Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine, Logan, finally has a confirmed villain: the genocidal cyborg Donald Pierce.
According to early casting rumors Narcos star Boyd Holbrook was for the role of Donald Pierce, who in the comics is a cyborg member of the Hellfire Club.
If you recall, the underground society of elite mutant villains was last seen in X-Men: First Class where it was led by Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw. Shaw was a semi-immortal mutant who first discovered Magneto at a Nazi concentration camp where Shaw was a Nazi doctor. However, it’s later revealed in the books that Pierce, despite his high rank within the organization, actually hates all mutants and is working from the inside to destroy the mutant race. He is uncovered by Professor X and imprisoned by the Hellfire Club for his betrayal, but not before returning with a new team of cyborg murderers known as the Reavers.
While he has always been an enemy of mutankind and a threat to the X-Men as a whole, his most famous interaction with Wolverine involves a time when he and the Reavers seized the Xavier mansion and tortured and crucified Wolverine. It’s a brutal scene that might make an apperance in some form or other in James Mangold’s R-rated Wolverine film.
Since it was revealed that Logan would be an adaptation of the famously dark “Old Man Logan” storyline from the comics, Mangold seems to be relishing the opportunity to helm one of the rare R-rated superhero films, “In this flick, people get hurt or killed when shit falls on them … Should anyone in our story have the misfortune to fall off a roof or out a window, they won’t bounce. They will die.”
To that end, Pierce’s character as a racist, genocidal maniac who is hellbent on murdering mutants makes him the perfect fit for the story. While it’s clear that the film will focus on Logan’s legacy and future, even introducing his clone X-23, Pierce will no doubt be eager to eliminate one of the most famous mutants of all time to complete his desire of total mutant genocide.
The film has also been releasing stoic, black-and-white photos on Instagram which show, among other things, an incredibly aged Professor X (played by Patrick Stewart), a motel, and a severed arm holding a shotgun. We get it Logan, you’re rated R and we’re all excited.
Logan will be released on March 3, 2017.
