Professor X Dies – Logan
Boy, there were a lot of deaths in superhero movies this year, weren’t there?
We’d already seen Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier die before, back in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, so when Logan seemed to be setting Professor X up for another death, we thought that it wouldn’t pack much of a punch. Oh, how naive we were.
Midway through, director James Mangold pulls one of the – if not the – biggest surprises in the franchise as the elderly, ailing Charles is seemingly murdered in his own bed by Wolverine! It’s then revealed that this is actually X-24, Logan’s dark clone. By the time Logan can see to his old friend though, it’s too late, and Xavier passes away.
This is a relentlessly bleak scene, and a tragically grim way to go for a character who has survived multiple attempts at world domination and even a dystopian timeline ruled by killer robots. But it works perfectly within Logan‘s tone and Patrick Stewart really seizes the opportunity to bring the full might of his Shakespearean gravitas to the proceedings.
