Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine Traveling In Time?

In a recent interview, Hugh Jackman strongly hinted that his appearance in Deadpool 3 will involve time travel.

By Michileen Martin | Published

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It looks like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine will once more be riding the timestream. In a recent interview, the Aussie actor all but confirmed his character will be time traveling when he reprises his signature role in 2024’s Deadpool 3. Falling short of specifically saying “Wolverine will travel through time,” Jackman said it was in part the MCU’s current handling of the Multiverse and time travel that opened the door for him to return to the role.

Hugh Jackman was speaking to SiriusXM when discussing what brought him back to the role when he referred to some kind of inspirational moment that prompted him to immediately call Ryan Reynolds who, as fate would have it, was hours away from going into a meeting with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. Asked to clarify what it was that came to him just before calling Reynolds, Jackman said seeing the first Deadpool made him regret missing the opportunity to appear with Reynolds in something reminiscent of 1982’s 48 Hrs. Then he got to what it was that opened up the possibility of finally making it happen without damaging the integrity of 2017’s Logan.

“All because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines, now we can go back. Because, you know, it’s ‘science.’ And so we don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline which was important to me and, I think, probably to the fans, too.”

-Hugh Jackman on what allowed him to return to the character of Wolverine.

So while Hugh Jackman didn’t straight up say he would be time traveling, he pretty much completely said Wolverine would be time traveling, and it’s actually kind of fitting. With the sole — and very brief — exception of Bishop (Omar Sy), Wolverine’s character is the only superhero in Fox’s X-Men films we ever see traveling through time before the events of 2018’s Deadpool 2. Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) sends him back in time in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Speaking of which, this could be an opportunity for Deadpool 3 to finally fix some narrative difficulties that Hugh Jackman’s previous time travel shenanigans caused in Fox’s X-Men narrative. When Wolverine returns from the past in Days of Future Past, he’s seemingly changed his timeline and essentially erased or drastically altered the events of all of the previous films. However, this brought up some confusing questions about where things stood, and Logan‘s release only further complicated things.

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Famke Janssen and Hugh Jackman in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

If the world Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine wakes up in is the same one that subsequent films like X-Men: Apocalypse happened in, then why is Jean Grey there when she leaves the Earth in Dark Phoenix? Why is the Colossus of the Deadpool movies a completely different person from the one in the X-Men movies? And which Fox timeline does Logan take place in?