hired two new writers and officially entered active development set the precedent for familiar faces from the extended X-Men franchise crossing over into Kevin Feige’s shared mythology.
“I’m 100% hopeful. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high in case it doesn’t happen, but I really do hope it does because I loved playing Laura. She holds a very special place in my heart and she’s an incredible character. And to be fair, the whole Deadpool 3 situation really, really made me happy because, obviously when Disney bought Fox, I suspected they weren’t going to do any more R-rated films, but then greenlighting Deadpool is a great sign for other R-rated movies.”
Whether or not the Marvel Studios head honcho has any real interest in an X-23 spinoff is another question entirely, but there are plenty of worse ideas out there than bringing Dafne Keen into the mix. The 15 year-old is currently receiving strong notices for her work in fantasy adaptation His Dark Materials and looks to have a lengthy and successful career in front of her, while an MCU return would give the series the opportunity to introduce a familiar graduate of the Weapon X program without having to recast Wolverine straight away.