Logan

Original Air Date: March 2017

Credits: James Mangold (Director), Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green (Screenwriters), James Mangold (Story), Hutch Parker, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Schuler Donner (Producers), Stan Lee, James Mangold, Joe Caracciolo Jr., Josh McLaglen (Executive Producers), Marco Beltrami (Composer), Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse, Lennie Loftin, Jason Genao, Bryant Tardy, Alison Fernandez, Ashlyn Casalegno (Main Actors)

Brief Description:
Logan’s healing factor struggles to keep the adamantium metal in his body from poisoning him. As a result, by the year 2029, he has aged greatly, is having a harder time recovering from injuries and has become an alcoholic. He works as a chauffeur in Texas as he and Caliban live in an abandoned smelting plant across the border in Mexico, where they care for a senile Charles Xavier, who has accidentally killed several X-Men in a seizure-induced telepathic outburst a year earlier. The future looks bleak, as new mutants have stopped being born and ruthless scientific and business interests govern the US. A Mexican nurse approaches Logan for help in transporting an 11-year-old girl named Laura to a place in North Dakota. Donald Pierce and his ruthless Reavers are after Laura, and the nurse soon ends up dead. From a video on her phone, Logan and Xavier learn that scientists have been using DNA samples from mutants to breed mutant children and train them as soldiers. Laura herself was created from Wolverine’s DNA, making her his daughter. When the children refused to fight, the scientists created a more deadly mutant instead and decided to put the children to death. The nurse and other staffers smuggled as many children as they could out of the facility, but Laura is the only one who certainly survived. Meanwhile, Caliban is captured by the Reavers and forced to help them track down his friends, until he finally sacrifices his life in an attempt to slow down the ruthless pursuers. Logan and Charles travel with Laura for some time, narrowly evading the Reavers, but Logan begins to doubt the existence of the safe place they are supposedly headed when he finds it mentioned in a fictional story in one of Laura’s comic books. The three mutants briefly stay with a friendly family and try to help them in their fight against big business interests attempting to drive them from their homestead. However, the situation is rendered moot as the Reavers find them and unleash their deadliest weapon, a mindless Wolverine clone, who kills Xavier and slaughters the family. Logan and Laura escape and bury Charles, after which the grief-stricken Logan collapses from his injuries. Laura drives them the rest of the way to North Dakota, where surviving mutant children have indeed gathered for a final hike across the border to the safety of Canada. However, the Reavers catch up to them, and Logan has to put his selfish interests aside and help the children. He ends up sacrificing himself fighting the Reavers and his mindless clone, after which the children bury him under a wooden cross tilted to look like an X. Having survived thanks to Logan, Laura and her peers then cross the Canadian border in search of a brighter future.

Full Synopsis:
Logan, the man known as Wolverine, currently visibly aged, bearded, with a scarred face and very drunk, is asleep in a pool hall parking lot inside the limo which he drives for a living. He is awakened by heavy noises from a group of Mexican street thugs, attempting to steal the car’s tire hubcaps.

Swearing, Logan steps out into the night, illuminated by the glowing advertisements around the lot, with loud, Spanish, hip-hop music blaring in the background. Barely able to stand, he tries to talk some sense into the gang, but one of the thugs carelessly shoots him in the chest and they continue their illicit work. Still alive but apparently hurt, Logan swears again and slowly, with a lot of effort, manages to get back up. Calling the thieves “guys,” he continues trying to dissuade them from starting a fight, while unsheathing his menacing-looking metal claws from the backs of his hands.

To Logan’s own surprise, he fails to fully draw one of the claws, and the distraction allows the gang to make the first move. They jump him, managing to land several heavy punches and kicks as Logan swings his claws. He keeps missing them, but finally stabs one of the thugs through the arm. Another one hits him in the head but Logan, unphased, slashes his stomach. More gunfire follows, with one bullet hitting Logan’s shoulder, after which the goons manage to knock down their opponent and proceed to pummel him with kicks and a metal bar. Finally becoming enraged, he jumps up with a savage growl as one of the men is about to shoot him with a rifle. The man’s arm is sliced clean off just as the rifle fires. Swearing angrily, Logan stabs one thug through the throat, another through his chest and stomach multiple times, finally knocking him down by slashing his face, and then drives his claws straight through the head of the next incoming assailant.

While he is dispatching another thug in a similarly vicious way, the remaining goons leap into their van and drive away, with Logan furiously throwing the metal bar after them. He is then overpowered by exhaustion and barely manages to climb back into his limo. He drives to a public restroom, where he tosses his blood-stained suit into the trash and painfully extracts the bullets from his body by pushing them out, as his mutant healing ability struggles to heal the wounds. Logan then drives off through the night, this time with the radio on. A caller is explaining his conspiracy theory to the radio host and mentions mutants. The host interrupts him to ask why they are still talking about mutants in 2029.

In this grim future, where mutant numbers have dwindled, the aging Logan works as a night-time driver for a hired Chrysler limousine in El Paso, Texas. His customers include the likes of a smug, rich, businessman and some rowdy male high school grads who shout “USA!” repeatedly at the police while driving by the border with Mexico. His final stop one morning is a cemetery, where Logan somberly looks upon the graves, while propping himself up against a tree with one arm and swigging from a bottle carried in the other.

It is now morning and, as heavy rain pours, a strange Mexican woman approaches him, calling him “Wolverine.” Cursing, he tries to walk away from her, but she runs after him, yelling out that she’s in trouble. Logan simply tells her to get away from him, swearing at her. She shouts in Spanish and then pleads but, as he keeps ignoring her, she finally gives up. Logan pulls out an umbrella from the limo’s trunk and assists his client, a wealthy widow, into the car, assuring her that the recent intruder was just some madwoman. As he climbs in himself, the Mexican woman’s old and dirty car roars by, with a hooded little girl in the back seat, staring fixedly at Logan.

His work for the day completed, Logan stops outside a hospital and concludes a shady deal with a ward, receiving a bag of prescription drugs in return for his latest salary. Not knowing that he is being observed, he steps back into the limo, coughing, and takes another swig from his whiskey bottle. Only then does he notice his observer, who is confidently climbing into the back seat behind him.

“As I live and breathe! The Wolverine…  And he’s a junkie now,” the young man casually drawls in his southern accent, not removing his dark glasses. He casually informs Logan that there are some bullet holes in the car door, then tells the old man that he had heard he was in Phoenix. But then some friends informed him that “three dead Cholos” were found in a pool lot in Texas, one missing an arm, another a leg. As tigers are now extinct and Freddie Krueger is fictional, the search for the perpetrator was narrowed down to whoever was driving the 24 Chrysler that left tire tracks near the bodies. “Well…  this is a 24 Chrysler.”

The man then asks Wolverine if “Gabriella” has found him yet, as he himself is looking for her, and she’s looking for “Wolvie.” She has taken something for which the strange man is supposed to be responsible. Logan tells him that he doesn’t know any Gabriella and, swearing, tells the guy to get out of his car. Unconcerned, his visitor casually replies that he knows what Wolverine is hiding: “the old cue-ball south o’ the border…” Logan asks him what he wants, and the strange man tells him he only wants some cooperation. Tossing his card at Wolverine, he steps out of the limo, with “I’m a fan, by the way” as his parting words. Logan looks at the card, which reveals his recent interlocutor to be Donald Pierce, “Chief of Security” for a company called Alkali / Transigen. Recognizing the name “Alkali” from his painful past, the aging mutant curses with even more emotion than earlier.

As morning turns to mid-day, Logan is on a mobile phone, trying to bargain with the supplier of the meds that he is after, while driving through security at the US-Mexico border. He is annoyed when he fails to secure a price that he can afford, but still manages to greet the border guard with a “Hey, Sam,” this trip apparently being part of his daily routine.

Wolverine drives to an abandoned Mexican ranch with an old, large, water tank next to it. He enters the ranch, which he is currently using as a shabby home, alongside the hunchbacked albino mutant Caliban. Deranged phrases can be heard being yelled out in Professor Charles Xavier’s voice from the water tank. “He’s having a bad day,” Caliban informs Logan. “They’re all bad days,” Wolverine replies moodily, tossing the bag of prescription drugs to him.

“He needed these six hours ago,” Caliban notes, taking out the bag’s contents. He quickly points out that the supply isn’t enough to last them through the week, and Logan tersely responds that he’s working on it. Caliban then hands the bag back to Logan. “It’s your turn. I’ve had a rough night.” “Well, poor you,” Wolverine growls back, snatching the bag and walking towards a different part of the room. Caliban tries to inform him that their captive has mentioned that he’s communicating with someone, but Logan dismisses the idea. The albino insists that the details make the story convincing, and that the water tank, though intended to act as a barrier, does have a lot of cracks in it. “Just, please, stop,” Logan implores groggily, while searching some drawers for a fresh syringe. The hunchback tells him which drawer is the right one, then berates Logan for not listening. The man locked in the tank has been asking questions again, like why the three of them are there. He may have been trying to read Caliban’s mind. “Well, that’s what these are for,” Wolverine mutters, referring to the syringe and the bag of meds, before he exits the building. The sunlight streaming in through the now open door apparently has an adverse effect on Caliban, forcing him to draw back.

Charles Xavier, looking even older than in previous appearances, is driving his wheelchair around in circles inside the water tank, babbling incoherently. He breaks off in the middle of his recitation of “Little Miss Muffet” when a frowning Logan steps in with the meds. Xavier then begins a fresh rant, this time in the style of an Evangelical preacher, announcing to an unseen crowd of “friends” the good news that as no one can live up to God’s rules, and God knows that. It is actually okay to be imperfect. As Logan approaches him, Charles orders him to “make way,” calling him “sir.” He then abruptly starts off in a new direction while reciting an advertisement about “the next big thing” from Taco Bell.

Wolverine finally manages to hold him still and begins to roll up Xavier’s sleeve to apply the syringe. A confused Charles asks him who he is, and Logan replies that the Professor knows him. “You’re the man who puts me to sleep,” Xavier manages to recall, before being told that they both could use some sleep. Charles suddenly tries to stop Logan from jabbing him with the syringe and ends up falling to the floor. He seems frightened about what is being done to him and goes into a violent seizure, which activates his mutant psychic powers. Both Wolverine and Caliban feel the effects, with the latter unable to move and Logan falling to his knees. As Xavier thrashes about, Wolverine manages to apply the syringe, putting an end to the seizure and the psychic backlash.

In the farmhouse, Caliban struggles to catch his breath, while in the water tank a now pacified Charles asks how long he has been there. As Logan puts him to bed and gives him the rest of his medication, he reminds his former mentor that the shots mellow the seizures, while the pills prevent them from happening. He also adds a sarcastic joke, prompting the Professor to swear at him, calling him Logan for the first time. “So you remember who I am now.” “I always know who you are, it's just sometimes I don’t recognize you.” Wolverine ponders this for a second before sternly telling Charles to take his pills.

While Logan is adjusting Xavier’s bed, the Professor complains about being left alone with “that f#@&ing albino” who doesn’t listen to him. Charles is sure that he has witnessed a speciation, the appearance of a new mutant. However, he believes that there are “forces” trying to kill “them.” Hearing the pretentious word “forces,” Wolverine dismisses the story, reminding Xavier that he’s not in that business anymore. The Professor replies that “they” don’t want him, but instead want Logan, which proves how stupid they are. “They’re waiting for you… at the Statue of Liberty…” Fussing with Xavier’s blanket, Logan replies that the Statue of Liberty was a long time ago, and that no new mutants have been born anywhere in the last twenty-five years. “You always thought we were part of God’s plan, but maybe… maybe we were God’s mistake.”

Charles grabs Wolverine by the face, apparently about to deliver an inspirational speech. Instead, however, he merely mutters “What a disappointment you are.” When the Professor found him, Logan was pursuing a career as a cage fighter after spending his life as an assassin and was hooked on barbiturates. He was an animal, but Charles took him in and gave him a family. Wolverine bluntly replies that the family is gone now, and proceeds to leave, ignoring Xavier’s questions about what Logan has done and why they are there. “No one should live like this, drugged in a f#@&ing tank!” It’s for the Professor’s own good, Wolverine tells him, closing the door. Charles continues to shout after him that it isn’t, and that Logan is really just waiting for him to die.

As a train passes near the old farmhouse, causing some of the objects inside to rattle, Wolverine sits on his bed alone in his room. Mementos of his past adorn some of the walls, including the great samurai sword from his Japanese adventure, the Muramasa blade. Logan himself however is a mere shell of what he used to be, as he exerts a supreme effort to pull his one stuck claw all the way out from his knuckles, deeply cutting his other hand in the process. As his healing abilities seem to be working much slower than in previous years, he is forced to bandage the hand, before reaching for the whisky bottle once more. He then holds his old dog tag in his trembling hand, trying to revive the memories of who he used to be, before finally going to bed. As he tries to sleep despite the sounds from trains passing outside, day turns to night. Meanwhile, Professor Xavier lies on his own bed, staring upwards in either contemplation or a stupor.

As the evening wears on, Caliban is getting on with his ironing when Wolverine walks in, having barely managed to get some sleep. Reluctant to start an argument, the hunchback nevertheless points out that they need to discuss some things. Handing Logan the pill bottle, he repeats his previous observation that the dose is too low to suppress the seizures. Wolverine tells him that he wasn’t in a position to make demands, and that what they have is what “the guy” gave him. Caliban insists that he almost died during the last seizure, and Wolverine dismissingly replies that it barely lasted a minute. “It felt a lot longer than a minute,” the albino mutant proclaims. “I couldn’t breathe! You’re less affected! You know he needs a higher dose.”

Caliban goes on to say that he knows that Logan has more money stashed away, but Wolverine claims that the money is intended to get them out of where they are hiding. The hunchback responds that only Charles and Logan are going to benefit from that, as the savings are intended to buy a sunseeker yacht, “sun” being the key word. The light-shy Caliban doesn’t see a future for himself cowering below decks “like Nosferatu,” folding Logan’s underpants and cooking for Xavier. He then changes the subject, producing an adamantium bullet that he has found in Wolverine’s pocket. “If you are planning to blow your brains out, could you wait ‘till you’re out on the high seas? I just mopped these floors.” Logan tells him off, and Caliban sits down next to him, trying to be more diplomatic. He recalls how a year earlier, Wolverine asked for his help. But he can’t really help him if Logan won’t talk to him. Caliban can hear him at night, unable to sleep; Logan has refused to talk about that. Or all the booze he keeps drinking. Or the puss he wipes away from his knuckles, or the blood that Caliban washes out of his clothes, or the fresh wounds in his chest that don’t seem to be healing. “And I’m pretty sure you don’t want to talk about the fact that you can’t read the label on that bottle.” Wolverine is genuinely surprised as Caliban reveals that the bottle he had just shown him is actually ibuprofen.

Logan lashes out, telling the albino mutant to stay out of his things, and then storms off. Undeterred, Caliban calls out after him that something’s happening to him on the inside. “You’re sick; I can smell it.” Still unwilling to have that conversation, Logan returns to his job as a limo driver.

Logan drives a rowdy bachelorette party around as they get increasingly drunk, one of them even displaying her naked chest to him as he shakes his head condescendingly and keeps his eyes on the road. When the ride is over, one of the girls tips him for his toleration of their shenanigans, but he hardly notices, as he has received a message on his phone. He struggles with a pair of reading glasses, trying to make it out. Logan later drives to a shabby motel, where he finds the same odd little girl he had seen in the Mexican woman’s car, bouncing a rubber ball off a wall. The woman steps out and introduces herself as Gabriella, calling him “Mr. Logan.”

Unwilling to help her, he starts to leave, but the woman cries out that she and the girl are being chased, and that they need transportation to Canada. “Anyone can do that job,” Wolverine mutters but she continues to implore him, offering him 50,000 dollars. He finally turns around to face her, berating her for drawing the attention of her pursuers onto himself, and asks how she found him. She responds that there were reported sightings of someone looking like the Wolverine, only older. Meanwhile, an enraged, obese woman steps out of her office in a nearby building. She is the motel owner, annoyed at Laura making noise with her rubber ball late at night, and wants her overdue rent. Gabriella tries to mollify her but ends up getting knocked to the ground as her own previously injured hand starts bleeding. When Logan intervenes, the motel owner finally backs down, still claiming to have seen Gabriela with enough money to pay her bill.

Logan takes Gabriella back into her motel room, where she proceeds to bandage her hand. She explains that she used to be a nurse in Mexico City, and that she received her injury the same morning near the border. She has recently escaped from the people currently pursuing her. Logan notices a piece of paper with the name “Transigen” on her nightstand, as well as a comic book with the character Wolverine in his iconic, yellow costume on the cover. He says he has to go, but Gabriella stops him. She hands him an envelope with 20,000 dollars and insists that he’ll get another 30,000 from her friends when he gets her and the girl to Canada. Wolverine asks where she got the money and the nurse claims that she took it from her boyfriend, who wants to kill her and get the little girl. “That’s your daughter?,” Logan asks, looking through the window at the child still playing outside. “Yes,” Gabriella replies, and goes on to say that she knows Wolverine wants to help them. He growls back that she doesn’t know anything about him, and she promises that there will be no problems as long as they leave immediately. Logan shouts that he can’t just “leave” all the way for North Dakota. Still apparently desperate, she tells him that they must get there by Friday, or they will miss their chance to cross the border. She begs him for his help, and he turns once again to see the little girl, who has walked closer and is also looking at him expectantly.

Later, back in the water tank, Xavier is tending to some potted plants and Logan is keeping him company. The Professor compliments his friend’s reading glasses, claiming that they make him look younger. Logan, who has just received a message from Gabriela, surprises Charles with the news that he will be away on a job for a few days but that, when he comes back, they’ll have enough money to go live on the ocean. As he leaves, Caliban brings Charles a tray of food.

Things don’t go as planned, however. When Logan arrives at Gabriela’s, the door is broken open and the woman herself is slumped on a chair, dead. Quietly swearing, he takes her phone from a drawer and sees that the screen is still displaying the last messages the two of them had exchanged.

When Logan returns to the farmstead in the limo, the sun is fully up, so Caliban meets him with a large hat, sunglasses and his face wrapped up. He asks what happened, only to be told that the entire job was wrong from the beginning. As the disgruntled Logan walks into the house, Caliban notices that the limo’s trunk is open, and finds the little girl’s ball and backpack inside. He smells them nervously and calls back after Logan, asking who their owner is. Before he can get an answer, a car built for heavy terrain drives up, and Logan asks why Caliban didn’t see the intruder coming. Caliban replies that he can only track mutants; he’s a “glorified truffle pig,” not a clairvoyant. Logan orders him to hide inside and prepares to face the newcomers.

Donald Pierce steps out of the car, only to be told that he is trespassing on private property. Pierce agrees, adding that the property belongs to a multi-national smelting company based in Shanghai. He asks where “the old man” is hidden and deduces that he’s in the water tank, adding that he’d like to meet him. According to the Health and Safety Act, the old man is officially classified as a weapon of mass destruction. “Damn shame, what happened back east,” Pierce concludes. Logan replies that the man has been dead for a year.

Changing the subject, Pierce reminds him that he’s after the girl. Logan tries to play dumb, but is unconvincing, as he is still holding the girl’s ball and backpack. Pierce knows that he went to the motel, so Logan claims that only the woman was there. “Such as she was,” Pierce adds. He then summarizes that Logan saw Gabriela, but didn’t call Donald. “That hurts,” he says. Did Logan shoot her? No, Logan replies, and asks if Pierce did it. “I asked you first,” Donald responds in a playful tone. The surly Logan retorts that he doesn’t like guns. Pierce grabs his shoulder in a mock-friendly manner and, pushing his hand away, Logan notices that it is robotic. Donald tells him that Wolverine isn’t the only one who’s been enhanced.

The conversation then comes to an abrupt stop, as with a scream the little girl from earlier throws a pipe at Pierce’s head, knocking him out. Charles joins the strange scene in his wheelchair and introduces her as Laura, then calls out to Caliban, claiming that she’s the one Xavier was telling them about. He says to Laura that they have been waiting for her, then struggles to convey the same message in Spanish. The little girl aggressively grabs her bag away from Logan, picks up her dropped ball and follows the gently welcoming Xavier back into the house.

Caliban joins Logan, who is looking down at the unconscious intruder. The albino suggests that Pierce looks like ex-military and is possibly a bounty hunter. “Worse,” Logan replies, handing him the card he got from Donald earlier. The two guess that more men will come looking for him. “Get him back in his ride, take him out to the wash and dump him,” Logan orders, handing him a gun from Donald’s pocket and kicking Pierce’s head to make sure he doesn’t wake up. He then tells Caliban to message him when he’s done, so Logan can drive him back.

Laura is at a table hungrily devouring some cereal, while Xavier looks at her with an awestruck expression. He attempts to talk to her in broken Spanish, as if in response to a thought he read in her mind. Logan barges in and tries to look through the girl’s backpack to see what her mother has gotten them into, but Laura refuses to give it up and, to Logan’s surprise, turns out to be physically strong enough to keep the backpack from him. He walks away, followed in his wheelchair by Charles, who tells him that the woman he has met isn’t her mother. Logan asks if the apparently mute girl told him that, and Xavier explains that they’re “communicating.” Not pleased at all, Logan orders him to take his pills. They’re no longer safe and need to leave, and Charles can’t have an attack out there. Xavier quickly agrees in order to change the subject: this is the mutant he has been talking about. She needs their help. Logan growls back that she’s not a mutant, unless her gift is eating or pipe throwing. The ground suddenly shakes, making a startled Laura get up, but Charles calms her down by explaining that it’s only a train.

Caliban succeeds in dumping Pierce by the side of the road but, moments, later Donald is back on his feet and has retrieved his gun from the car, pointing it at Caliban. Seeing that more cars are arriving, Pierce tells the “mutie” that now he’s f#@&ed.

Also noticing the cars from a distance, Logan rushes to hide Charles, who is mistakenly telling Laura that the roaring sound is from another train. As his former X-Man wheels Xavier away, the elderly Professor assures the girl that Logan will be back for her as well. Logan gets Charles into the limo and folds up his wheelchair to put it into the trunk, with Xavier constantly insisting that they need to go back for Laura. “She’s not our problem,” Logan snaps back and starts driving, but is unable to escape as the limo becomes surrounded by the encroaching cars. Bulky uniformed men rush out of the cars and one shows the others a poster of Laura, telling them in Spanish that they must capture or kill her, and referring to the girl as “el mutante.”

Donald Pierce also returns in his own car and leans through the limo’s open window to greet Xavier, calling him as the world’s most wanted octogenarian. Charles politely corrects him that he’s actually a nonagenarian. Logan jumps out of the limo, hitting one of the thugs with the car door, and demands to know where Caliban is. Donald claims to have left him in the same ditch he was going to leave him in. Infuriated, Logan draws his claws, but is overpowered by Pierce’s men, who knock him to the ground and point their assault rifles at him. Donald condescendingly tells Wolverine that seeing him like this is heart-breaking. Logan threatens and swears at him, only for Pierce to kick him in the head. Donald then orders some of his men, led by a particularly large goon with a mohawk, to go get the girl.

Inside the house, Laura calmly continues eating her cereal while watching the men approach on Logan’s closed-circuit television set. They finally surround her, and the one with the mohawk, who is sporting cyborg enhancements, brandishes a heavy pair of handcuffs. She turns her head to look at him menacingly.

Outside, pained yelling can faintly be heard from the house, and Pierce gestures to his remaining men to slowly approach. As they do, Laura steps out with a large object which she dismissively tosses at their feet. It is the mohawked thug’s disembodied head, dripping a fresh trail of blood. She then tosses down the handcuffs he had attempted to imprison her with and walks towards Pierce with grim determination. He tries to calm her down and get her to stop, struggling to keep his nervous men from shooting, as they remind him how he told them to get her alive or dead. When she doesn’t cease her approach, Donald loses his relaxed veneer and panics, finally backing away from her. Before anyone can react, she extends two pairs of metal claws from her knuckles and begins slashing at the men.

They manage to drive her away by opening fire and she rushes back over the fence towards the abandoned smelting facility alongside the house. Pierce orders them to stop shooting, reminding them that “she heals,” and then emphatically pushes them to run after her. Stunned, Logan swears, then finally manages to get up and gives chase. Xavier looks on from inside the limo with an awed half-smile.

Inside the smelting facility, as the uniformed men attempt to stalk her, Laura leaps out at them and uses her claws to dispatch them with incredible speed, acrobatic agility, and deadly precision. She collects her backpack from one of them and makes her escape from the building. Outside, she is intercepted by another thug, and is about to do away with him as well when Pierce shoots her with a harpoon straight through her chest. As he reels the line back, drawing her towards himself, she continues screaming and growling, apparently undaunted by her injury. Several men try to hold her down and handcuff her, but Logan finally comes to her aid, stabbing them.

Laura breaks the harpoon’s blade and pulls it out of her body, only for more thugs to grab hold of her. They pull her away, keeping her arms trapped, but she extends a metal claw from the tip of her shoe and begins stabbing them with it. Now free, she continues using her other claws to fight the remaining men, while Logan violently kills one of them who was about to get to Charles in the limo. Wolverine then leaps into the limo and starts driving, while Xavier points out that, as he had said, she’s a mutant like Logan; indeed very much like him. As Laura sees Logan and Charles about to drive away, she leaps onto the limo and climbs in through the skylight. She then shields Xavier’s head from a bullet through the window, taking it in her arm and then sucking the bullet out of her arm with practiced ease.

Unable to break out with the limo through the property’s wire fencing, and seeing that the other cars are approaching, Logan starts backing out, dragging some of the wire fencing along and using it to immobilize some of the cars. The heavily damaged limo, now riddled with bullet-holes, is then driven towards the train tracks. Some of the thugs catch up to it in motorbikes and try to grab hold of the mutants through the windows, but Laura bloodily dispatches them, even stabbing one through both eyes simultaneously before sitting back down and wiping the blood from her face with her sleeve.

Logan then drives the limo through the train tracks an instant before an extremely long train passes through. The train rams the frontmost car of the pursuers and keeps speeding forward, leaving Pierce and the remaining thugs to helplessly watch as behind it, on the other side of the tracks, the mutants make their escape. Disappointed but not defeated, Pierce orders his men to bring him “the tracker.”

Logan continues driving while Laura curiously pokes at the bullet holes in the windowpane. He aggressively asks her who the hell she is but gets no answer. Xavier gives him a hint, asking if she reminds him of anybody.

In a makeshift military camp, a robed and roughed up Caliban is brought to Donald Pierce, who claims to have read about him as a kid. The albino answers evasively, prompting Pierce to violently kick him. The cyborg then points out in his regular mock-friendly manner that Caliban used to work for Pierce’s employers, hunting down mutants. “What changed,” Donald asks, “you got religion?” As the albino doesn’t reply, Pierce goes on to tell him that he needs Caliban to do one more thing for “the good guys,” to track one more “special mutie.” Caliban refuses to help him, but Donald doesn’t believe that people really change. To drive home his point, Pierce suddenly exposes Caliban to the sunlight, making the mutant scream in agony as his sensitive skin begins to burn and blister.

In his relaxed manner, Donald suggests that they shouldn’t bring out the worst in each other. Over Caliban’s screams, he says that the girl isn’t worth it; she’s not “a natural f#@&-up” like Caliban, she’s a business mistake, R&D gone bad. They can’t have things with patents running around hurting people. They need to get her off the board before she hurts somebody else, maybe even someone Caliban cares about. “So get to sniffin’,” he concludes, finally tossing a towel over the agonized mutant’s face.

Logan and Charles are in the limo at a gas station, watching a recording made by Gabriela on her phone. She explains that she is a nurse who used to work for Transigen Research in Mexico City. She then shows video she secretly took of children being kept in a scientific facility and explains that, although Transigen is owned by an American company, what she is currently showing is illegal in the U.S. and Canada. Along with other staff, she had been told, falsely, that they were developing pharmaceuticals. Instead, the facility was artificially impregnating Mexican girls (now incapable of being found) to breed genetically altered children who were then kept there, never allowed outside to see the sun, or the ocean, or any other creature. The video then shows a scientist, assisted by Donald Pierce, interrupting a birthday party for one of the children and later telling a nurse that she is not to throw parties for them, call them “baby,” or “kiss boo-boos.” She is to think of them not as children, but as things, with patents and copyrights.

As the recording proceeds, Gabriela’s voiceover explains that her employers thought the staff was too poor and stupid to understand but, though they may have been poor, they were not stupid. Their employers were in the business of making soldiers, killers, she states, as the video shows one child unleashing shockwaves against a tackling dummy. Just as the recording gets to a shot of a heavily bloodied Laura being implanted with adamantium metal on a hospital bed, the phone’s battery runs out. Logan and Charles are silent and upset as they look out of the car’s window at Laura, who is riding a coin-operated toy horse in front of the gas station. Xavier points out that Logan took the woman’s money and promised to take the child to North Dakota. “What is she?” Logan wonders, so Charles finally gives it to him straight: she is Logan’s daughter. Alkali had his genetic code… “Not just mine,” Logan interrupts, and when Xavier tries to press the subject, Logan refuses to talk about it. Charles then agrees to change the subject, admitting that he needs to pee.

The riding horse has stopped moving, so Laura shakes the coin deposit box, then unsheathes her claws. Logan arrives in time to grab hold of her arm and insert another coin, telling her that this is to be the last ride. The girl just scowls and looks away as the ride starts.

While a surly Logan struggles to assist the partially immobilized Charles in the bathroom, Laura wanders around the gas station store, randomly picking up things to eat and drink before putting on a pair of sunglasses with a brightly colored frame. The young store clerk approaches her, explaining that she needs to pay for the items, but she heads for the door. He blocks her way and, glancing around to find her parents, begins to take back the things she has accumulated. Laura reacts by angrily throwing him to the ground and unsheathing her claws, but again Logan stops her, sternly telling her “Not okay!” He apologizes half-heartedly to the clerk and picks up a phone charger before exiting with the girl, leaving the clerk bewildered.

Later that night, the limo is stopped at Oklahoma’s city limits, and Laura and Charles are asleep. Logan groggily switches the now slightly charged phone back on and continues watching the recording. As the children grew older, they became more difficult to control, Gabriela explains. The video shows Laura being interrupted while repeatedly cutting at her own arm with her claws, the wounds instantly healing. Seeing this, Logan glances at the sleeping Laura, this time with a hint of concern and pity. The company made the children’s bodies into weapons, the nurse goes on, but they did not want to fight. The video then shows a team of staffers being unable to stop one boy from running away to the roof of the facility and jumping off.

“A soldier who will not fight is useless,” Gabriela explains, so the scientists at the Transigen building began working on something new. Something they say is better than the children, as it has no soul. The phone’s screen then displays scattered footage of bio-readings alongside the code designation “X-24,” while in the background the scientist from earlier is heard complaining about being unable to get good sushi in that part of Mexico. They must have been successful, Gabriela points out, as they eventually decided to shut the facility down and started euthanizing the children. While the video shows Donald Pierce dragging a child across the floor after its failed escape attempt, the nurse’s voiceover announces that she and other staffers tried to save as many children as they can. There follows footage of people being chased while shuffling children through the building, as the children use their mutant powers to repel the pursuers.

The video then switches to the house Gabriela was last staying at, where she directly addresses the camera while Laura sleeps on a bed behind her. The nurse has read about a place for mutants up north, called Eden. “If you are watching this, it means that I am dead. I am not sure if any other children survived. We were separated. There is no more money; that was a lie. She’s not my child. But I love her. You may not love her. But she is your child. Please, I beg you… take her to safety,” Gabriela whispers, fighting back sobs, as the recording ends. Logan looks at sleeping little girl pensively.

When Laura wakes up, it is still night time, but the car is driving through Oklahoma, and she marvels at the city lights. Xavier also awakens and she smiles at him. He asks Logan if this is where they’ll be hiding out, only to be told that they won’t be hiding out. They’ll get a few hours of sleep, clean up, get new clothes and a new ride, then get out of there. The heavily damaged limo then stops in front of a hotel and Logan hands the keys to a stunned young valet, telling him to keep the car out front. As Logan helps Charles out of the limo and into his wheelchair, Laura puts on her colorful sunglasses and begins taking in her surroundings with an awed expression. She is equally impressed as they make their way through the huge casino in the hotel lobby and stops in front of a display of clothes for sale, where the mannequins represent a father and daughter holding hands. Logan tries to draw her away, but Charles reminds him that they do need new clothes.

Accompanied by Laura, Logan wheels Xavier into an elevator, where Charles eagerly begins rummaging through their freshly acquired shopping bag and puts on a fancy new hat. Logan presses the button for their floor and then has to stop the little girl from pressing all the other buttons just to hear the tone, explaining to her that it is not a toy. When the elevator stops at a lower floor, Logan has to dissuade some people from coming in, pointing to Xavier’s wheelchair and gruffly thanking them for their consideration. He then tries to get Laura to stand still, while Charles is handing him another new hat. “We’ll get changed in the room,” Logan has to explain to him as the little girl watches how adults converse.

“You’re a low-down, lying Yankee,” a character in the 1953 movie Shane says right before being shot, as Laura and Charles watch the classic western on the television set in their hotel room. Xavier tells Laura that the film is very famous, and now almost a hundred years old. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Logan coughs up some blood onto a towel before taking a swig from a small bottle of whiskey. Outside, a bathrobe-clad Laura is riding back and forth in Charles’ wheelchair, her eyes riveted to the screen as the characters are singing a prayer at a funeral. Resting on the bed, Xavier recalls how he first saw the picture when he was her age, at the Essoldo Cinema in his old hometown.

Having put on his new jacket, Logan is looking over documents from Laura’s backpack, apparently taken from Transigen by Gabriela. They present bio-stats and other data such as estimated IQ and emotional IQ for mutant children from the facility, as well as the names of the mutants used for their source DNA. The document for Laura informs him that her code number at the lab was X23-23, and that she’s 11 years old. The name of the source for her DNA is given as James Howlett, Logan’s original name. Seeing this, he glances into the next room where the little girl is busy putting on her new boots. He then finds something else in her backpack: old issues of “Uncanny X-Men” comics.

Logan interrupts Charles and Laura’s movie to sarcastically ask the little girl if she’s an X-Men fan. He tells her that maybe a quarter of what the comics portray really happened, and not the way they present it. “In the real world, people die,” he growls, and no self-proclaimed hero in a leotard can stop it. The nurse has been feeding Laura meaningless children’s stories, Logan insists, as Xavier tries to calm him down. “I don’t think Laura needs reminding of life’s impermanence,” Charles finally tells him, before asking in a conciliatory tone if Logan still intends to find them a new ride. He does but, before he leaves, he tosses Xavier’s pills to Laura and orders her to give him two more in an hour. After Logan storms out, the two remaining mutants finish watching their film. The hero is telling a little boy that he tried being different from what he is, to turn his back on all the killing, but a brand sticks. He then encourages the boy to run home to his mother and let her know that everything’s all right: there are no more guns in the valley. Laura watches the scene intently, memorizing every word.

Donald Pierce and his Reavers arrive in their cars and trucks at the gas station where the mutants had stopped earlier. The intimidated clerk tells them that he already gave the cops all the information he had. Screams can then be heard from the building as the man is being interviewed, while in the Reavers’ truck two thugs drag a badly burned Caliban back into his cage, as he has done his job of tracking the mutants.

As Logan leaves the badly damaged limo to be stripped for parts, he is upset to find that Charles has been hiding his pills inside it instead of taking them. Later, he negotiates with a saleswoman for a new truck, telling her he’s willing to pay her more if she skips filling out the necessary paperwork. She agrees but informs him that it will still take an hour to fit the truck with tires. Logan decides to spend that time the way he’s used to, getting drunk in the nearest bar. As he drinks, he glances through Laura’s issues of “X-Men” and finds to his dismay that “Eden” is the name of a fictional place in the comics. He compares the coordinates in one comic book panel to those left by Gabriela for the location in North Dakota where he is supposed to take Laura and finds them to be identical. Angrily, he assumes that he has been sent looking for a made-up place.

Returning to the hotel in his new truck, Logan’s anger quickly turns to panic as he sees several thugs skulking around outside who look like Reavers. Trying to remain calm, he stays out of their sight and makes his way inside. Before he can get very far however, something appears to go badly wrong. The ground feels like it’s shaking, people around become disoriented and distraught, and two cars outside actually collide with each other. Concluding that Charles is having a seizure which is affecting everyone in the area, Logan struggles through the strain to get to the Professor quicker. Around him people are immobilized and appear to be in pain. Outside is Donald Pierce’s truck, where he, his men and Caliban are similarly unable to move or breathe. The reason is evident on a monitor in front of Pierce, which shows his thugs surrounding Xavier with rifles, also now frozen in place and shaking.

As if fighting against a powerful gravitational pull, Logan slowly progresses through the casino in the lobby, grabbing hold of some objects to keep his balance and knocking over others. He can barely stand the slowness of the elevator as it makes its way up, his brain constantly assaulted by Xavier’s telepathic onslaught. He feels worse still while traversing the corridor to their room, even using his claws to anchor himself to the walls as he passes through. When he gets to the room, the door is open and an armed thug is stuck in place in front of it. The powerful cyborg barely has the strength to turn his eyes towards Logan as the latter takes in the scene inside. Several Reavers are paralyzed, having been about to shoot Xavier, who is in the throes of a powerful seizure. Laura is the only one still able to move, crawling on the floor in a desperate attempt to reach the Professor, while pills and syringes lie scattered on the floor.

Logan stabs the man at the door through the head, then clambers into the room. He begins stabbing the remaining thugs’ heads one by one, before finally losing his balance and collapsing over a table. He then crawls on his knees over to the two men closest to Charles and guts them. Laura manages to reach him, handing him a syringe, which he finally injects into Charles’ shoulder. Almost instantly the seizure stops, all the stabbed men collapse to the floor, and Logan, Xavier, and Laura are left trying to catch their breath.

Laura notices that one of the thugs is still alive and quickly slashes him before he can harm them. She then puts her little hand in Xavier’s larger one in a gesture of friendship, and he asks if she’s alright. Logan finds that the intruders have body cameras and guesses that Pierce is outside watching, which means they have to get out of there. He and Laura quickly wheel Xavier out to the truck with Charles clumsily apologizing to the still half-conscious people scattered around the floor of the casino. A dazed Pierce stumbles out of his truck to find that the mutants are already gone.

The next day, Logan is listening to the radio while driving on the open road. The incident in Oklahoma is being commented on, with the reporter saying that at least 400 people are recovering after their temporary paralysis. She states that many are noting the similarities with an incident in Westchester over a year earlier that left more than 600 injured and took the lives of seven mutants, including several X-Men. Glancing nervously at the sleeping Charles, Logan switches off the radio to make sure his former mentor doesn’t hear this. Logan then scolds Laura for playing with the car lock, his voice waking Xavier up. Charles reminds him that she’s a child; in fact, she’s Logan’s…

Logan interrupts him angrily to ask how long ago he stopped taking his meds. Shrugging, Xavier admits that it’s been around two days. Logan recalls the previous day’s incident and points out that if it had lasted longer, everyone in that casino would be… Here Charles interrupts, explaining that he did what he had to in order to protect Laura. “You didn’t do anything,” Logan snaps back, insisting that Xavier merely freaked out and had a seizure. Charles claims that Logan prefers him “pharmaceutically castrated, rambling like a lunatic,” to make things easier for himself. “There is nothing easy about you, Charles, nothing!” Logan retorts.

Xavier then accuses him of being like the rest of the world, always blaming someone, and pretending not to be boring. When Logan scoffs at Xavier’s disappointed attitude, the Professor tries a more conciliatory tone. He points out that Logan should be able to derive a sense of purpose from taking a young mutant to meet with more of their kind. Casually swearing, Logan replies that the reason he sees no purpose in their mission is that nurse Gabriela made Eden up. Charles fails to understand him but, rather than explaining any further, Logan hands Laura the Professor’s pills and orders her to give him two of them. He then demands to see Charles open his mouth to make sure that he actually swallowed them, which Xavier does, mockingly.

Some way behind the mutants, Donald Pierce and his Reavers stop their pursuit to rendezvous with a helicopter, from which emerges the chief scientist seen in Gabriella’s recordings, wearing an outfit for traveling and a pair of sunglasses. Addressing him as Dr. Rice, Pierce tries to assure him that everything’s under control, but the scientist berates him for how he is handling the situation. He then approaches the truck in which Caliban is imprisoned, making the albino mutant nervous.

Still driving, Logan swears at the automated freight trucks on the road. Xavier tells him off for screaming at a machine and not minding his language in front of Laura. “Oh, what, she can gut a man with her feet, she can’t hear a few naughty words, huh?” Logan retorts. Charles insists that she can still learn to be better. “You mean better than me,” Logan mutters, and Xavier admits that he did mean that. He then offers an explanation for Laura having foot claws: her gender. In a pride of lions, the female is both hunter and caregiver, her front claws used for hunting, and her back claws for protecting others, ensuring their survival.

Logan has no reply to this, and the conversation is dropped when one of the large trucks accidentally runs him off the road, along with another car which is transporting horses in a trailer. The horses escape and run around in a panic, prompting Charles to suggest that they help the owners round them up. Reminding him that they need to keep going, Logan supposes that someone will eventually come along to help. “Someone has come along,” Xavier insists. Reluctantly, Logan steps out, while Charles secretly uses his telepathy to calm the horses. Seeing the animals suddenly docile, Logan looks back suspiciously at his former mentor, before he asks the owners, an African-American family, if they need a hand.

After the horses are back in the trailer, the family introduce themselves to Logan and start a conversation. He introduces Laura as his daughter and Xavier as his father, “Chuck,” and the three are invited to the family’s nearby home for a meal. “That would be lovely,” Charles replies in a friendly manner before Logan has a chance to refuse.

Caliban has been hooked up to some equipment for medical treatment. Dr. Rice allows him to call him Zander and states that, according to his colleague, Caliban has been resistant, possibly dispensing delayed information to allow his friends to stay one step ahead. Dr. Rice claims to be offering him redemption: a chance to protect the world and maybe save his friends, for which the girl should be considered a small price. Unlike him, she’s impure, not made by nature, but a mistake of Zander’s. Caliban replies that he did what he could, and the doctor’s colleagues burned and beat him; he calls them savages. Chuckling and still appearing friendly, Rice agrees, as the Reavers have been very ineffective. He is bringing new tools to bear, but he still needs someone to point him in the right direction. Caliban refuses to help and Zander tries to calm him down. He points out that the old man obviously has some kind of degenerative brain disease, and in the world’s most dangerous brain, too. “What a combo,” he concludes suggestively.

The three mutants are sitting down to dinner with the family they’ve helped, the Munsons. The teenaged son, Nate, is clumsily delivering a prayer of thanks for the food, and for their new friends, “the Howletts,” who came to their aid. His parents join him in saying amen, then serve their guests. Logan has to gruffly remind Laura to use utensils rather than her hands, and to not take all the corn, but leave some for the others. Slightly taken aback, the mother, Kathryn, says they have more if she wants, but Logan insists that the girl is fine. Xavier heartily compliments the food, and the father, Will, asks where they are headed. As Logan replies Oregon, and Charles simultaneously says North Dakota, the Professor has to clarify: Oregon, then North Dakota.

Vacation, Kathryn guesses. Yes, Xavier, says, and long overdue; they are city folk, who always wanted to take a road trip, see the country, and meet the people living there. Kathryn mentions that she keeps telling her husband they should take a vacation, and Will insists that someone has to be there to take care of the homestead. The couple then bickers: she thinks it’s time to leave for a new place, but he wants to know what they will live off. The Lord will provide, Kathryn says, prompting him to respond that he’s still waiting for the Lord to provide him with a new thresher. This makes their son laugh at the friendly quarrel. His mother would still like to travel someday, and Xavier tells her that he’s sure they will. Nate offers to drop out of school to make travel easier, but here Kathryn disagrees.

Smiling, Charles asks him why he would do that, and Logan pokes fun by pointing out that Xavier used to run a school himself. A kind of special needs school, Charles agrees, before adding that Logan used to be there too. Lightening the mood still more, Logan recalls that he was kicked out a few times, and Xavier states that he would like to say Logan was a good pupil, but fears choking on the words. This makes everyone laugh, including Laura, and even Logan smiles indulgently.

Night has fallen as the six friends rise from the table. Logan is very grateful for the meal and Kathryn offers to put her guests up for the night in the free space they have. He prefers to find a motel, but is told that the nearest one is two hours away and not very nice, while Xavier suggests that they stay and then leave at the break of dawn. Logan prefers to have his argument with Charles away from the others and takes him into the bathroom, while Kathryn offers Laura some desert.

“Two days on the road, only one meal, and hardly any sleep. She’s 11, I’m f#@%ing 90,” Xavier quietly argues. “Well, that’s 101 reasons to keep going,” Logan answers, while giving him his pills. He asks what they are supposed to do after they stay the night. Take her to her friends in Eden, Charles responds, and then buy the sunseeker. Before Logan can think of any reply, the house’s residents begin experiencing trouble with their water. Nate explains that the pump station that supplies them, which is a mile and a half away, sometimes gets itself shut off. His son’s next remark suggests that it gets shut off by some unpleasant people that the family is in a quarrel with. Xavier offers for Logan to go along with Will to fix the problem. Nate also offers to go, but is reminded that he has homework to do. Logan agrees to help, as soon as he gets his “dad” settled in for the night. Laura watches curiously as he gently picks Charles up off his wheelchair to carry him up the stairs.

Safe in his bed, Xavier tells Logan that this is what life should be like: a home, safety, people who love each other. Logan should take a moment to feel it. He still has time to find that for himself. Logan dismisses this, reminding Charles that the world has changed. They’re taking a risk by even just staying there. And the place they’re supposed to be going, Eden, doesn’t exist; the nurse got it from a comic book. It’s not real. It is for Laura, Xavier points out emphatically. Logan simply tells him to get some rest and leaves the room.

As Logan and Will walk through the night to the water station, Will recounts the family’s predicament. A beverage company bought up everything in the area, but the Munsons wouldn’t sell their house, so the company tried evicting them through legal means, then started messing with their water. A couple of months ago somebody even poisoned their dogs. Logan guesses that the trucks which ran them off the road earlier also had something to do with it. “Who knows. Maybe,” Will responds, before pointing out the company’s facilities glowing in the distance. They’re like dinosaurs with large bodies and little brains, he says, producing “cloned-up super corn” that tastes awful. So why do people eat it, Logan asks. They don’t, Will answers, they drink it; the corn syrup is in the energy drinks everyone takes to stay awake, cheer up, feel strong, sexy, whatever. Before, people simply used to have bad days. Logan replies that he still has those.

Laura visits the Munsons’ son, Nate, in his room, and looks at his sports trophies. He explains that they’re all second and third place; he’s not too good, but his dad still makes him participate. She then shows an interest in his headphones. He leaves them to her, along with the device playing the music, deciding to get them back from her the next day. Later, in her bed, Laura listens to music on the headphones while looking at a picture of herself and other children from the Transigen facility with nurse Gabriela.

Will and Logan spend some time fixing the water supply system. Will asks Logan how long his daughter has been mute, and he answers that she has been that way since the beginning. Will claims to envy him; when kids get to Nate’s age, a lot of nonsense comes out of their mouths. “Makes you wonder the whole point of it all.”

Before the conversation can continue, a truck pulls up, and Will draws a gun, nervously reassuring Logan that they won’t really need it. He then confronts the newcomers: an older bearded man and two younger guys. They claim that he is trespassing and dismiss the agreement he claims to have had with the previous owner. Logan steps out, rudely advising them to drive away. They assume that Mr. Munson has hired some muscle and tell Logan he’s got a big mouth. “I hear that a lot,” Logan admits. The bearded man assumes that he probably hears this sound too, then cocks his gun. “More than I’d like,” Logan replies. “Then you know the drill,” the bearded man says, then tells him to walk away and begins counting to three. As the man ignores Will’s insistence that he has rights to this water and has hired a lawyer, Logan simply takes the man’s gun and punches him in the face with it, then breaks it in two. “You know the drill,” Logan echoes, growling at the thugs to leave. As they drive away, he coughs and then admits to Will that he’s had some training.

As dawn approaches, Xavier is in his bed, listening to the crickets. Hearing footsteps, he assumes it’s Logan and tells him not to wake Laura yet, but to let her sleep another hour. Charles admits that last night’s sleep was his best in a long time, but also that he doesn’t deserve it. He has done something unspeakable back in Westchester, and now at last he has remembered it. Logan wouldn’t tell him, so they just kept running away from it. “I think I finally understand you,” Charles begins to say, but the man in the room with him only looks like Logan. His hair and beard are shorter, and with a ruthless expression he sticks his metal claws through Xavier’s chest.

Freshly awakened, Laura charges at the intruder and stabs him multiple times as blood trickles from the still conscious Charles’ mouth. Nate walks into the room and attacks the intruder with a bat, only to be slaughtered. “He’s fantastic,” Zander Rice declares, watching footage of the scene from the intruder’s body camera. “You said you only needed the girl!” a horrified Caliban yells from his cage, but Rice is undaunted. He repeats his earlier statement that he was bringing a new tool to bear, and claims that Caliban and his friends had every chance they deserved.

Logan’s lookalike carries a shackled Laura over his shoulder as Kathryn confronts him with a shotgun. Will and Logan return just in time to hear the woman shout and futilely fire her gun before being stabbed to death. Laura screams as Will climbs the stairs to meet the intruder and is himself brutally stabbed and thrown back down the stairs. Logan then meets the intruder at the bottom of the staircase. The two exchange savage looks and, reluctantly ignoring the stranger walking away with Laura, Logan rushes up to see Charles. He finds Kathryn’s body, then his fatally injured mentor, and desperately starts telling Xavier that it wasn’t him who inflicted the wound.

Meanwhile, his doppelganger walks out of the house with the struggling Laura, and Dr. Rice awaits him in the Reavers’ truck. They struggled to raise the X-23’s without a conscience, Rice explains to Pierce, but you can’t nurture rage; you have to design it from scratch. The Logan lookalike appears to be a case in point, as he mindlessly walks towards the truck with the captive Laura. Suddenly, he is interrupted by two more trucks that pull up with the Munsons’ enemies, led by the older bearded man. They step out, assuming that the doppelganger is Logan, and tell him that whatever Munson is paying him, the Canewood beverage company can offer him five thousand a week. The lookalike drops Laura and walks menacingly toward them, prompting the bearded man to shoot him, which enrages the doppelganger, who promptly beheads the bearded man.

Rice bemoans his loss of control over the situation and Caliban looks on horrified as Logan’s lookalike slaughters Canewood’s men. Meanwhile, the real Logan tries to stop Xavier’s bleeding, but is unable to do so and Charles passes away while muttering about the sunseeker boat they were going to acquire. Dr. Rice walks out of the Reavers’ truck and tries to calm “24” down, but Logan’s doppelganger simply continues killing. Pierce assembles his men to go out and help the scientist, while Caliban surreptitiously grabs hold of a stray grenade. Caliban then detonates himself and the entire truck, including the Reavers, with only Pierce barely managing to survive.

Furious over Xavier’s death, Logan engages his double and begins stabbing him. He soon loses the upper hand as metal claws clang against each other, and the lookalike slashes at Logan, nearly killing him. He is prevented from doing so by a car which rams into him, driven by the still surviving Will Munson. Will then steps out of the car and fires his rifle at the doppelganger several times, before turning towards Logan. He is about to shoot Logan as well, but the gun is out of ammo, and Will finally succumbs to his wounds, collapsing to the ground. With Zander Rice watching, unable to do anything, the heavily bloodied Logan then stumbles over to Laura, who is still shackled and picks her up. He brings her into his truck and she screams furiously at the sight of Xavier’s corpse inside while Logan starts driving. As the truck makes its way straight through a cornfield, Logan frees the flailing Laura from her shackles with his claws.

Morning comes and, as the Reavers regroup, Zander Rice injects Logan’s lookalike, X-24, with a green-colored serum to help him heal from his injuries and, with apparent affection, calls him a newborn.

Logan repeatedly coughs as he drives, while a now pacified Laura watches the road through her colorful sunglasses, Nate’s headphones in her ears and her knuckles still blood-stained from the fight. Later, Logan digs a grave for Charles in a forest by a lake but finds himself tearful and unable to deliver a eulogy. Laura puts her little hand on his arm, but he pulls away and walks back to the truck. It fails to start, which infuriates Logan, who then steps out and begins pummeling it with a shovel. He finally collapses from exhaustion as Laura looks on.

Logan wakes up hooked up to medical equipment in a doctor’s office that Laura has somehow managed to bring him to. The doctor is a kindly old man who seems fascinated by mutants and advises Logan to check himself into a hospital to find out what’s poisoning him from the inside. Logan insists that he knows what it is, and simply gets up to leave, despite his still open wounds. He meets Laura, who is waiting outside, and, as the doctor offers to run some tests, Logan tells him to look after his own life and forget they were ever there. He then struggles to catch up to Laura as she speedily walks back to a Ford she has stolen for them.

Taking the driver’s seat beside her, Logan points out that she can’t just take things, then reluctantly thanks her for saving him, and she replies with a curt “De nada.” This annoys Logan, who had been convinced that she was mute. However, when she begins rapidly yelling in Spanish, he changes his mind and urges her to shut up. She then lists names of mutant children: Jonah, Gideon, Rebecca, Delilah and Rictor, then demands that Logan take her to North Dakota to be with them. He tries to convince her that the place she wants to go is made up, but she seems convinced that it’s real, even pointing to the coordinates in her comic book. After he still refuses to drive her all the way there, she begins hitting him and, when he stops her, she continues repeating the children’s names. Logan finally relents and agrees to drive her, if only to prove to her that their destination is made up.

At a military base, Zander Rice argues with a major who berates him for leaving behind a war zone in the Mexican city of Juarez and now apparently doing the same thing again. Zander reminds the major that he himself wanted “these assets,” referring to the mutant children, off the board. Rice then orders his men to save DNA from the now dead Caliban, as he was a good tracker and had a high IQ. Meanwhile, recovering in a hospital bed, Pierce fixes his own cyborg prosthetics before looking at Laura’s photograph that the Reavers have recovered--the one of her and the other mutant children, which has Eden’s North Dakota coordinates on the back.

Logan is barely able to stay awake as he drives the Ford through the desert. Laura suggests that he let her drive, which he absolutely refuses to do. She then points out that he is dying and that, according to Charles, he wants to die. When asked what else Charles has told her, she replies that he told her not to let Logan die. He makes no answer and, as he continues nodding off, she encourages him to rest. Night falls as Logan sleeps and Laura changes places with him to take the wheel.

When Logan wakes up, the Ford has traversed the remaining distance and is at the foot of a small mountain. Logan looks up to see a little wooden tower with a large radio antenna atop the mountain, as well as Laura calling to him to climb up there. Not having the strength to do so, he loses consciousness again. He next awakens strapped to a makeshift wooden elevator which is slowly being manually reeled up towards the tower. Laura is up there waiting for him, along with a dozen other children of various ethnicities. Before he can make sense of the situation, he blacks out once more.

Logan wakes up again inside a wooden dwelling next to the tower, where the children are trying to help him recover. One girl uses her ice breath to create a cold compress for him, while a boy prepares an injection with the same green substance that Rice had given X-24 earlier, and asks another boy, a Mexican named Rictor, if the dose is okay, only to be told to reduce it. Logan first asks where he is, then immediately questions them on where they got the green substance. “Where we came from,” Rictor explains. They gave it to them before a fight, as it makes you stronger. It makes you crazy, Logan corrects him gruffly, and can kill you. Not if you use it in small doses, Rictor insists patiently. It’s helping Logan heal. The older mutant then asks about Laura, and a smallish African-American boy named Bobby points to her sleeping in the corner. He offers to wake her up, but Logan refuses and lies back against his pillow, finally acknowledging that they are safe.

In the middle of the night, Logan grunts and growls, waking himself up. Laura has been watching him and guesses that he was having a nightmare. Still tired, Logan asks if she too has nightmares. “Si,” she admits, adding that in them people hurt her. His are different, Logan explains; he hurts people. Laura then shows him the adamantium bullet he carries around which she found in his pocket, and asks in Spanish what it is. Logan tells her that it's made of adamantium, the metal that was put in the two of them, which is now one of the few things that can kill them. It’s probably killing Logan already, as his healing powers are being overtaxed by the metal poisoning his system. He recalls how he got the bullet a long time ago and kept it as a reminder of what he is and admits that lately he’s been thinking of shooting himself with it, like Charles suspected.

Commiserating with Logan’s mental anguish, Laura quietly points out that she has also hurt people. “You’ll have to learn how to live with that,” Logan advises her before settling back down with a groan. “They were bad people,” she insists. “All the same,” he tells her, concluding the first genuinely fatherly conversation he has had with the girl. As he falls asleep, Laura takes the bullet away from him. Aside from them, the other children are also sleeping in bunk beds in the wooden shack. As dawn begins, a helicopter passes over the shack and the adjoining small tower, observing them.

Logan is awakened by the children’s suppressed giggles after they have used tiny scissors to trim his moustache and beard. He looks at himself in a dusty mirror on the wall and yells that it’s not funny. He then asks Rictor how long he’s been unconscious. Walking out towards the small wooden tower and giving orders to start packing, Rictor answers that Logan has been asleep for two days. The older mutant begins to say that they can’t just stay in one place for too long, but Rictor informs him that they already have a plan. They were waiting for Logan to recover and had given some other children until today to find them. Tomorrow they will leave before dawn for Canada.

In the tower, he is assured by an ally’s female voice on an old radio communicator that between noon and 5:00 the satellites will be blind. She also informs him in her Spanish accent that their asylum has been approved. Nearby, Laura is looking back towards the shack through a pair of huge mounted binoculars. She sees the children playing around while collecting their luggage, as well as Logan groggily stepping out of the shack. Rictor tells her to look further to the right: there’s eight miles of woods for them to hike through, and then they’ll reach a pass, which is the US-Canada border. They will finally be safe there.

Logan walks up to them and Rictor greets him, having been told by Laura how he helped her. She was lucky to have Logan, Rictor concludes, and hands him the envelope with the money left for them by nurse Gabriela. It was the reason Logan agreed to help, wasn’t it? The older mutant replies that he doesn’t really need the money, the children do, and he leaves it with Rictor as Laura looks on.

That night, the children chat excitedly around a campfire, while Logan watches them curiously from a tiny window in the shack. Laura approaches him and he tells her that her new friends seem nice. He tries to say that they remind him of Xavier’s school, but is unable to finish the sentence. Laura however doesn’t seem happy and asks where he will go. “Nearest bar, for starters,” Logan simply replies, prompting her to turn around dejectedly. “Hey, I got you here. That’s all I signed up for. I even gave back the money.” “Such a nice man,” Laura replies sarcastically.

Now yelling, Logan tells her that he didn’t sign up for any of this, and neither did Charles or Caliban, who both ended up dead. Whatever Charles told her, Logan isn’t what she thinks he is. She has the friends she was looking for now, and she’s better off with them. Logan sucks at helping people, he claims; instead, bad things happen to those he cares about. “Then I’ll be fine,” Laura responds quietly before walking out, leaving him with his thoughts. Outside however, she doesn’t re-join the campfire, but stands apart from it to deal with her own thoughts.

Logan wakes up in the early morning to find a bottle of the green serum and a fresh syringe left next to his bed with a note from Rictor not to take it all at once. He walks out to find the campsite empty, as the children have already left. He looks down to find the Ford that got him and Laura there still at the foot of the mountain. However, he is quickly distracted by several helicopters passing overhead which worry him. He runs over to the tower’s huge binoculars and looks at the road alongside the forest that the children are traversing. A cadre of vehicles appears to be looking for them. Logan quickly grabs the serum and the syringe along with a backpack and rushes off through the woods.

The Reavers invade the forest on foot and in military-style trucks, accompanied by a determined-looking Zander Rice in a jeep. The children have spotted them and are making a run for it. Exhausted, Logan stumbles several times as he struggles to get to them. Seeing some children in the distance already being rounded up, he pulls out the bottle of serum from his backpack and injects himself in the neck with all of it.

As little Bobby is being captured, another girl is pinned to a tree by a Reaver’s robotically enhanced arm. She uses her ice breath to freeze the arm and then break it off. Unfortunately, while the man screams in agony, a different Reaver recaptures her. Communicating over radio, Rice barks orders at his underlings to stop the other children faster, before they can get to the border. One girl falls to the ground as the pursuers approach her with their large guns. She then resorts to her mutant power, which causes branches and twigs all around to fly in a storm towards the men, dispatching them bloodily.

Laura also joins the fight, viciously slashing at any Reaver she can get to, and soon hears the encouraging feral roar of Wolverine from the distance. Now back to full strength and very angry, Logan runs towards the Reavers and does what he does best, killing a number of them in a manner of seconds. However, many more are arriving in the cadre of trucks, which briefly stops to allow Pierce to pick up a clue: Logan’s now empty bottle of serum.

A stray shot leaves Rictor with a flesh wound which allows Pierce to capture him. Dodging machine gun fire, Wolverine gets to Laura, who is surrounded by armed thugs. He grabs one of them and uses his machine gun to take out some of the others, as Laura also begins putting up a fight. In the ensuing melee, he is shot several times while protecting her, and the two kill all of their immediate pursuers. She then looks at Logan to see that his healing power is struggling to cope with the wounds. “You took all the medicine,” she observes; “it’s wearing off.” Undaunted, Logan picks up a weapon from one of the dead men, apparently overcoming his own aversion to guns, and starts off to help the other children.

The Reavers have caught and tied up several children and some men are guarding them while the rest are searching the forest for the others. Logan and Laura secretly approach the guards and he decides to distract them while she rescues her friends. Before they split up, he tells her that she’ll know when to act.

As Logan confronts the Reavers, Donald Pierce arrives with the recently captured Rictor, holding a gun to his head. Donald taunts Logan that the “green juice” is wearing off, and that soon it will be hard for the “old mutie” to keep his claws out. Rictor swears at Pierce, encouraging Logan to “waste” him, before Pierce hits him in the head with the gun. As the weakened Logan continues his approach, Zander Rice addresses him as “Mr. Howlett” and asks him to stop, or Rice will have to tell his men to fire on the children. The scientist points out that Logan will not survive further wounds, then introduces himself. “I believe you knew my father on the Weapon X program,” he adds. “Yeah,” Logan says gruffly, raising his metal claws, “he’s the a#$hole who put this poison in me.”

Slightly shaken, Rice admits that he was one of them, yes. “I think I might’ve killed him,” Logan continues, and Rice admits that’s probably true as well, struggling to maintain his composure. Pierce tells the “mutie” to show some respect; he’s talking to the man who wiped out his kind. Regaining his polished matter, Zander explains that his friend Donald overstates. He makes it sound more brutal than intended. The goal was not to end mutantkind, but to control it. As humans have been perfecting their food and drinks, Rice realized that they could use those products to perfect themselves. He discretely distributed gene therapy through everything from sweet drinks to breakfast cereals. And it worked: random mutations went the way of polio. He then embarked on the next endeavour…

“Growing mutants of your own,” Wolverine guesses. Pierce starts to say that it was necessary in these dangerous times, but Logan has heard enough and unceremoniously shoots Rice through the head, killing him, then shoots Pierce’s robot hand off along with the cyborg’s gun. The Reavers then open fire on him, which gives Laura her cue to attack them. Still a captive, Bobby uses his electricity generating powers to help from a distance.

The injured Pierce runs towards a truck and lets loose X-24, who promptly assaults Logan. There follows a brutal fight between the aging mutant and his healthy, younger clone. Despite Rictor’s protests, Laura joins the battle, attacking X-24. A heavily wounded Wolverine crawls to her aid but is struck through the leg by Pierce’s harpoon. Before he can reel Logan in however, Donald encounters the freed mutant children who use their various powers to pin him to the ground and hold him down. Pierce struggles as he dies from a combination of enveloping plants, ice breath, electricity and other effects.

Though wounded, Rictor uses his own power to drop an entire truck on X-24, but the powerful clone survives. Logan urges Laura and the other children to run as X-24 stabs him through the shoulder and drags him over to a felled tree, then impales him on a sharp branch. Laura refuses to flee and gets hold of the gun that Logan had used earlier. She puts the adamantium bullet in the gun and shoots X-24 in the head, killing the mindless brute instantly. She then rushes over to Logan, refusing to believe that he has finally been mortally injured. The dying Logan urges her to take her friends and run before more pursuers arrive. They don’t have to fight anymore. “Don’t be what they made you,” he urges her breathlessly as she puts her bloodied hand in his. She breaks down in tears, while his agonized expression turns calmer.

“So this is what it feels like,” he whispers, finally experiencing the peace that comes from taking care of his family, before he passes away. The crying Laura laments his passing, calling him “daddy” for the first time, as the other children gather around to comfort her.

Later, the children have buried Logan and marked his grave with a makeshift wooden cross. Not knowing any eulogies, Laura cites verbatim the lines she heard from the movie Shane: there is no living with a killing. Right or wrong, it’s a brand and a brand sticks. Run on home to your mother, the character’s words are echoed in Laura’s quote; tell her everything’s all right. There are no more guns in the valley.

The other children look on, with Rictor’s arm in a sling, and Bobby holding on to an action figure of Wolverine in his iconic yellow and blue costume. “Let’s go,” Rictor finally says, “we gotta move.” They grab their backpacks and take off, while Laura stays by her father’s grave for a minute longer. Before she leaves, she turns the wooden cross, making it into an X. The children then continue on their way to seek a brighter future while Logan, the man known as Wolverine and the last of the X-Men, lies dead after his final act of heroism.

Characters:
James Howlett / Logan
Caliban
Professor Charles Xavier
Laura / X-23-23
Gabriela Lopez
Zander Rice

Donald Pierce
Reavers
X-24 (Logan’s clone)
Major

April, Bobby, Charlotte, Delilah, Erica, Gideon, Jackson, Jamaica, Joey, Jonah, Julie, Mira, Rebecca, Rictor, Stephen, Tamara, Tomas (all Transigen children)

Will Munson
Kathryn Munson
Nate Munson
Canewood Beverages men
Mexican gangsters
Prom teens
Women from bachelorette party
Mourning widow
Motel Manager
Convenience Store Clerk
Car dealer
Casino patrons
Old doctor

In video recording:
Transigen scientists
Transigen staff

Notes:
It is unclear within what continuity this movie takes place. X-Men: Apocalypse ended with a post-credit scene in which DNA samples of mutants were being collected by a mysterious outfit at William Stryker’s Alkali Lake complex, which apparently must later have been used in Transigen’s experiments. This would suggest that the movie follows the revamped timeline established by the prequel films. However, Xavier references the Liberty Island incident which happened in the original timeline in X-Men, and a deleted scene mentions Wolverine killing Jean Grey, which occurred only in the original timeline in X-Men: The Last Stand. Also, in Logan’s room we see the Muramasa blade that he acquired in The Wolverine, which is certainly part of the original timeline as it deals with the aftermath of Jean’s death. It seems likely therefore that this film presents another possible future of the original timeline, which is different from the possible future seen in Days of Future Past. It is also conceivable that this movie takes place in an entirely separate universe which has some similarities to both timelines. Considering how many continuity inconsistencies there already are in the X-Men films at this point, one could simply conclude that they all take place in different universes which are similar but still different from each other.

The comic book version of Caliban is named after a character in William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest,” who happens to be a shady creature in the service of a witch. This movie’s Caliban recalls that origin with his British accent and his preference for darkness. It is also interesting to note that when Xavier’s voice is first heard in the film (while Caliban is seen on-screen), his ramblings include a passage from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” reinforcing the connection to classical English literature.

This movie’s Caliban is unlike the eponymous character in X-Men: Apocalypse, who has a different accent and mannerisms, and refers to himself in the third person. The reason for the discrepancy is that both films were being made at the same time, and director James Mangold was reluctant to change his version of the character just to fit in with X-Men movie continuity. While Apocalypse’s Caliban is an opportunistic swindler, this film presents a more intellectual and noble version of the character. The comic history of Caliban has similarly changed his appearance, personality and intelligence, depending on the outside influences that the character has fallen under.

Caliban compares himself to Nosferatu, one of several iconic gothic/horror figures that his character in this movie seems to be based on. The classic silent movie “Nosferatu” was the first adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” which would go on to inspire many more films about the vampire lord. In the original film, Nosferatu was pale and sneaky, much like Caliban is here due to his aversion to sunlight.

The character of Donald Pierce is based on a mutant-hater from the X-Men comics who was heavily injured in a fight with Wolverine. He was then given robotic parts to replace his wounded ones by his employers, and later took over leadership of the Reavers, a criminal cyborg gang that had been displaced from their Australian headquarters by the X-Men. As leader of the Reavers, Pierce became one of mutantkind’s deadliest foes, and has managed to return from more than one apparent death through technological means.

“Cholos” refers to members of a Latino subculture which originated in Los Angeles and is today mostly associated with anti-social and criminal behavior.

Xavier references the Essoldo Cinema, also known as the Longford Cinema, in Stretford, Manchester. (As the movies’ version of Xavier is British, that must have been his original hometown.) The Essoldo is notable for its art deco design, the frontage being shaped like a cash register. Less than 15 years after Charles is supposed to have watched pictures there, it was converted to a bingo hall, before finally being shut down in the 1990s. It is currently being preserved for its architectural value, but no longer functions. The reference plays into the film’s themes of aging, the passage of time, and business interests conflicting with other human values.

When Logan is looking through the Transigen documents, we see that the DNA used for Rictor came from Dominic Petros, while Bobby’s DNA came from Christopher Bradley. In the comics, Dominic Petros aka Avalanche has similar powers to Rictor, though the two are not known to be related. Avalanche was briefly shown in X-Men: The Last Stand fighting for Magneto’s Brotherhood. Christopher Bradley aka Bolt can manipulate electricity and appeared prominently in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where he was employed by William Stryker, the scientist behind the Alkali Lake facility, which would explain where Transigen got his DNA from. Of course, at this point in the X-Men films, continuity was being frequently ignored, so other explanations and biographies for the characters are also possible.

The issues of “Uncanny X-Men” that Laura has been reading were made especially for this film and do not match X-Men comic book canon. The cover of one of them shows Storm and Wolverine battling Sauron and features an image of a character who looks like Gambit. Another cover shows Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Xavier and (probably) Colossus mourning at a fellow mutant’s gravesite. Director James Mangold was permitted by Marvel to use X-Men comics in the movie, as long as they weren’t real issues, so he had editor Joe Quesada and artist Dan Panosian create some original ones. They are drawn in a late 1980s style as an homage to the comics Panosian read growing up.

The green liquid that is used in the film to boost mutant powers appears similar to the mutant growth hormone developed by Beast in the comics, except it has only temporary effectiveness as well as serious side effects. Another mutant growth hormone was developed by Ajax in the movie Deadpool, which could activate latent mutant powers.

It is unclear where Logan got his adamantium bullet from. It could be one of several that William Stryker shot him with in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. As Logan lost his memory immediately after that, it makes sense that he would have kept the bullet to remind him of what he is.

Logan’s nightmares about him hurting people are apparently the result of a longstanding tragic aspect of his biography: not only does he outlive most people that he cares about, as he ages more slowly, but he has become the reason for many of their deaths. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a friendly elderly couple took him in, but was then murdered by his pursuers. In X-Men: The Last Stand, he was forced to kill Jean Grey to stop her from going on a rampage when her powers drove her insane; this event would haunt him for years afterwards. Finally, in this movie, we see the Munsons dying because they offered him shelter, and he later dissuades the friendly doctor from helping him in order to save him from a similar fate. At the end of this film, we see Logan redeem himself, saving the children from their common pursuers instead of contributing to their demise.

The children giving Logan a shave recalls a similar scene in The Wolverine, where upon his arrival in Japan, Logan is forcibly bathed and given a shave by his hosts. In both cases, he is being removed from a “wild” state to which his experiences have driven him and introduced into a more civilized setting through a kind of ritualistic cleansing.

The symbolism of Logan sacrificing himself and being pierced through his side, along with the Johnny Cash rendition of the song “When the Man Comes Around” which immediately follows during the credits, gives the movie’s ending a heavily Christian overtone. This is further reinforced in the Deadpool films, as the first takes place at Christmas, while the second one begins with Deadpool holding a toy model of the mortally injured Wolverine with the branch piercing his side. Deadpool II then becomes a story about the titular character sacrificing himself to help an abused child not to become a deadly villain. A part of Logan’s soundtrack is reused in that movie, titled to match Logan’s final words to Laura: “Don’t be what they made you.” The possibility for redemption, the hope that maintaining childhood innocence can make the world better, and the heroism of self-sacrifice rather than mindless fighting, are all important Christian themes which many forms of Christian culture have historically tended to overlook. The X-Men film franchise appears to rely heavily on them in its later instalments, including Days of Future Past, where Mystique sacrificing her urge for revenge prevents a dystopian future for the planet, and X-Men: Apocalypse, where Xavier rejects an evil mutant’s creed of survival of the strongest in favor of the strongest instead helping those who are weaker. It is also notable that in Deadpool II, when his friend asks him what he means when he talks about being selfless, the exasperated Deadpool simply exclaims “Jesus Christ.” Finally, in the third season of the X-themed series Legion, a character sacrifices herself to help others, even uttering one of Jesus’ final phrases in her native language, and is later miraculously resurrected. As at least some of the same people contributed to all these projects (such as Lauren Shuller-Donner, who has worked on every X-Men film and TV series), their coinciding message of the importance of Christ-like self-sacrifice appears intentional. It is perhaps a necessary counterpoint to what has come to be expected from superhero comics and films, namely resolving all problems mostly through violent conflict.

The story of Logan is loosely connected to that of the final 20th Century Fox X-Men movie, The New Mutants. There, a group of young mutants are being trained to become soldiers, and we see flashbacks of the similar experiments in the Transigen facility. It is left unclear at which point in time the film’s events take place, and different versions of some of its characters have already appeared in other X-Men movies. Possibly, Logan and The New Mutants take place in the same universe, but maybe they are in different universes which both have mutant children overcoming experiments to turn them into soldiers. Either way, the message “Don’t be what they made you” continues to resonate through all of these films.