This weekend was undoubtedly a somber occasion for hardcore fans of the X-Men/Wolverine series of movies. While the release of ‘Logan’ gave the world one of the best interpretations of the character’s story to date, it remains a bitter/sweet endeavor considering this is the final time Hugh Jackman would play the iconic role that made him a household name. With a respectable 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Wolverine’s final adventure is shaping up to be the best one yet.
With both the flurry of excitement and sorrow in the atmosphere, it might have been easy to miss some of the easter eggs and references scattered throughout. In case you were too busy wiping the tears from your eyes to have caught them all, these are seven things you might have missed in ‘Logan’:
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Deadpool/Cable
US audiences were treated to an unexpected cameo from the Merc with the Mouth himself, Deadpool, in a hilarious pre-show scene. As the first real teaser for ‘Deadpool 2’, the footage was riddled with pop culture references, including the ‘Firefly’ posters inexplicably peppered throughout the background and the famous ‘Superman the Movie’ John Williams score as Wade takes WAY too long to change in a phone booth (a wink to ‘The IT Crowd’?). You might have noticed that written on the phone booth were the words “Nathan Summers coming soon”. As fans would recognize, Nathan Summers is the real name of Cable, who was already announced during the post-credit scene to the first ‘Deadpool’.
Why leave that there for people to notice if we’ve known about the character’s involvement for over a year? The likeliest explanation: the graffiti is a tease to the fact that they have already cast Cable and are ready to announce their pick very soon. The controversy behind finding a suitable actor for the role apparently left Ryan Reynolds and director, Tim Miller, at such a disagreement, Miller pulled out of the project, leaving David Leitch to take his place. Rumors have been circulating of ‘Stranger Things’ actor, David Harbour, taking on the role, but we won’t know for sure until we get a concrete confirmation.
5500 Mangold
If you happened to keep a sharp eye peeled, you likely saw the address of the motel Logan was called to by Gabriela appeared on his phone. It read “5500 Mangold”. This is a direct shout-out to the film’s director, James Mangold.
Caliban
Last summer, audiences were treated to the third installment of the rebooted franchise with ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’. The movie didn’t give us much in the way of new characters to the series, but one of the newer additions to the cast was the albino mutant tracker, Caliban, played by Tomas Lemarquis.
For ‘Logan’, there was yet another incarnation of Caliban, this time played by comedian, Stephen Merchant. This might be the fastest turnaround for a character being recast/rebooted from one film to the next. Considering ‘Apocalypse’ takes place a full 46 years before the events of ‘Logan’, it’s unclear if we’re supposed to believe this is just a new version of Caliban or the same character recast.
Statue of Liberty
Throughout the movie, Logan and Charles speak about their past. At one point, Charles references one of their battles taking place on the Statue of Liberty, which is a direct callback to the events of the first ‘X-Men’ movie in 2000.
The problem that this presents is with the timeline. At this point, fans have pretty much accepted the fact that each ‘X-Men’ movie kinda follows its own path and makes up the rules of time as it goes along. However, the events of ‘Days of Future Past’ essentially erased the timeline up until that point, meaning the only films that are relevant run from ‘First Class’ onward (more or less). This postulates the notion that not all the movies’ events were deleted, or at the very least not the ones we think. Assuming one were to piece together every movie’s placement in time, it’s likely some actually remain intact, while other events no longer remain canon.
Mutie
A few times throughout, you might have heard the mechanically enhanced operative, Pierce, refer to his opposition with the term “mutie”. In the comics, “mutie” is actually the racial slur for mutants in the Marvel universe. This marks the first time in the series’ history showing mutants referred to in such a way, despite the often heavy-handed attempt at addressing the discrimination of mutants in previous movies.
Sauron
On one of the covers to Laura’s ‘X-Men’ comics, it depicts a battle between one of their classic villains, Sauron, the half-man, half-pterodactyl hybrid. The relevance behind this lies with Logan’s line “Maybe a quarter of it actually happened, but not like this.” This presents the possibility that at some point, between the previous films and now, the X-Men may have squared up against Sauron himself in one form or another.
Essex Corp.
It seems that Transigen, the evil corporation responsible for cloning all the mutant children, managed to get their hands on Wolverine’s blood and used the genetic material to clone both X-23 and X-24. How did they get his blood in the first place? If you recall the post-credit scene to ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, a mysterious man is seen placing a vile of Wolverine’s blood in a briefcase labeled “Essex Corp.” following his great escape from the Weapon X facility. This would likely answer the question of what that scene actually meant, considering how cryptic it was initially.
