Logan Explained: How It Fits Into The X-Men Timeline

Spoiler alert, if you haven’t sen Logan yet, go watch it!

No one wants to watch their childhood hero fall.  No one really wants to see an  invincible superhero suffer from age and sickness. And no one really wants to watch the one man who keeps defying death grow weary of life and long for death.. It’s too sad, too devastating and reminds us too much of reality. But even thought its not the X-men movie we might want to see, it’s the movie the Wolverine deserves.

If you have seen it… wasn’t it heartbreaking?!  Perhaps a bit over-hyped, but still absolutely awesome! Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did it make you cry? Did it leave you with many, many questions?

It did for me! So in response I have created an updated character timeline, that will hopefully answer all of your Logan questions!

Unfortunately it is a little confusing, thanks to Days Of Futures Past we now have 2 timelines. The Original Timeline, which includes the original X-Men trilogy.  And The New Timeline that Logan supposedly takes place in.

The Wolverines Original Timeline:

  • 1800 X-Men Origins: Logan is born & fights wars with his brother.
  • 1945 Wolverine: Logan is caught in a Japanese camp when Nagasaki is bombed. Logan saves Japanese officer who tries to give Logan his Samurai sword.
  • 1962 First Class: Charles & Magneto recruit him, but he declines.
  • 1973 DOFP & Origins: Wolverine is in NY with his brother.
  • 1973 DOFP: Mystique kills Trask & is captured & studied.
  • 1981 Origins: Logan gets the Adamantium skeleton & claws & amnesia from Stryker at Alkali Lake.
  • 1981 Origins: Logan kills the Deadpool wannabe
  • 1983 X-Men Apocalypse: This never happens!
  • 2000 X-Men 1:  Logan “officially” meets Charles, joins the X-men &  he falls in love with Jean.
  • 2003 X-Men 2: Charles helps Logan with his memory & he goes after Stryker.
  • 2006 The Last stand: Cure is invented & Logan kills Jean/ Phoenix
  • 2013 The Wolverine:  A Heartbroken Logan (who wants to be with Jean) goes to Japan & loses his adamantium claws.
  • 2014ish? The Wolverine: Magneto & Charles want Logan’s help.
  •  2023ish?: Off-screen: Magneto gives Logan his metal claws back, to help them fight the Sentinels.
  • 2023 DOFP: Logan is 1 of the last few surviving mutants, they are being hunted by Trask’s sentinels. These sentinels use Mystique’s DNA to adapt & kill mutants. They kill people they think may have mutant children in the future. Logan goes back in time to 1973.
  • 1973 History is rewritten——————————————–
  • Deadpool & Logan movie doesn’t happen.

    The New Wolverine Timeline:

  • 1800 X-Men Origins: Logan is born & fights wars with his brother
  • 1945 Wolverine: Logan is caught in a Japanese camp when Nagasaki is bombed. Logan saves Japanese officer who tries to give Logan his Samurai sword.
  • 1962 First Class: Charles & Magneto recruit Logan, but he declines.
  • 1973 DOFP & Origins:  Logan “officially” meets Charles & Hank.
  • 1973 DOFP: Mystique saves the president & is never caught.
  • 1973 DOFP: Logan gets rescued from drowning by Mystique (NOT Stryker).
  • 1973-1983 Off-screen: Logan gets Adamantium skeleton & claws & amnesia from Stryker at Alkali Lake. It’s unknown when this happens.
  • 1981: 2nd half of Orgins: This never happens (No Deadpool or Stryker).
  • 1983 X-Men Apocolyse: Jean frees Logan from Styker & gives him back a few memories. But Logans DNA is eventually used to make X-23 (Laura).
  • 2000 X-Men 1: Most of these events did happen, according to Logan movie. He still has the same dog tag from  Origins & fights Magneto in NY.
  • 2003 X-Men 2: Most of these events probably don’t happen.
  • 2006 X-Men Last stand: Never happens, Logan never kills Jean.
  • 2013 The Wolverine:  Logan isn’t depressed & never kills Jean, but he does have his Samurai sword in the Logan movie. We do not know why!
  • 2016: Deadpool Movie happens!
  • 2023: DOFP: Logan is slowly ageing & happily teaching History at Charles School For Gifted Youngsters.  No more mutants are being born. Why? Because Dr. Rice’s corn syrup has suppressed the mutant gene.
  • 2027ish: LOGAN: Charles is suffering from seizures & brain problems & accidentally kills some of the X-Men at his school.
  • 2029 LOGAN: Logan is the only one who Charles can’t accidentally kill, so he is taking care of Charles trying to buy a boat to sail to the middle of the Ocean to keep the world safe from Charles.
  • 2029: LOGAN:  Since Logan watched some X-Men die (don’t know who) & he is depressed & wants to die. (He felt the same way in the original timeline back in 2013.)
  • 2029 LOGAN: The adamantium has been in Logan’s body for 50 years(?) & it’s slowly killing him.
  • 2029 LOGAN: Logan’s healing abilities can’t keep healing him & he finally dies from his wounds, somewhere near the Canadian border. RIP Wolverine.

Final thoughts: It’s interesting that in both timelines after Logan watches some of his fellow X-men die, he gets depressed and wants to die himself. Also in the original 2023 we see that even though Logan is healing quickly and not really aging, in the new timeline he ages drastically during those 6 years to get to the sickly state he is in by 2029. Why? why does he age so quickly in those 6 years?

Here is my theory. In the old timeline Logan has Adamantium in his body from 1981, until 2013 when he loses his metal claws but still has metal elsewhere in his body. Then sometime before 2023, Magneto puts metal back on his claws.  In those 42 years Logan barely feels the affects of the adamantium. Why? Well, perhaps having his metal claws out for almost a decade decreased the affects of the metal poisoning? We don’t really know.

However in the new timeline, we do not know when Logan got the adamantium put in, we just know he finally escaped in 1983. So it could be possible that he was weaponized anytime between 1973 & 1983. Which means that it’s possible that in this new timeline Logan has been living with adamantium poisoning his body for almost an extra ten years! Fast forward to 2023  where we see an ageing Logan as a history teacher. We are never told how his healing abilities are, and if he notices a difference in his body. Is he slower? Does he notices when he wakes up in his older body that he has scars & doesn’t have the same stamina he used to? Again, we don’t know, since DOFP never mentions it.

We just know that by 2029 Logan’s regenerative abilities have been declining for sometime now.  It is very likely that in the  new timeline Logan has actually had his adamantuim in his body for over 56  years, instead of the original 42.  If you didn’t catch why, let me explain…

It is possible that when Logan saved everyone in Days Of Futures Past, he unknowingly set off a chain of events, that caused him to get his adamantuim implants nearly 10 years sooner, which in turn cut off almost a decade of his life. This causes him to age rapidly in his last 10 years and die in 2029, instead of what might have been 2039, had he never altered the past. (That is of course assuming Trask’s sentinels hadn’t killed him first.)

Which brings me to the sad conclusion, that even though Logan changes the past, the future still finds it’s way to destruction. In both timelines many of the X-Men still die, the mutants never get treated as equals, (as they are either killed off or experimented on and forced to have their abilities repressed.) And Logan still gets weary of watching his friends die and longs for death. His act of changing the past, may have prevented a darker future, but they only gave his friends an extra 10 to 30 years off life.  And he still couldn’t save the mutant race from extinction. In the end all that was accomplished was that Logan traded several years of his own life, so that his friends could live a few more years themselves. Which makes this antihero’s  death even more heartbreaking & touching.

For more info check out…

The Complete History of Wolverine in the ‘X-Men’ Movies, Including the Setup for ‘Logan’ (Photos)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *