Three Ways The X-Men Movies Could Explain Recasting Wolverine In Universe

Hugh Jackman announced recently that he would be returning to the role of Wolverine "one more time" for the third Wolverine solo movie. It will be his eighth outing as the character over a 17-year period (by the time the movie is released), and it seems he's ready to walk away from the claws and mutton chops for good.

That leaves Fox in an interesting position. When X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughan was still attached to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past, he had plans to cast a new Wolverine and have him meet up with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine as part of the film's time travel shenanigans. When Vaughan left the film, Fox decided to go in a different direction, leveraging Jackman's star power as both past and future Wolverine and keeping him the spotlight for the next Wolverine solo movie.

So now that that opportunity has passed, Fox will have to find another way to explain why Logan suddenly looks like anyone other than Jackman. If they recast earlier, it would have been easier. If Professor X and Magneto look different, why not Wolverine as well? But now that they've used Jackman in the past era, alongside Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, it might be a bit trickier.

It's still possible that they'll just swap out actors and assume fans will roll with it, but they have more story-centric options as well. Here are three ways they can explain a Wolverine recasting in universe.

NOTE: We know that none of these explanation would really explain why Wolverine looks like Hugh Jackman again in the flash forward scene at the end of Days of Future Past, but there's a few decades of wiggle room there, and continuity has never been the X-Men franchise's strongest point anyway.

Weapon X

When we last saw Wolverine, he was being dragged back up from the watery grave that Magneto left him in by Mystique, in the guise of William Stryker. This would seem to setup the X-Men movies to revisit Wolverine's time in the Weapon X program. Weapon X did all kinds of experiments on Wolverine, including one that left him with an adamantium-laced skeleton, in order to turn him into a kind of ultimate killing machine. Perhaps they think he'll serve their purposes better if he is no longer physically recognizable as the man he was before? There are surgical ways to go about that, or Mystique's powers, somehow temporarily transferred to Logan, could help as well.

Horseman of Apocalypse

In the past portion of Days of Future Past, Wolverine was still without his adamantium. Wolverine found himself in a similar position in the comics, after Magneto stripped the adamantium from his bones during the "Fatal Attractions" storyline. Logan eventually had adamantium reattached to his bones when he was kidnapped by Apocalypse and transformed into the new Horseman of Death.

With Apocalypse being the villain of the next X-Men movie, it's possible we could see a similar plot play out, perhaps in conjunction with the Weapon X theory above. Apocalypse, either through the Weapon X program or otherwise, turns Wolverine into one his Horseman, physically altering him in the process. This is a known side effect of being a Horseman in the comics, so the films could extend it beyond a change in skin color to something on a larger scale if they need to. Presumably, Wolverine would be freed from Apocalypse's thrall by film's end, but the physical changes, at least in part, could remain.

Ultimate Cable

With the next X-Men movie introducing Apocalypse, a Deadpool movie on the horizon, and rumors of an X-Force movie in the works, many fans have wondered if Rob Liefeld's other '90s mutant creation, Cable, might appear in X-Men: Apocalypse. There's actually a version of Cable that could be of use in changing Wolverine's look, if the studio doesn't mind going with older, or at least Jackman-aged, actor.

In the Ultimate Universe, Cable is not Nathan Summers, the time travelling son of Cyclops and the Goblin Queen. In the Ultimate Universe, Cable is a time travelling Wolverine instead, who now relies on traditional weaponry more than he does his claws.

Using Ultimate Cable as a new Wolverine would likely be controversial with fans who want to see the original version of Cable make his way to the big screen, but it is a way to leverage Wolverine's popularity into the rumored X-Force movie, if such a project ever moves into production. Combining the characters of Wolverine and Cable would also set up Fox to combine Cable's original X-Force with Wolverine's black op squad, several members of which are already appearing or rumored to appear in X-Men: Apcolypse or elsewhere in the X-Men cinematic universe (Angel, Psylocke, and Deadpool).

This one is a longshot by far, as limiting Wolverine's use of his trademark claws doesn't seem like something that would play with fans, but it is a possibility.

X-Men: Apocalypse opens May 27, 2016.