Why Wolverine Started To Lose His Healing Power In Logan

In Logan’s dark future timeline, Wolverine was losing his mutant healing factor. Here is the reason why Logan got sick and why his powers failed him.

In Logan, a Wolverine living in a dark future is seen to be slowly losing his healing powers, which enabled his eventual tragic death. Directed by James Mangold, the R-rated and Academy Award-nominated Logan proved to be the final time Hugh Jackman portrayed the Wolverine, which was the role that made him world-famous thanks to the X-Men movie franchise. However, while it laid some of the groundwork of an explanation, the movie did not fully explain why Wolverine lost his healing factor.

Logan is set in 2029 in a hypothetical timeline where the X-Men have mostly been killed off. No new mutants were known to have been born in 25 years, and those who have survived are hunted by the evil Transigen corporation for their genetic material for corrupt and profit-driven motives. Logan finds James Howlett, the ex-mutant superhero known as Wolverine, eking out a living as a chauffeur. Wolverine is also working to take care of the ageing Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who, despite his mental prowess as a mutant telepath, is dying of degenerative brain disease. Wolverine is shaken out of his routine when a young mutant girl, Laura (Dafne Keene), is given to him to care for and along with Professor Xavier they flee across the country in search of a fable mutant sanctuary while they are pursued by cybernetic mercenaries hired by Transigen to recapture Laura and any mutants like her.

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At the beginning of Logan, Wolverine is a shell of his former self and is clearly ill from the beginning of the movie. In the X-Men movie canon, Wolverine has been alive for almost 200 years having been born in Canada in 1832. This was only possible due to his mutant ability which gave him an incredible healing factor that, for a long time, seemed to make him almost immortal. In Logan, the power has clearly been becoming less effective for some time as scars and bullet holes that once would have vanished remain permanently visible. It’s also shown that he is in constant physical agony, numbing it regularly with alcohol, painkillers, and sometimes just gritting his teeth through the enduring pain. With his healing factor in decline, even his claws don’t come out as quickly or as reliably as they once did. So why is his healing factor failing? It all comes down to a single fatal affliction: Adamantium poisoning.

After Wolverine is confronted with a mindless clone of himself who has killed Professor X, he is gravely wounded and Laura takes him to a local doctor. The physician told him that something in his body was killing him as he was literally being poisoned from the inside out. Logan remained stoically unsurprised by this as he had already assumed the Adamantium that the Weapon X program coated his bones with had long been the cause of his ailment. The experimentation that the government conducted on Wolverine made him a powerful weapon, but also led to his eventual demise, and it is unclear how long he might have survived if not for the operation. This decision on the filmmakers’ part also parallels real-world situations of governments experimenting with toxic substances on their own troops which can make them more effective soldiers but can also be harmful or even fatal at the same time.

While Logan didn’t elaborate on the grisly details of his Adamantium poisoning, it can be surmised that Wolverine’s very long and brutal life taxed his healing factor to its limits. Meanwhile, the Adamantium was constantly poisoning his insides; Logan’s healing factor originally kept the metal’s toxicity in check but, as it gradually failed, the poison has been overwhelming his system and killing him. Adamantium poisoning may also have turned into the cause of his healing factor’s increasing failure. By the time of Logan, there is no viable major medical resource for mutants, and even if there were, it is previously noted that the bonding process for the Adamantium to be on Wolverine’s bones cannot be undone. By the end of Logan, the long-suffering mutant’s depleted healing factor could no longer save him and after a life of pain he was ready for the end to come at last. With that, Logan died from his fatal injuries and Hugh Jackman moved on from his role as Wolverine. But not before Logan performed one final, heroic act where he saved Laura and the future of the mutant race.

Next: Logan Movie Villain & Comic Backstory Explained

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