Logan might have added a secret post-credit scene at the last minute

When the final credits roll on Logan, will audiences have officially seen the last of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine? Or will we get one more tiny glimpse of the character after all? That’s the question on fans’ minds right now after Mike Sampson, the senior marketing and promotions manager of the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain, revealed that 20th Century Fox has added three minutes to the final runtime of the movie:

I was lucky enough to see an early screening of Logan a few days ago, and that screening did not feature a post-credits scene. But studios adding scenes like these at the last minute after press have seen them has become commonplace in the last few years. For example, Fox did it with X-Men: Apocalypse last year, and Marvel Studios famously waited until after The Avengers had its press junket and world premiere before they shot the shawarma scene that was added to the end of the movie.

So while secretly adding new scenes isn’t exactly a new practice, doing so for this particular film would be fascinating because of the way it ends. I’m going to spoil the ending of Logan for you now, so if you don’t want to know what happens, click away. Last warning: spoilers ahead.

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The film ends with Logan helping X-23 and a bunch of other runaway experimental mutants fight off the scientists who created them, but in the process of helping them escape, Logan is killed. It’s a deeply moving and poignant moment, and the weight of seeing this character in action on screen for seventeen years adds a weight to the scene that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. It’s a tragic, sad, and appropriate ending, and the best part is that in a franchise-heavy cinematic landscape, it feels final. Wolverine is not coming back.

But three new minutes added to the cut seems like just enough time to throw on a post-credits scene and give the audience one more look at this world before director James Mangold closes the book on it for good. The problem, of course, is how do you follow up such a perfect ending? This is supposed to be Jackman’s last ride, so I doubt we’d see something as insane as Logan’s fist bursting forth from his grave. And while Mangold has mentioned being interested in making a movie that centers on X-23 in the future, a post-credits scene here doesn’t seem like the proper place to set that up. The ending of the actual movie already accomplishes that.

Let’s address the red-suited elephant in the room. Rumors flew at the end of last year that Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool might appear in a cameo in the film, but both Mangold, Reynolds, and Jackman all denied that would happen. I know fans desperately want to see those character interacting, but I think once you see how masterfully Logan comes to an end, even the biggest Deadpool fan would agree that a post-credits scene featuring that motor-mouthed character would be a wildly inappropriate tonal shift from the movie’s somber ending. And what would Deadpool even be doing in that situation? They wouldn’t edit in a flashback of those character together because that would undo the dramatic arc the filmmakers just created, so that means it would need to take place after Logan’s death. So Deadpool would be, what, standing over Logan’s grave and dropping one-liners?

I can’t imagine that Mangold would be ok with undermining the tone of his movie with a goofy post-credits sequence. There’s always the chance the new three minutes were just to fix an error, or maybe now the credits themselves are finalized whereas they may not have been before. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Directed by James Mangold and starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keene, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E. Grant, and Elizabeth Rodriguez, Logan will be released in cinemas on March 1, 2017 in the UK and March 3, 2017 in the US.

Images: 20th Century Fox