What Does The Ending Of X-Men: Apocalypse Really Mean?

What's Going To Happen With Wolverine And Stryker?

It's not exactly the film's ending, but is something pretty major that's not fully wrapped up by the credits, so let's take a look at what we learn about William Stryker and the Weapon X program.

The last time we saw Logan and Stryker was at the end of Days Of Future Past, with the latter (well, technically Mystique in disguise) dredging the former from the Potomac river. In Apocalypse, Stryker (the real version) turns up after the destruction of the X-Mansion, taking some choice mutants in the hope they'll lead him to Xavier. He doesn't account for Jean Grey, however, who releases Weapon X, killing most of his men and sending him running.

OK, so first, what's Stryker up to? Well, as he's led to the school because it's the source of Apocalypse's nuclear cleansing and later seems obsessed with finding the Professor, it's clear Charles features prominently in his new plans, possibly a new-timeline version of his "kill all mutants" scheme from X-2. He later leaves, clearly unsure of his chances against Wolverine, leaving an appearance in a sequel very much open.

Now for the character we all wanted to see - Wolverine. He's very different to when we last saw him (although it's worth remembering the 1973 version in Days Of Future Past was actually a mind-travelled version from 2023), with all his previous memories lost and his mind seemingly in a permanent "berserker rage" state. In this context loaded sequence - his get-up is very comic reminiscent, while the details of his escape has some parallels to the visions Logan had in X-Men 2 - the big difference to the status quo is that Jean not only aids his escape, but that she actually gives him back the few memory fragments that power his journey.

This is very much the river realligning itself, with Jean's memory-giving a correction for some blip in the timeline, something that may get alluded to in Wolverine 3.

This sequence doesn't address the Mystique-Stryker from Days Of Future Past, however, which leads some timeline speculation open.