Early life James Howlett was born in
Northern Alberta,
Canada, near Cold Lake (then part of
British North America),
Earth-10005 in 1832. His mutant powers are awakened when, at 13, he stabs his family's groundskeeper,
Thomas Logan, for killing his father, a wealthy landowner. Discovering that Logan was in fact his biological father and seeing the revulsion in his mother's eyes over James killing him, he flees. With his half-brother
Victor Creed, Howlett spends the next century fighting in numerous wars including the
American Civil War, the
Great War, and the
Second World War. While being held in a
Japanese
POW camp in 1945, he saves the life of Japanese officer
Ichirō Yashida from the
bombing of Nagasaki. In 1962, Howlett is approached by
Charles Xavier and
Erik Lehnsherr, who are recruiting mutants, but Howlett simply responds "Go fuck yourself".
Original Earth-10005 variant Team X and becoming the Wolverine During the
Vietnam War, Creed kills a superior officer for preventing Creed from raping a Vietnamese woman. Howlett defends Creed when he sees angry soldiers surround him, and they are both sentenced to
death by firing squad, but survive and are imprisoned. After the war, Howlett becomes a member of a
black-ops strike team, "Team X," which is led by Colonel
William Stryker and includes Creed as well as
Wade Wilson. After staying on the team for a few years, Howlett leaves due to the group's disregard for human life. He starts a new life in Canada under the name "James Logan" with
Kayla Silverfox. In 1979, Logan's past catches up to him when Stryker assigns him to the
Weapon X project, in which he has
adamantium grafted to his bones. Taking the name "Wolverine" after the
Algonquian spirit, Kuekuatsheu, Logan works together with Creed to fight and kill Wilson, who has been designated Weapon XI. Stryker shoots Logan in the brain with an adamantium bullet before being arrested. Though Logan survives, his memory is lost, with his only identifying personal effects being his
dog tags engraved with "LOGAN."
Member of the X-Men In the 2000s, Logan is an amateur cage fighter in Laughlin City,
Alberta. There Logan meets
Marie D'Ancanto / Rogue, a mutant teenage girl who has run away from home. They are attacked on the road by Victor Creed, now known as Sabretooth and a minion of Magneto. Two of Xavier's students
Cyclops and
Stormarrive and save them. Logan and Rogue are brought to
Xavier's mansion and school for mutants in
Westchester County, New York. Xavier tells Logan that Magneto appears to have taken an interest in him and asks him to stay while Xavier's mutants, the
X-Men, investigate. Rogue enrolls in the school, and visits Logan while he is having a nightmare. Startled, he accidentally stabs her, but she is able to absorb his healing ability to recover. Disturbed by this event, Rogue leaves the school, and Logan finds her on a train and convinces her to return. Before they can leave, Magneto arrives, knocks out Logan and subdues Rogue, revealing it was Rogue who he wants rather than Logan. Learning that Magneto plans to use a machine to "mutate" world leaders meeting at a summit on nearby
Ellis Island, Logan and the other X-Men scale the
Statue of Liberty, battling and overpowering the
Brotherhood of Mutants, with Logan throwing Sabretooth off of the building into the ocean. After helping stop Magneto's plan, Logan is directed by
Professor X to an abandoned military base around Alkali Lake that might contain information about his past, taking Cyclops' motorcycle. Four days later, while stopping on his way to Alkali Lake to refill his gas tank, Logan notices that Sabretooth has been tracking him and attacks him, stopping after noticing he has similar dog tags to his own, and that Sabretooth is not trying to kill him. Offering him a drink, the two drink in a nearby bar, with Sabretooth revealing his fall from the Statue of Liberty to have restored some of his own erased memories, such as of his name being "Victor", of killing babies and old men, and of Logan. They are interrupted by soldiers searching for Victor, who recognizes Logan as "Weapon X". Fighting the soldiers, Logan and Victor are surprised that they show instinctive teamwork side-by-side, but they are eventually brought down. The two wake up restrained on a helicopter, and after apologizing to Logan for their past, having remembered them to be brothers, Victor throws Logan out of it, sacrificing himself to save him.
William Stryker then has adamantium bonded to Victor's bones, which fails as he had originally expected, although he is content with one new success story,
Lady Deathstrike. Learning of Logan's survival, Stryker expects to see "Wolverine" again. Three days later after that, Logan returns to Professor X's
school for mutants where he encounters Stryker, to which he and the X-Men teams up with Magneto and
Mystique to stop him. During a confrontation with Stryker and Lady Deathstrike, Logan regains some of his memory but opts to remain with the X-Men over Stryker's objections, while Stryker is killed when Alkali's base floods after sustaining damage. One year later, Xavier sends Logan and
Storm to investigate the disappearance of Scott Summers at Alkali Lake, but they find only
telekinetically floating rocks, Summers' glasses, and an unconscious Jean. Xavier explains to Logan that when Jean sacrificed herself to save them, she freed the "
Phoenix", a dark and extremely powerful
alternate personality which Xavier had telepathically repressed. Logan is disgusted to learn of this psychic tampering with Jean's mind. Later on, he checks up on her and she awakens suddenly. Jean then starts seducing Logan aggressively, but he notes this behavior as the Phoenix. Logan then discovers that she killed Summers and is not the Jean Grey he once knew. Jean as the Phoenix kills Xavier and joins Magneto, who plans to have mutants loyal to him storm a Worthington Labs facility housed in Alcatraz to destroy a supposed "cure" for mutants. Logan, Storm, and
Beast lead the remaining X-Men in challenging the attack, and Logan has Colossus throw him at Magneto to distract him long enough for
Hank McCoy to inject Magneto with the "cure" and thus nullify his powers. Army reinforcements arrive and shoot at Jean just as Logan had calmed her down. The Phoenix is awakened by the attack and disintegrates the troops, and begins to destroy Alcatraz and anyone within range of her powers. Logan realizes that only he can stop the Phoenix due to his healing factor and
adamantium skeleton. When Logan approaches her, Jean momentarily gains control and begs him to save her, and everyone else, by killing her. Logan fatally stabs Jean, killing the Phoenix, but mourns her death.
Isolation Years later, the guilt-ridden Logan lives in
isolation in the Yukon. He is located by
Yukio, a
mutant with the ability to foresee people's deaths, sent by an elderly
Ichirō Yashida wanting to repay Logan for being saved during World War II, but Logan refuses to have his healing powers transferred into Yashida. With Yukio at his side, this leads to a series of events where Wolverine protects Ichirō's granddaughter,
Mariko Yashida from Ichirō's son,
Shingen Yashida. In the course of these events, Logan's healing powers are damaged, his adamantium claws are severed, and he is finally able to let go of his guilt over Jean's death. After finally returning to the United States two years later, Logan finds himself approached by Magneto and a resurrected Professor X while learning of a new threat to all mutants. In a
deleted scene, Logan received the yellow costume from the source material in a suitcase.
Going back in time By 2023, the world is controlled by
Sentinels, which have decimated the mutant race and virtually conquered Earth, forcing the X-Men to seek a new method of combating their threat. At some point, his claws were infused with adamantium again. Logan's damaged healing factor led to him eventually developing minor wrinkles and a few grey strands of hair. In a deleted scene, at some point, he also started a deep romantic relationship with Storm.
Kitty Pryde uses her phasing powers to transfer Logan's mind back in time into his 1973 body to help the younger Xavier and Lehnsherr, as well as Hank McCoy, deter Mystique from assassinating
Bolivar Trask, preventing the apocalyptic future from occurring. Once his mission is fulfilled, events from 1973 onward are changed.
Revised Earth-10005 variant Rewriting history and captured by Weapon X In the revised 1973 timeline, while Logan supposedly served as a bodyguard for the Mafia, his mind was taken over by the consciousness of his future self. While pursuing and capturing
Raven in Paris, Logan saw Major
William Stryker, triggering traumatic flashbacks. Logan temporarily recovered his consciousness, before his future self reclaimed control. When the original timeline–Logan succeeded in his mission, his consciousness left his body. Logan woke up being rescued from drowning by Raven, disguised as Stryker. In the 1980s, Logan is eventually captured by Stryker, given an adamantium skeleton and subjected to brutal mental conditioning, leaving him more feral than human. When some of the X-Men are captured by Stryker's men in 1983, Jean, Scott, and
Nightcrawler infiltrate Stryker's base and find a cage. Jean senses the human mind inside and releases him so that he can help. After he tears through Stryker's forces, the three mutants find him and Jean telepathically restores some of Logan's human memories before he runs off through a small side-exit into the snow.
Modern day and a better 2023 In 2023, the consciousness of the original timeline's Logan awakes in his body but with no memory of this timeline. He is happy to see Jean, Scott, and Hank alive, as they never died. Over the preceding 40 years, Logan had joined the X-Men, ultimately becoming a history teacher at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
Death and legacy In a potential future, Logan's healing factor continues to deteriorate from Yashida's draining of it. This caused Logan to finally age past his prime and suffer from terminal adamantium poisoning. By 2027, Xavier developed
Alzheimer's. This inadvertently led to Xavier suffering a
seizure while in
Westchester County, which also made him accidentally unleash a psychic attack that kills several people, including few of the X-Men. Following this, Logan and Xavier are branded international fugitives. Logan asks the assistance of
Caliban to help care for Xavier. He and Caliban take Xavier to an abandoned smelting plant the along the
border between the
United States and
Mexico, caring for the senile Xavier. Wanting Xavier and himself to live the rest of their lives in peace, Logan spends his days working as a chauffeur under his birth name in an attempt to raise money to purchase a
Sunseeker yacht. He also begins hustling for prescription drugs for Xavier. By 2029, he is tasked by Transigen's former nurse Gabriela Lopez to escort the 11-year-old
Laura to a place in
North Dakota called "Eden." Caliban is captured by Transigen's
hunters led by
Donald Pierce but Logan, Charles, and Laura escape and discover that Laura is Logan's daughter bred from his DNA and has inherited his bone claws and healing factor. After the three accept shelter from the Munson family they helped on the highway, Xavier is killed by a
feral clone of Wolverine. Logan and Laura escape and bury Xavier's body near a lake. Eventually, Logan and Laura arrive at Eden, a safe haven run by
Rictor and former Transigen test subjects. There, Logan learns that the children will make an eight-mile journey across the forest to the
Canada–United States border and entrusts Laura to lead before departing on his own. But when the children are located and captured, Logan uses a mutant serum provided by Rictor to restore his full strength and healing factor. After the serum wears off, he meets Rice, who reveals himself as the engineer of the mutant decline in the USA. In retribution for Rice's actions, he shoots and kills the scientist. With an overdose of the serum leaving him exhausted, Logan is no match for his clone, who impales Logan with a tree. Laura shoots the clone in the head with an adamantium bullet that Logan had kept with him for years. Logan tells Laura not to become the weapon that she was made to be, and after she tearfully acknowledges him as her father, he dies peacefully in her arms. Laura and the children bury him before continuing the journey across the border. Laura places Logan's cross-shaped grave marker on its side to create an "X" to honor him as the last of the X-Men. It is later revealed that Logan was Earth-10005's "anchor being", an entity of extreme importance to the timeline, which begins to destabilize after his death. This catches the attention of
Paradox, a rogue
Time Variance Authority (TVA) agent, who decides to use the "Time Ripper", a machine that mercy-kills timelines, on Earth-10005. In an attempt to save his reality,
Wade Wilson from the revised timeline time-travels to scour Logan's grave for signs of survival, only to find his adamantium skeleton remains, which he uses to fight off TVA forces. == Alternate version ==