In the immortal words of Blink-182: Well, I guess this is growing up. We’ve known for a while that next March’s Wolverine threequel will feature an aged version of the furry-faced protagonist we’ve grown to love and longed to pet since 2000. But we didn’t know what the adventure — allegedly Hugh Jackman’s last for the franchise — would consist of, or even what its title was. A few hours ago, the picture’s director, James Mangold, tweeted out the first poster, revealing that (a) the flick’s called Logan (which is Wolvie’s surname) and (b) it will involve some kind of small child. It seems our hero has gotten into the adult-guardian-ing business. Peep the image here:
Speculation abounds! Could that kid be Marvel Comics (and, originally, X-Men Evolution) character Laura Kinney, a.k.a. X-23? After all, Laura is a young, female clone of Wolverine, one he spent some time mentoring (that is, before he died, after which Laura became the new Wolverine, even though a future version of Logan from an alternate timeline currently operates on Earth-616 in the aftermath of Molecule Man and Reed Richards’s restructuring of the multiverse at the conclusion of Secret Wars … but you knew all that already). And in the post-credits scene of this summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse, we saw a mysterious figure gathering some of Logan’s genetic material — could that have been the beginning of the cloning program? Or is it a secret love child birthed by Logan’s onetime paramour Mariko Yashida? Perhaps Wolvie entered the Big Brothers Big Sisters program? All the pieces matter.