Warning: major SPOILERS for Logan are ahead!
Wolverine struggled with himself in more ways than one in Logan. Along with having to deal with his failing healing factor after nearly two centuries of walking the Earth, the clawed mutant also had to fight a animalistic clone of himself called X-24. X-24's inclusion came as a complete surprise after Donald Pierce, Zander Rice and the Reavers had been advertised as Logan's villains, but when Hugh Jackman was initially pitched on him playing the clone, he wasn't keen on the idea because he believed it wouldn't be satisfying to audiences. Jackman explained:
I was very skeptical of having X-24 being played by me. I understood what it represented and thematically the idea of battling himself, which of course is right at the core of this character that we never fully got to, so I kind of loved the externalization of that. But I also know that myself as an actor and fans of Wolverine come up to me in the street every day and go, 'We wanna see that full berserker animalistic crazy off-the-wall Wolverine,' right? That we don't feel we've fully seen it, so I was like, 'Jim if we introduced halfway or near the end of the movie that full berserker animalistic crazy Wolverine and he's somehow fighting our hero, audiences won't know what to feel.' And I remember him saying, 'Trust me, trust me, trust me.'
Despite director James Mangold's assurances that using X-24 in Logan was a good creative decision, Hugh Jackman admitted that for a while he continued to ask the director if they could keep "exploring" other directions to take the R-rated movie. Jackman didn't succeed with that request, but after making some slight changes to X-24's appearance, seeing how audiences would hate the clone after he killed Professor X and being satisfied with how "berserker" the actual Wolverine managed to be, Jackman was satisfied with how the Logan team handled this plot twist. He added in his Collider interview:
When I saw the movie it's just clear, for some reason I think because he skewers Patrick Stewart in that moment the audience just sort of hates him. We did some subtle things, I changed the bridge of my nose, I wore contacts---I just wanted him to look a little different from myself. And I think by that point we'd created already the Wolverine that people wanted to see. So anyway, that was one of my examples of being wrong (laughs).
X-24 was grown by Transigen using Wolverine's blood and DNA acquired from his rampage through Weapon X in X-Men: Apocalypse. As a younger version of Wolverine without any of his humanity, X-24 left a trail of bodies in its wake. He was eventually killed by Laura, a.k.a. X-23, with an adamantium bullet, but by that point, the clone had already fatally wounded Wolverine, and the hero died soon after. Jackman also expressed amazement at how X-24's appearance in Logan managed to stay a secret up until the movie's release, and commended the cast and crew for not "spilling the beans."
Logan is now available on Digital HD, and it will be released on Blu-ray Tuesday, May 23.
