X-23 was penned down as Wolverine’s replacement by its creator, Crag Kyle.

As we edge closer to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine and everything that the film is set to represent, fan expectations, as one would expect, are at an all-time high. The MCU has struggled in recent years and appears to have pinned a lot on the upcoming Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds-starrer, which most notably sees the return of Wolverine to live-action since 2017’s Logan.

The movie was not only praised for its stellar narrative, but it also brought forth the character of X-23, played by Dafne Keen, a potential replacement for Jackman’s character once he eventually hangs up his boots. The MCU will also need to be well-prepared for that eventuality, as even if Wolverine plays a major role in upcoming Avengers narratives, his clone and adoptive daughter is the obvious replacement who is bound to take up the mantle in due time.

The character in itself was created by writer Craig Kyle for X-Men: Evolution, and came after years of attempts from Comic book writers to come up with a valid successor to Wolverine. As Kyle revealed, not only did he impress the Marvel bosses with his pitch, he also came up with it in ‘a page and a half,’ despite other creatives trying to crack the idea since years.

Craig Kyle came up with X-23, the obvious successor to Wolverine, ‘in a page and a half’

The need for Wolverine to connect with a younger audience has been felt by Comics creators for decades, who came up with a variety of pitches over the years to come up with a successor without compromising what Wolverine stands for. Via X-Men: Evolution, Wolverine was to integrate with a younger team of mutants which presented a major problem, in the sense that an aged-down version of Logan Howlett proved too ambitious.

That was until Craig Kyle came up with X-23, a Wolverine clone created by HYDRA who wanted to make the ultimate killing-machine capable of surpassing even Logan. Kyle, as he revealed in an interview with IF Magazine, was utterly proud of his creation:

That’s my little girl and I couldn’t be more proud of her. I know I had to clone Wolverine and make her a little girl and she’s taken off. I’m really proud of that, that means a lot to me. 

The Marvel writer explained how Joe Quesada himself praised him, something which made him immensely proud:

One of my best moments at Marvel, when I pitched that character Joe Quesada, and he said for fifteen years people have been trying to crack that idea and I did it in a page and a half. I mean, to have Joe Quesada, Editor in Chief, bad ass artist and all around awesome comic guy, be impressed, I was like, “I’m going to go home and get out of here.” It was great. I couldn’t respect the comics any more, and again, they’re tough critics too. They look at our stuff, and expect us to deliver, and they tell us when we think we aren’t and they also tell us when they love this stuff. All the guys on the East Coast were really impressed with DOCTOR STRANGE, You can’t get better fan praise, than the guys who do the comics.

X-23, or Laura Kinney, was effectively a combination of the features Craig Kyle thought evolved her identity into the perfect Wolverine successor. She not only mirrored Wolverine’s aggression, but was also always weighed down by the guilt of the lives that she had taken, eventually leading to a redemption, as she became a part of the new X-Men.

X-23 was created as the ideal successor to Wolverine

While there are obvious similarities between Wolverine and X-23, she also had her own personality, and was shackled to the murders that she had committed, in Craig Kyle’s own words:

I took a look at Wolverine. Every time he went right, I made a left,” Kyle explained. “Instead of a guy who is older than we know, I made a girl who is very young. Instead of a man who has no memory of his past, you have someone who is shackled to the murders she’s committed. Unlike a guy who had a life before it and lost it, I made her a girl who’s never known anything but it.

Raised in isolation and trained to be a killing machine much like Wolverine, X-23 was a cold-calculating beast and had a range of repressed emotions that she eventually learned to open up to.

While she initially blames Wolverine for her condition, X-23’s redemption comes when she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and understands how she herself is in the same boat as Wolverine, and a victim of HYDRA.

Hence, the character not only represents the obvious choice for the MCU to eventually replace Wolverine, but that was exactly what she was created for, by Craig Kyle. That, alongside the kind of history that she has, means that X-23 is the ideal eventual replacement for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in the MCU as well, regardless of whether the character continues to be portrayed by Dafne Keen, and undergoes fresh casting.

Deadpool & Wolverine will be released on July 26, 2024.