11 Years Later, Readers Are Still Scratching Their Heads About this Marvel Death

Marvel in the 2010s became known for shaking things up. The ’00s had been a rebuilding decade for the House of Ideas, with the publisher bringing numerous characters and teams back to prominence after the ’90s, where the company seemingly only cared about the X-Men and Spider-Man. In the ’10s, the Marvel Universe had reached a point where things felt a little stale, especially after the insanity of the ’00s comics, and the publisher started to shift things, moving characters around, putting new characters into old mantles, and killing off numerous fan favorite heroes and villains. Sometimes, these changes made sense, but there’s one ’10s death that has never made any sense at all and that’s Wolverine‘s.

Wolverine is a character with a rich history, and the ’00s were honestly a pretty great time for fans of the hero. Not every story was perfect, but there were some best of all time runs and stories from the ol’ Canucklehead, with the character becoming an important part of the Avengers. The early ’10s saw Logan rise through the ranks of the X-Men, eventually starting his own mutant school. The hero was a huge part of the Marvel Universe, and then at the end of 2014, he was dead. Barely a year later, there would be a new Wolverine, and there would also be a new Logan. The whole situation was mystifying and it still makes no sense even today.

Death of Wolverine Came Out of Nowhere and Left Fans with Questions

Wolverine has always been a popular Marvel hero, but the 21st century felt like Marvel was trying to push him into the A-list. Now, obviously, Wolverine had been an A-list hero when it came to sales for nearly his entire existence, but as far as his in-universe reputation went, he wasn’t exactly important when compared to characters like Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and others (most of whom he sold better than). The ’00s and the ’10s seemed to be all about making the hero into something bigger than ever and it was working.

By 2014, the year of his death, Wolverine was leading his own X-team, had his own mutant school, and was a key member of the Avengers. He was widely respected by the superhero community and had reached a new level of heroism. All of the years of work had paid off and he had finally become a major hero in the hierarchy of the Marvel Universe. This is what made the decision to take away his healing factor and kill him off, basically out of nowhere, such a strange one.

What makes the whole situation even stranger is what happened afterwards. Laura Kinney becoming Wolverine was obviously going to happen, but 2015 would also see the return of Old Man Logan in a Secret Wars tie-in miniseries. This wouldn’t have been weird, but the mini ended with Logan making his way to the 616 universe. So, to be clear, Marvel killed Wolverine at the height of a project that seemed to exist to push the character to a new level, replaced him and put someone else in the blue and yellow fighting togs, and then brought back another version of Logan. Oh, and that version of Logan got all of the A-list stuff, like joining the casts of the flagship X-books, but wasn’t Wolverine.

If you really look at the events, none of it makes any sense. It honestly sort of feels like Marvel went into the whole situation with no plans whatsoever, and started panicking when Laura wasn’t as popular as they thought she should be. The only reason for the whole situation that makes any sense is that with the upcoming Inhumans push, Marvel wanted to get rid of the X-Men’s most popular character in order to drive readers to the Inhumans books. There’s really no other explanation for the entire situation. Marvel built a character up to kill him in a rather mid miniseries (great art, blah writing), replaced him, and then replaced him again with a slightly older version of the character. It’s one of the big mysteries of ’10s Marvel.

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