Comic book continuity is a crazy thing. It’s always changing, be it through huge events involving time travel and/or magic or just simple retconning. Most comic book movie franchises have avoided such confusing plot devices, but in recent years, Fox’s X-Men series has leaped at them head-on. After running the series in a mostly straightforward fashion for the first six films, everything changed with 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. That film saw Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) transported from an apocalyptic future back into the 1970s to alter the course of history, with the help of the mutants introduced in the previous saga film, X-Men: First Class. They were successful, resulting in Wolverine returning to a far brighter future in 2024, where all of his friends were still alive. So what timeline does the 2029-set Logan take place in? The original one? The altered one? Or a third altogether different one?
Some confusion arose about this over the weekend, when some comments made by Hugh Jackman were misinterpreted. Director James Mangold soon took to to set things straight…
“Don’t think @RealHughJackman said that exactly. Simple fact. We take place in 2029, 5 yrs past anything depicted in XMEN film… and “slightly different” causes an uproar? Everyone should breathe and focus on important things.”
So there you have it! Logan takes place not in some weird new timeline, but instead sometime after the events of Days of Future Past‘s 2024-set epilogue. At this point, any film made since DOFP takes place in the altered timeline, unless otherwise stated by the filmmakers. Just for fun and to make things simple, here’s what currently counts in each of the two timelines.
Old Timeline
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (pre-1970s scenes)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (1970s scenes)
X-Men
X2: X-Men United
X-Men: The Last Stand
The Wolverine
X-Men: Days of Future Past (dark future scenes)
The events of DOFP removed the majority of XO: Wolverine and all of the original X-Men trilogy and The Wolverine from the official continuity going forward. As a result, this is now the franchise’s current continuity…
New Timeline
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (pre-1970s scenes)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men: Days of Future Past (1970s scenes)
X-Men: Apocalypse
The New Mutants
Deadpool trilogy
X-Men: Days of Future Past (happy epilogue)
Logan
The New Mutants is reportedly set in the 1990s, utilizing some First Class trilogy characters (and their actors). Any potential sequels and follow-ups to it will follow suit and slowly close the 1990s-present timeline gap. The Deadpool trilogy is currently set during the present day and chances are that both “Legion” and the as-yet-untitled other upcoming X-Men TV series are as well.
