What Does The Ending Of Logan Really Mean?

7. Where Was Mr Sinister?

The now infamous Weapon-X scene in X-Men: Apocalypse and the post-credits stinger that fed out from it both seemed to suggest that Logan would in some way involve Mr Sinister as the... sinister force behind the cloning of Wolverine that leads to X-23's being.

But in something of an unexpected twist, the film completely ignores this establishing work: the company behind the cloning is in fact Alkali Transigen, not EssexCorp, and the big bad is Dr Zander Rice - the son of one of the Weapon X scientists - rather than Sinister (whose real name is Nathaniel Essex - hence the suspicion he was appearing). So what happened? Did James Mangold just decide not to explore this narrative thread after all?

Well, Mangold was very clear that he wanted to avoid the kind of pantomime, costumed villainy that Mr Sinister would bring in Logan, so he was left out consciously. Plus, according to producer Simon Kinberg, Sinister is being set up for a future X-Men movie role, which suggests that at some point, the mainline of X-Men movies is going to explore a Wolverine clone storyline again... Otherwise what the hell was the point in the Apocalypse post-credits scene?