Wolverine has lost his memory and woken-up in a podcast.
On Tuesday, Marvel New Media and Stitcher announced a new (sadly, fictional) serial podcast starring one of the most popular X-Men of them all: Wolverine. Titled Wolverine: The Long Night, the 10-episode series will launch in early 2018 on Stitcher Premium before it’s released on all other podcasting platforms in the fall.
Richard Armitage, known for playing Thorin in The Hobbit trilogy, will provide the voice of Logan. Armitage will be joined by Scott Adsit (Big Hero 6) and Brian Stokes Mitchell (Mr. Robot), while comedian Chris Gethard will have a cameo appearance. (Though all of their roles are unknown, it can’t be unreasonable to think Mitchell would make a pretty good Beast.)
Wolverine: The Long Night will be written by Benjamin Percy, also known as the author of DC’s Green Arrow comics. A gritty crime story set in rural Alaska, the series follows two agents investigating a murder in which our hero, the man called Logan — who is also mind-wiped — is the prime suspect. In an interview, Percy told Mashable that The Long Night is chiefly modeled on the investigative styles heard in popular podcasts like Serial and S-Town. “They’re co-authors, they’re literary detectives, because they’re piecing together the clues alongside the reporters, and I wanted to take a similar approach to that,” he said.”
Percy commented on how Wolverine’s lost memory adds dimension to his character: “He doesn’t know the whole terrible truth about his life. Part of the series is him recovering those memories and despite his attempts to separate himself from society, getting drawn into a situation where frontier justice is called for.”
Dan Silver, VP of Stitcher, said that Wolverine: The Long Night isn’t the beginning of the “Marvel Podcast Universe.” Yet. “Marvel is known as world-builders and universe-builders; that is what we do across all of our mediums,” he told Mashable.
While Silver basically confirms The Long Night isn’t sowing the seeds for a continuity of podcast serials, it is without question possible if the series becomes a hit. Comics have been doing it for decades, while the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Marvel Studios is exemplary in regards to creating an interconnected narrative.
After comics, radio was the medium superheroes found themselves becoming household names. Podcasts are the modern descendant of radio, which makes a “Marvel Podcast Universe” not so unprecedented. As of now, it’s unknown if Stitcher has access to just Wolverine, the X-Men, or the larger Marvel universe. If Quicksilver can appear in two different Marvel movies — owned by two different parent companies — then could there be a podcast Hulk who battles podcast Wolverine?
“It’s hard to say, but it would be super cool,” said Silver.
Wolverine: The Long Night will be released in spring 2018 on Stitcher Premium.
