Warning! This article contains spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.

Deadpool & Wolverine just proved my point about Wolverine’s death in Logan with Deadpool’s typical irreverence in his MCU debut. As expected, Deadpool & Wolverine did not revive Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine from Fox’s X-Men franchise and instead starred Jackman as a Wolverine variant from another reality. This version of the character was distinctly more surly than his Fox-based counterpart after having “failed” his universe’s X-Men by being willfully absent as they were massacred. It was certainly a gritty take on the character – but still not quite as gritty as Logan in his final days.

Logan was released in 2017 and brought Wolverine’s movie timeline to a tearful end as he helped ensure the survival of mutant-kind and his young female clone, X-23. Logan ends with Wolverine dying at the hands of an adult clone, being impaled on a log before finally succumbing to his mortality and being buried by his adoptive daughter. The problem is that Wolverine famously has a powerful healing factor, and no amount of explaining away through appealing to age is going to make this make any less sense.

Wolverine’s Failing Healing Factor Never Made Sense To Me In Logan

Logan Shouldn’t Be Dying That Easily

Logan is lavished with praise as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. The gritty realism made for a perfect stage on which to showcase Wolverine’s animalistic brutality and finally bring his iconic cinematic legacy to an end (before Deadpool & Wolverine would contradict this). There is no doubt that this was compounded by the heightened stakes delivered by the fact that Wolverine could, in fact, die whereas his previous outings made him functionally immortal thanks to his healing factor.

Wolverine is steadily dying in Logan without being impaled as his body is finally starting to succumb to adamantium poisoning as his healing factor deteriorates.

Yet this heel-turn with Wolverine’s mortality is also one of the movie’s biggest pitfalls. Rationalizing Logan’s newfound ability to die by ascribing it to old age or general deterioration also doesn’t make much sense, especially considering he seemed to age pretty rapidly between The Wolverine and Logan despite nearly 200 years of appearing to be in his 30s. The movie may be next to flawless, but this plot device feels too convenient to ignore – and thankfully, Deadpool refused to.

Deadpool & Wolverine Calls Out Wolverine’s Death In Logan

Even Wade Was Surprised About How Easily Wolverine Died In Logan

Deadpool & Wolverine commences with a typically hyper-violent fight sequence in which Wade kills several TVA agents with the exhumed adamantium skeleton of Logan. This is followed by a flashback detailing how he got here, in which it is revealed that Deadpool and Logan’s shared timeline has started to decay after Logan’s death, as he is that universe’s anchor being. Deadpool is rightfully incredulous at the notion that Wolverine, whose healing factor allowed him to survive an atomic blast, could up and die out of nowhere.

Deadpool’s retrieval of Logan’s corpse adds further confusion to the X-Men franchise timeline, as Logan died in 2029 whereas Deadpool & Wolverine takes place in 2024.

As Deadpool begins digging up Wolverine’s corpse, Wade notes how Paradox seems to be “forgetting” the fact that Wolverine has this healing factor. Nevertheless, Deadpool is shocked to find that Wolverine has died and left nothing but his skeleton behind, making sure to state how it doesn’t make sense. Setting aside the baffling fact that Logan’s death would have always been a part of the timeline, his subpar healing factor is also highlighted by the presence of the variant Wolverine star of Deadpool & Wolverine.

Deadpool & Wolverine Further Makes Logan’s Death Completely Baffling

An Older Wolverine Had A Much Better Healing Factor Than The One From Logan

After discovering that Logan is dead and gone, Deadpool sets out to replace him with a Wolverine variant from another timeline. This eventually brings him to a variant whose team of X-Men were murdered by humans, turning him to drink. This Wolverine evidently does not take care of himself, and yet can heal from being atomized and also reveals that he is over 200 years old. This makes him older than Logan‘s Logan, whose deteriorating healing factor was ostensibly due to age (and who looked much older besides).

This worsens the baffling circumstances of Logan’s death, given Wolverine variants are far less prone to growing old and dying. Comic book precedents also depict Logan as surviving hundreds of years into the future, such as in the “Old Man Logan” run of Marvel Comics, whereas Logan succumbs to age in 2029. While I won’t go so far as to say that this ruins Logan – it actually raises the stakes for the film – at least Deadpool & Wolverine have validated this gripe.