The world of Logan will be unlike anything seen in previous X-Men stories on the big screen. Mutant populations are in decline, the X-Men are disbanded, and people feel generally hopeless. Instead of the exciting, conflicted mutant teens now familiar to us from movies like First Class, Logan audiences might meet a more intense and desperate mutant team: Caliban and the Morlocks.
Logan takes place in the year 2024 where, after a series of dramatic events, the mutant population is left in shambles. Professor X is alive but he’s ill and a shadow of the man he once was. According to newly released plot details, Professor X’s powers are unstable and sometimes he’s unable to even remember who Logan is.
Without the X-Men rallied around him, Professor X is cared for by the mutant Caliban (played by Stephen Merchant). Caliban is a mutant who can track the movements of other mutants, and he’s a member of the underground society for wayward or physically terrifying mutants: the Morlocks.
If the Morlocks appear in Logan, prepare for an X-Men film that channels Mad Max. These guys are freaky enough that even their fellow mutants don’t want them around.
The Morlocks are shunned from society somewhat more than the X-Men. Either due to the extreme physical mutations or their temperaments, the Morlocks chose to literally go underground. They are generally very powerful with their powers often taking form in horrifying ways.
The more details that emerge from Logan, the more it becomes clear that the film isn’t just some distant sequel to The Wolverine. Logan is going to shake-up the X-Men timeline once again, this time depicting a mutant future even more brutal than the one seen in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
How the X-Men universe builds up to this terrible future is still a mystery, but it might explain how Caliban comes to care for Professor X, when previously the character was seen in X-Men: Apocalypse as a mutant trafficker (played by Icelandic actor Tómas Lemarquis). If this isn’t another instance of saving the future with the power of time travel, the Logan future is the dark, inevitable end for the X-Men.
