The X-Men cinematic continuity is ... let's just say, "Fluid." The events of Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past resulted in a massive wiping away of events that we had seen established on screen, allowing new stories to be told that were freed from a pre-existing timeline. In addition, solo movies like Deadpool and Logan -- though they have elements from the X-Men movies -- largely exist in separate realms from the linked X-Men team movies. Or so we thought. Today, X-Men producer Simon Kinberg confirmed a major link between Logan and X-Men: Apocalypse, and it creates intriguing avenues for future stories.
The following contains light spoilers for Logan. It doesn't give much away, but you might want to avoid reading them, so we have included this warning.
In the mid-credits scene from X-Men: Apocalypse, Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg included a shot of someone walking through the carnage left by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and the recast X-Men at the Weapon X facility. The clean-up squad is vacuuming up bullets and mopping up blood. And speaking of blood, a stranger opens up a cabinet and removes a vile of blood marked "Weapon X" and places it in a briefcase labeled ESSEX CORP. This is a tease for Mister Sinister, a classic X-Men villain, and it led many to believe that Sinister might show up in Logan.
Well, he doesn't. He's not the villain of Logan, though today, Logan producer Simon Kinberg confirmed that this scene DOES in fact explain how the villains of James Mangold's piece eventually acquired the blood and the DNA that they use in their revised Weapon X program to create an army of young mutants, including Laura (Dafne Keen), aka X-23. When we asked, specifically, if the X-Men: Apocalypse end-credits sequence and Logan are directly connected, Kinberg confirmed:
Yes, that is the implication.
Very cool. Which means that, at some point along the X-Men timeline between X-Men: Apocalypse and the events of Logan, we likely "met" Mister Sinister.
To that end, CinemaBlend Events Editor Eric Eisenberg pressed Simon Kinberg on the plans for Mister Sinister and whether he'll appear in an upcoming X-Men movie. The producer revealed:
The short answer is yes. We would love to see Sinister. I think he is one of the great untapped villains in the X-Men universe, and we do have plans to introduce him into the world.
There you have it. Mister Sinister will be in an X-Men movie, in due time. The next question, of course, is when this might happen. Simon Kinberg told us that they do have a rollout plan in place through 2018, and are very close to revealing it. The rumor remains that the next official Team X-Men movie, which Simon Kinberg might direct, could involve the Dark Phoenix storyline. But if that takes place in the 1990s, and Logan takes place in 2029, then the timeline has ample opportunity to get into the saga of Sinister and the Essex Corp.
Logan opens in theaters on March 3.
