Hugh Jackman’s age isn’t a problem for Wolverine – just look at Marvel Comics
Deadpool and Wolverine Co-lead Hugh Jackman is 55 years old, and over the course of his acting career, he’s aged like any normal guy who happens to be stunningly handsome and absurdly wealthy. That wouldn’t be a problem if he were playing pretty much any other comic book character. But he’s spent nearly 25 years playing Wolverine, a man whose most notable talents (aside from the whole claw thing) are aging slowly and healing quickly. Jackman’s perfectly normal aging has been a sore point for some fans, who have vocally proclaimed that he’s too old to be a credible Wolverine.
Luckily for Jackman and his seemingly eternal passion For this role, Marvel Comics has given him an outlet. For the past 15 years, the publisher has been obsessed with the idea of an aged Wolverine.
Jackman, who has played the role since the first film X-Men film in 2000, is probably Marvel’s most loyal live-action acquisition. He’s bravely grunted and honed his way from the franchise’s heyday in the early 2000s under 20th Century Fox to Wolverine’s final film, now under Disney. By the end of Deadpool and WolverineHe and his quick-witted foe Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) have more or less entered the far-flung multiverse version of the MCU, meaning there’s a chance he could pop up in Marvel Studios’ next big crossover event. Avengers: Secret Wars is an obvious candidate for a Wolverine cameo, even though that film is scheduled for release in 2027, a full 10 years after Jackman originally hung his claws on the willows and withdrew from the role.
But Logan — a film about Jackman’s Wolverine bid farewell — made it all the more fitting for Jackman to proudly display some salt and pepper in his mutton chops. The film takes much of its inspiration from one of the most famous Wolverine comics of the last 40 years, Old man Logana standalone arc from 2008-2009 in the pages of the Wolverine comic. In that story, set in an alternate universe in the distant future, Wolverine/Logan is retired to a miserable apocalyptic wasteland. The world is ruled by elderly, deranged supervillains. Most of the hero population, including the X-Men, has been wiped out.
It is later revealed that Logan murdered his teammates while Mysterio was tricking him with an illusion, a fact that completely destroys what little faith he had in heroism. So when he is called back into action, he is so emotionally traumatized that he doesn’t even raise his claws for a while.
Although the film Logan shaves a lot Old man Logan‘s broader Marvel setting details (and names Charles Xavier as the culprit behind the deaths of the X-Men), Logan is faithful to most of the pathos of the comic series. Wolverine has a bottomless backstory in the comics, largely because his powers allow him to live—or have already lived —as long as the writers want it to.
But by leaving him to the mercy of his inner turmoil and by slowing down his healing factor, Old man Logan truly confronts Wolverine’s biggest, most recurring problems: his purpose and identity. Is he a killing machine? A teacher? A father figure to a found family? A lost soul doomed to cross the line between vengeance and mercy? As death draws ever closer to knocking on his door, Old man Logan And Logan Give him a crash course in dealing with these questions and reaching a conclusion: While he will probably never see himself as completely good, his ultimate goal lies in good.
Old man Logan Writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven didn’t come up with the idea of making a superhero older to delve deeper into the poignant nature of their existence: Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns did the same with Batman in 1986. Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come offered a very old DC universe in 1996, and writer-artist Kaare Andrews gave Spider-Man a grim future in the 2006-2007 arc Spider-Man: ReignBut while continuations of the Dark Knight Returns universe are mostly limited to what Frank Miller wants to do with them in his own corner of DC Comics, should Old Man Logan not remain as an alternate-universe look at Wolverine’s future. Like Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverinehe was thrown into something much bigger.
The comic book Wolverine of Earth-616 (considered the central continuity of Marvel Comics and the MCU, for the most part) spent much of the 2010s dead. He lost his healing factor to a virus in Charles Soule and Steve McNiven’s Death of Wolverine series, tracked down the mad Weapon X doctor who “created” him, and died after the fight. His super colleagues didn’t handle this so well, and X-23 (the Wolverine clone who also appeared in Logan And Deadpool and Wolverine) briefly took over his mantle. But thanks to some multiverse shenanigans in the 2015 version of Secret Wars (another Marvel crossover/continuity cleanup attempt), a version of Old Man Logan from a slightly different timeline was thrown into Earth-616. There, he wore his cool brown coat, teamed up with the X-Men, and tried to prevent the horrible future of his own original continuity.
This wasn’t a short stay. Old Man Logan would end up in several other mutant-themed titles, and his return spanned multiple volumes of the Old man Logan funny. Part I ran for five issuesas Brian Michael Bendis guided him through the trials of the Battleworld in Secret Wars. A 50-issue Volume II followedthe first half written by Canadian wunderkind Jeff Lemire, the second by Ed Brisson. Then he took his (for now) final bow in Brisson’s 12-issue arc Dead Man Logan.
And we haven’t even mentioned the extra volume of Declan Shalvey and Mike Henderson’s Deadpool vs. Old Man Loganwho confirmed that no matter what universe Deadpool and Wolverine come from, they are pretty much destined to bicker, fight, and ultimately get along. Far from a one-off, Old Man Logan’s new adventure spanned the latter half of the 2010s. Dead Man Logan #6 even features a recently resurrected Earth-616 Wolverine seeking some advice from his more battered counterpart, cementing the latter’s importance even in light of the “real” version.
Wolverine’s Marvel friends didn’t seem to view Old Man Logan’s run on Earth-616 as an odd duck. They were pretty quick to embrace him as the real deal, especially since he was able to quell some of the anxiety that made the “real” Wolverine so consistently irritable. That’s kind of where we see the “old, but not Old Man Logan old” version of Logan at the end of Deadpool and Wolverine: He has faced some of his traumas and his belief that he is an outsider and has now found himself with a new family.
The comics made it clear that no one cared about Logan’s age, no matter which continuity he ended up in, and the MCU seems to have followed Hugh Jackman’s lead here. Both characters are shaping up to be the same thing: a grizzled partner/mentor to a modern group of heroes, someone who brings with him a lesson in dealing with trauma and exploring rebirth. That’s a useful thing to have in any medium. In short, both the comics and the movies have decided that it’s perfectly fine to let Logan just be Old Man Logan.
Jackman’s tenure in the role won’t last forever. Many of the current crossovers (including Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Kelsey Grammer’s Beast making an appearance The miracles‘ mid-credits scene) shows Disney grappling with the Marvel films now under its 20th Century Studios umbrella, and trying to fit mutants into its massive franchise plans. All signs point to the company ultimately wanting to craft its own X-Men series, rather than a legacy of famous characters from a previous venture. Even bringing previous Spider-Men into the MCU in Spider-Man: No Way HomeDisney took a moment to confirm that Tom Holland, the MCU-specific Spider-Man, is “Peter 1.”
But thanks to previous comics and Jackman’s aggressive portrayal of the character in Deadpool and WolverineHis age — initially the cause of a thousand fan recasting discussions — seems to have been put on the table as a topic. We don’t need a “new” Wolverine just yet — at least not because the current one is outdated. Old Man Logan is as valid a character as any other variation on the man, and can offer emotional perspectives that a younger, reboot-friendly model can’t. A few extra wrinkles on his forehead as he snorts around his Marvel counterparts aren’t cause for alarm. If Jackman wants to jump on the Smith machine and a few more years of yellow spandex, we won’t have to worry about him falling short of the Marvel childhood ideal. He’s as comic book-friendly a version of Wolverine as we’ll ever get.