After a relatively quiet few months, the speculation surrounding Wolverine‘s potential involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has roared back into life over the last few days, with a multitude of largely conflicting stories having made the rounds.
In the last week alone, we’ve heard that Karl Urban is in the running to inherit the claws, while it’s also been rumored that Kevin Feige is making one last play to try and entice Hugh Jackman back for a final outing as the iconic mutant. Not only that, but there were reports that an anthology series was in early development for Disney Plus, which was swiftly followed by another claim offering that Marvel wanted to team Jackman’s Logan up with Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury for one of the Merc with a Mouth’s standalone sequels.
The latest addition to the perpetual rumor mill comes from tipster Mikey Sutton, who posits that Wolverine will face off against an obscure comic book villain in a future solo film. Sutton doesn’t specify as to whether this is hinging on Jackman’s involvement or not, but he nonetheless puts forward Roughouse as the antagonist of a standalone superhero story set largely on the island of Madripoor, which was of course introduced into MCU canon as part of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Roughouse first appeared in a 1989 issue of Wolverine, and his origin has been left deliberately vague ever since. He might be an Asgardian, or some kind of descendant of the Frost Giants, but nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that it would be a deep cut from Marvel lore to give the character a sizeable role in a movie, but we’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds for Logan given the sheer volume of chatter at the moment.