There’s comfort in familiarity and, outside Wesley Snipes as Blade, Hugh Jackman has the longest-running tenure as a Marvel character. He went from an actor who was very little known in the United States to an A-lister practically overnight thanks to the original X-Men in 2000. And, since that point, he’s played that character fairly consistently, starring in, all in all, the original trilogy, his own trilogy, X-Men: Day of Future Past, Deadpool & Wolverine, and put in cameo appearances in both X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse. It’s no wonder that the thought of recasting the character is practically unthinkable. It would be like recasting the voice of Darth Vader for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
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But the simple truth is that Wolverine is a physical role and Jackman is 57. He’s undoubtedly fit, so he can play the character for a few more years (better get on that, Marvel), but the day will come where someone else will need to pick up the claws. And, really, we already have that person right in front of us in Dafne Keen.
5) The Audience Has Already Grown Fond of X-23
Instead of just fully rebooting Wolverine and going through all that extra leg work, why not just stick with something that has worked not once, but twice. Playing X-23 in Logan made Keen a star for good reason.
Even though she was far younger than him, Keen held her own in every scene opposite Jackman, which was most of the scenes in the movie. Everyone was impressed with Keen but, equally importantly, the character was written as a tragic individual who could very well become a lost soul if not given a helpful hand. That’s a great origin story, and the MCU itself doesn’t even have to bother with telling it now because it’s already been done.
4) Wolverine’s Story Really Has Already Been Told
X-23’s origin story in Logan works so well because it’s partly tied to the conclusion of her father’s story. Not just because one falls and the other rises, but because one chooses to fall so the other can rise.
Was it great to see Jackman in an MCU installment? Of course, and his contentious camaraderie with Ryan Reynolds was the spark that allowed that movie to fly by, but the fact remains that Wolverine’s story has concluded. We spent 17 years getting to know him then losing him. It’s fine if he sticks around for another MCU adventure or two, without a doubt, but it’s even more important to keep building up X-23, be it right beside him or on her own forged path.
3) The MCU Has Already Established That She Can Exist Within It
As mentioned in the previous entry, it’s important that the MCU keeps the audience aware that Keen is a part of it. And the reason for that simply is that she is, in fact, a part of it. The ending of Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t show Blade or Elektra at that family meal at Wade Wilson’s apartment, they showed Laura/X-23.
Yes, technically Wade’s apartment is on Earth-10005 aka the “FoxVerse,” but Deadpool & Wolverine goes out of its way to say that the Merc with a Mouth is part of Disney now. The likelihood of them all staying on that Earth is limited when they have the means to get over to Earth-616 (after all, they got Laura out of the Void).
2) It Would Be Best to Lock Down Keen Before She Becomes Too Busy
Keen is young, so she doesn’t have a gargantuan number of credits to her name. But, of the ones that are there, almost all of them are pretty mainstream just as almost all of them feature her in a showy role.
Two years after Logan she led His Dark Materials for three years. Not many child actors lead an HBO (in the States, anyway) series. In 2024 she rejoined Marvel for Deadpool & Wolverine and played the ill-fated Jecki Lon in The Acolyte. And, this year, she both led the horror movie Whistle and nabbed a recurring role on Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The latter project shows she still has a strong working relationship with Disney, so it really wouldn’t be hard to sign her on a more permanent basis as X-23, if they haven’t done so already. If they haven’t, they might want to jump at the chance, because her next movie, The Marshmallow Experiment, is the first on which she’s serving as a producer, so she’s clearly going to continue moving up.
1) Keen Can Act
Even at the age of just 11, and with a difficult role consumed with rage and grief, Keen made us believe her fully as X-23. She could display a whole range of complex emotions without a single word.
And now that she’s led her own series in His Dark Materials, she’s proved both that her acting range has only improved and that she is more than capable of leading a name-brand property. The MCU didn’t really recast Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Captain America, they just had those characters’ narratives naturally lead into a passing of the torch. Even before the X-Men have really gotten started in the MCU, they’ve already accomplished this for Wolverine.
Who would you rather see more of in the MCU? Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine or Dafne Keen’s X-23? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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