Last week saw a flurry of information on the third Wolverine spin-off Logan, culminating in a spine-tingling first trailer, and then an Empire-exclusive trailer breakdown with director James Mangold. During that breakdown, we pressed Mangold on who exactly the mysterious girl in the trailer was – but he stayed tight-lipped. Now it looks like we have confirmation: she is in fact the character known as ‘X-23’.
Logan’s official Instagram account, the enigmatically-named @wponx (as in, Weapon X), posted an image of Dafne Keane, the actress who plays the character, with the caption “Laura”. In the comics, X23 is a girl named Laura Kinney, and the clone-daughter of Logan from the Weapon X programme hoping to replicate Wolverine’s regenerative powers and super-strength. She is the 23rd attempt to make such a clone, hence the name. She is a relatively new character, first appearing in 2004, and has since appeared as part of the X-Force team.
Mangold heavily hinted that would be the case, telling us last week: “I think I will just let speculation run rampant about that. I think what this film is about in many ways is family. From there out I’d let everyone figure out what we’re up to on their own, at least at this early stage.”
Logan is out on 3 March, 2017, and will be Hugh Jackman’s final appearance as the sideburned superhero. Watch the first trailer here, and read our trailer breakdown here.