Thanks to last year's Fox/Disney merger, there’s a whole load of previously Fox-owned Marvel characters for Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios to play around with in Marvel Phase 4 and beyond.
Deadpool, Fantastic Four, and X-Men are all high on fans’ wishlists to be introduced to the MCU, but Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo – one half of the Russo Brothers – has revealed why he doesn’t want one of the most iconic mutants, Wolverine, to unsheathe his claws for the time being.
For Russo, it all comes down to the man who played the short-tempered Canadian: Hugh Jackman.
Speaking to ComicBookMovie.com, Russo admits that while, “Wolverine was always one of my favourite characters," he points out that “Hugh Jackman has done an incredible job with that character over the years, and I think they should take a break for a little while before someone else takes a crack at it.”
It is hard to see anyone else in the role of Wolverine, a role Jackman played from 2000’s X-Men right through to 2017’s Logan, and the breathing room needed for the next evolution of the character might come naturally anyway, no matter Joe Russo’s opinion.
Kevin Feige may have offered a one-word tease ("Mutants") at 2019's San Diego Comic-Con, but also revealed last year that X-Men isn’t in the MCU’s immediate plans. “It’s all just beginning and the five-year plan that we’ve been working on, we were working on before any of [the Fox merger] was set. So really, it’s much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now,” Feige told io9 at the time.
For now, Wolvie is seemingly being kept on the shelf. It’s probably for the best. Just imagine how satisfying the snikt is going to be when he does make his belated return to the big screen. For more MCU content, check out our pieces on:
- How to watch the Marvel movies in order
- Our full MCU recap
- The MCU timeline explained
- The Marvel comics have the perfect way to bring the X-Men into the MCU
