To the shock of everyone, after news of Deadpool 3 was absent from D23, Ryan Reynolds, who plays the X-Men character, shared a small teaser across social media which not only revealed the Marvel movie‘s release date, but also confirmed that he would not be the only person returning.
This is because the teaser also revealed that long-time X-Men movie star Hugh Jackman would once again be donning his iconic claws to return as Wolverine, which led to a lot of hype — but also a lot of confusion — among fans.
The reason for this confusion was that just five years prior, Jackman said he was officially done with the character after he had a pretty definitive-looking ending in drama movie Logan. The sobering superhero movie, which also saw Patrick Stewart return as Professor X, saw the pair finally croak after inexplicably escaping death over a number of years.
You’d think the fact that Wolverine is, you know, dead, might stop him from returning to subsequent action movies, which may well might have been what Logan director James Mangold was hinting at when, shortly after the news broke, he shared a gif from the movie where Wolverine clone X-24 killed Logan by impaling him on a stump.
However, after his post sparked debate on who has the authority to say the final word on Wolverine, the director was forced to be less ambiguous. “Oh my gosh! Everybody chill. Just kidding!” he wrote on Twitter. “Multiverse or prequel, time warp or worm hole, canon or non-canon or even without a rationale, I cannot wait to see what madness my dear friends [Ryan Reynolds] and [Hugh Jackman] cook up!”
Deadpool 3 will be released on September 6, 2024. But really, how will Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine return work in practise? The good news is, we have a guide explaining just that hyperlinked above.