How Deadpool Made Hugh Jackman Regret His Worst Wolverine Decision

It wasn't very long after Hugh Jackman officially quit playing Logan, aka Wolverine, that he regretted his decision. Although Jackman had inhabited the role of the adamantium-infused mutant for 17 years at that point — starting with 2000's "X-Men" and ending with the character's noble death in 2017's "Logan" — a viewing of the 2016 movie "Deadpool," starring his friend Ryan Reynolds in the definitive screen portrayal of Marvel's Merc with a Mouth, quickly led Jackman to rethink what he had done.

"I was literally 10 minutes into watching 'Deadpool 1' and I was at a screening that Ryan had set up for me," Jackman recalled to Fandango (via FandomWire). "And I had just made the announcement, we had not shot 'Logan,' but I had made the announcement, this is it, this is the last one. And I remember being 10 minutes in and all I kept seeing was Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. And I was like 'I just said it' and I just shoved that one down."

What Jackman meant by "Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy" was, of course, a reference to the classic R-rated buddy comedy "48 Hrs.," in which Nolte plays a cop who has to spring Murphy's convict out of prison to assist him with a murder case. Jackman imagined a similar type of film, only starring Deadpool and Wolverine, but realized he couldn't renege on his promise to hang up Logan's claws ... at least not at the time.

Flash forward five years to 2022. Hugh Jackman's Logan seems truly retired, but in the meantime, Marvel Studios parent company Disney has officially acquired 20^th Century Fox and inherited all the Marvel characters that Fox had the rights to — including Deadpool, Wolverine, and the entire "X-Men" mutant universe. With what was then known as "Deadpool 3" officially confirmed as a Marvel Studios project in 2022, Jackman once again thought back to his ill-fated decision.

"I was just driving — and literally just like a bolt of lightning came this knowing, deep in my gut, that I wanted to do this film with Ryan," Jackman told Fandango. Although Jackman was adamant that he was finished with Logan back in 2017, the idea of teaming up with Ryan Reynolds had never quite left his mind. "I knew the fans wanted it," he said. "Ever since I put on the claws, fans have talked about these two, so that had always been there, but I just knew."

Worried that "Deadpool 3" was already filming, Jackman called Reynolds as soon as he could — who, it turns out, was not only not filming, but close to scrapping the movie because he and director Shawn Levy couldn't come up with a story they liked. "Soon as I arrived, I rang Ryan," Jackman told Fandango. "And I just said, 'Let's do it.' Like, I hadn't rung my agent, no one. I had to ring my agent and said, 'Oh, by the way, I have just committed to a movie.'"

Of course, as everyone who has seen "Deadpool and Wolverine" knows by now, the Wolverine we meet in the film is not the one who died at the end of "Logan." The Logan that Deadpool recruits for his mission to save his timeline is "the worst Wolverine" — a Logan from yet another timeline who let the X-Men down tragically in his universe and has been drowning himself in regret and alcohol ever since.

The question now is whether this Logan — who redeems himself and helps save all the timelines by the end of "Deadpool and Wolverine" — is going to stick around or not. Ryan Reynolds told Collider that the team-up was "really, genuinely meant to be a true one-off," while Hugh Jackman — when asked in the same interview about coming back for more — only said, "It literally does not matter how I answer this ... because I'm clearly a liar. But what's so great about my lie is I believed it. Fully. I fully believed it."

Whether he fully believed himself or not about being done playing Wolverine, Hugh Jackman got to undo that decision years later — and, as Deadpool himself says to Jackman/Logan in the film, may well keep undoing it until he's 90 years old if Disney and Marvel have their way.