Ryan Reynolds dropped a major bomb on Marvel movie fans in 2022 by revealing that Hugh Jackman was going to be returning to his iconic role as Logan, aka Wolverine, the clawed mutant from the X-Men franchise, in the upcoming third installment of the Deadpool movies.

To say the news was a surprise would be an understatement. Back in 2017, Jackman starred in Logan, the critically acclaimed and commercially successful final movie in Fox's main X-Men series which saw the titular character embark on one final mission that ended in his demise. At the time, Jackman was quite vocal about Logan being the last time he would ever play Wolverine. Let us take a look at why the actor eventually decided to walk back on that promise.

Hugh Jackman's Triumphant Final Performance

Hugh Jackman as Logan
20th Century Fox

As popular as Fox's X-Men movies were, they always suffered from highly uneven quality. Despite being the breakout star of the franchise, Jackman's Wolverine also struggled to make his mark with less-than-stellar stand-alone entries in his filmography, like 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013's The Wolverine. After more than a decade of playing the character with diminishing returns, Jackman decided he wanted to go out on top with one last definitive cinematic portrayal of Wolverine.

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To facilitate this decision, Jackman and his team decided to adapt arguably the most iconic Wolverine storyline from Marvel Comics, Old Man Logan. The series follows an aging Wolverine on his last legs, fighting for his life against increasingly desperate odds. This idea eventually became the movie Logan, where Jackman played the main character decades in the future, with his old X-Men allies dead or retired and only a decrepit Professor Xavier left to remind Wolverine of his heroic past.

Logan Ends Wolverine on a High Note

Hugh Jackman as Logan with Laura
20th Century Studios

Logan was embraced by critics and fans alike for Jackman's searing performance as a world-weary outsider. In his last days, Logan discovers his biological daughter Laura, and begins to once again form a bond with another human being despite striving to keep his distance. The movie ends with Wolverine's death, having saved his daughter in his final moments, finally managing to leave a positive legacy in the world after decades of pain and violence.

Right from the start, Logan was billed as Jackman's final appearance as Wolverine by Jackman himself. The actor told various news outlets that he was happy to have found the perfect story to end Wolverine's journey with, and would be moving on from the role to focus on other projects like his singing and dancing one-man show and film roles with a more dramatic bent to them. For five years, Jackman continued to insist he was done with Wolverine whenever asked by fans about potentially putting on the claws once again.

The Expansion of the MCU

Avengers Infinity War in MCU Phase 3
Marvel Studios 
Disney

While Fox's X-Men movies were winding down and Hugh Jackman had found the perfect swan song for Wolverine with Logan, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was just starting to hit its stride. Characters from Marvel Comics, which had been scattered across different studios for so long, were slowly and steadily being coalesced under one roof by MCU showrunner Kevin Feige. The first breakout indicator of this trend was the massively successful 2012 superhero team-up movie The Avengers.

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That film turned out to be not a one-off phenomenon, but rather the new normal, as more and more iconic Marvel characters started popping up in the MCU. Unfortunately, the merger which finally brought X-Men characters under the MCU umbrella happened after Logan was filmed. It was around this time that Jackman appeared to be having second thoughts about saying goodbye to Wolverine. The actor admitted in an interview with Collider that it had long been a dream of his to see Logan mixing it up with the heroes of the Avengers, but Jackman seemed to still be sticking to his retirement from the role after the film. At least for the moment.

Deadpool Comes Calling

Deadpool
20th Century Fox

While Hugh Jackman was holding firm to his decision to retire Wolverine from the big screen, his close friend Ryan Reynolds never accepted the decision. The actor played Wade Wilson aka Deadpool in a genre-busting, R-rated, and immensely successful movie in 2016, and the film makes it amply clear that Wade would consider his career incomplete without teaming up with Jackman's Wolverine at least once.

With the second Deadpool movie, Reynolds upped the ante even further, making shoutouts to Logan in the movie and freely admitting in interviews that he won't stop badgering Hugh Jackman to put on the claws one last time for a face-off/team-up between Wolverine and Deadpool. It became a running joke in Deadpool fandom to have Reynolds begging Jackman to play Wolverine again, and the latter always refusing.

Logan Finally Answers the Call

Wolverine in Deadpool 3
20th Century Studios

Despite declaring repeatedly out loud that he is done with playing Wolverine, inwardly Hugh Jackman was indeed having second thoughts about the matter after seeing the new potential of Marvel heroes on the big screen. "I was 20 minutes into watching Deadpool," the actor told Deadline. "And I had just announced, literally, a few weeks before, that Logan was going to be my last, which I fully intended. And then I was like, 'Uh-oh.'"

Seeing Deadpool in all his glory on the big screen made Jackman realize that he had missed out on some potentially really fun moments with Wolverine bouncing off the Merc with the Mouth. In the same interview, the actor explains that for the next few years he could not stop thinking about doing a buddy-cop style action movie starring Wolverine and Deadpool. Things came to a head in 2022. Jackman finally called up Reynolds to confirm that he was indeed ready to put on the claws once again. And the rest is internet history. Logan may have been a great swan song, but the swan sung too soon.