If there is one character who definitively rivals Hugh Jackman's Wolverine as the scene-stealer in Logan, it's Dafne Keen's X-23, otherwise known as Laura. The young, badass mutant has become an instant fan-favorite after only one movie in the X-Men universe, and plenty of X-Men enthusiasts have begun to see a future for her beyond her original performance. Despite her popularity (or possibly because of it) we likely won't see her in the main X-Men movies anytime soon because 20th Century Fox wants to focus on building solo stories around her. Logan producer Hutch Parker explained:
Yeah, I mean, look -- I don't know definitively, but in terms of the stuff we've been talking about, it's not sort of slipping her into the background of another movie. It's looking at that character, which is a great character and has a pretty interesting run within the comics, to find a story that we think she could carry or certainly be kind of majorly significant within.
While Hutch Parker's recent comments to IGN about the future of X-23 in the X-Men franchise are somewhat disheartening, they also make quite a bit of sense. The character clearly has potential for her own solo adventures (drawing from the comics, or original stories) and slipping her in as a "background" character in an ensemble movie could potentially do her a disservice as a burgeoning superhero. Laura has immense potential to carry her own franchise moving into the next few years, and it sounds like the folks at 20th Century Fox don't want to squander that.
Still, we cannot deny how awesome it would be to see Dafne Keen show up in an X-Men movie or the upcoming New Mutants film. It's hard to imagine a proper X-Men movie without a Wolverine within the roster (or at least with a Wolverine cameo), and the franchise has very clearly set up X-23 to take Logan's place as the resident clawed badass in this universe -- which also happened in the comics. For now, it sounds like something of that nature is probably not going to happen, but Dafne Keen is still very young, which means she won't age out of X-23 anytime soon.
Even if Laura doesn't pop up in a proper X-Men movie within the foreseeable future, it sounds like James Mangold already has a fairly strong idea of where she should go next. The Logan director recently addressed the story potential of the character and described her next hypothetical story as an "honest" coming of age tale about the trials and tribulations of Laura and her fellow Alkali mutants. There's a vision for this character, and it can work with or without the X-Men.
Logan is now available on Digital HD and Blu-ray. We will bring you more information related to the future of the X-Men franchise (and all of its spin-offs) as new updates become available. For now, take a look at our movie premiere guide for more up to date information on the rest of 2017's most highly anticipated theatrical debuts!
