Just because next year's Logan will be Hugh Jackman's last time playing Wolverine doesn't mean that the character is going to have it any easier. On the contrary, recent reports have indicated this spinoff will be one of the darkest X-Men movies ever. One of the reasons for that doesn't even have to do with Wolverine personally, but how all of mutantkind is suffering, and a new photo seems to verify that claim.
For the past week, the official Logan Instagram account has been posting photos teasing what's coming in the third Wolverine movie. Some are easy to understand, like seeing an elderly Professor X, while others are more mysterious, like seeing a toppled water tower at a "smelting plant." The latest photo falls somewhere in the middle, as we see a bathroom where someone has etched on one of the stalls, "Where are all the mutants?" Clearly in the Logan time period, something has happened to the mutant population that caused their numbers to significantly dwindle. The picture's caption doesn't provide any details about why, but we may already know the reason.
Supposedly in the year 2024, which is when Logan takes place, the mutant birthrate has started to decline. Whether this is natural or the result of an external force, their numbers are dropping. If that wasn't bad enough, young mutants are also being kidnapped by a enigmatic organization known as Transigen to be turned into living weapons. While it's doubtful the general population knows that about the kidnappings, evidently the decreasing number of mutants is impossible not to notice, hence why someone has taken it upon themselves to ask the obvious questions amidst the usual scrawlings one would find in a public restroom. There's no guarantee that answer will be directly provided in Logan, but it's obviously a rough time to be a mutant.
The dwindling mutant population is one of the many aspects of Logan that will make this spinoff a dreary affair. The eponymous protagonist looks a lot more ragged than the last time we chronologically saw him (at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past), and his healing powers are barely working, forcing him to turn to alcohol to help with the pain. As for Professor X, he's grown unstable in his old age, which isn't great when you're the world's greatest telepath. At some point during the story, Wolverine will come into conflict with the folks behind Transigen, including its head of security, Donald Pierce, and the man leading the operation, reportedly Zander Rice. The eponymous protagonist is also expected to run into his younger female clone, X-23, who rocks two claws on each hand rather than three.
Logan claws its way into theaters on March 3, 2017.
