In real life, actress Dafne Keen was 12 when Logan hit theaters in 2017. As Wolverine’s genetic daughter Laura, Keen made a big impression on Marvel fans, making her return in Deadpool & Wolverine all the sweeter.
But just how old is Laura supposed to be in the new timeline? Keen is 19 in reality, and she appears to be the same age in the film. But is this the same Laura from Logan? And if so, what year is everyone from? It all depends on your point of view, or rather, that of the storyteller. And when we unpack the questions surrounding X23’s appearance in Deadpool & Wolverine, we can piece together a Marvel Rosetta Stone that explains a lot. Spoilers ahead.
Dafne Keen says this is the same Laura
In an interview with YouTube Channel Phase Zero, Keen made it clear this version of Laura was the same person we saw in Logan. When she asked director Shaun Levy and star Ryan Reynolds what the status of her character was, including whether she was a variant of Logan’s Laura, the answers were straightforward.
“They were like, ‘Not a variant. You went along with the kids for a few years, and then you got zapped. And you’ve been in the TVA for a few years now.’”
Because Logan was set in the year 2029 and seems to have taken place in Deadpool’s timeline, this would indicate that seven or eight years have passed for Laura, regardless of what world she’s been living in.
But how does that work from Wade Wilson’s perspective? Does he live in 2036? No, because we’re told that his movie is supposed to be in 2024. The events of Logan, however, have somehow happened, so let’s dig deeper.
The TVA and the Void are timeless
Reconciling Laura’s age relative to the events of Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine is fairly easy thanks to the TVA and the Void. We know from Loki that time passes very differently in the TVA, and it stands to reason the same is true of the Void, too. Because Laura has occupied both these realms, having her be any age the movie wants her to be fits canon just fine.
As Keen says, at some point she got “zapped.” And within that TVA zapping, the writers have quite a bit of wiggle room. What’s really confusing about Deadpool & Wolverine’s timeline has nothing to do with Laura, but her presence calls attention to another question. How can Deadpool exist in a version of 2024 alongside events that are supposed to happen in 2029?
Deadpool’s metafiction fixes everything
Laura being from the X-Men timeline, Earth-10005, isn’t a big deal thanks to the TVA’s intercessions and the murky aspects of how the Void works. What really becomes confusing is how Deadpool is able to exhume Logan’s corpse in 2024 if Logan doesn’t meet his end until 2029.
Like other continuity problems in the X-Men movies, we could handwave all this away by saying the timeline that began with 2000’s X-Men is constantly being altered thanks to the time travel revisions of Days of Future Past. Maybe all the time travel within Earth-10005 has caused certain moments to take place earlier or later than we thought. But if that level of mental gymnastics doesn’t work, there’s another, easier in-universe explanation baked into the premise of Deadpool.
Deadpool is acutely aware that he’s a fictional character. When he breaks the fourth wall and references the real world or addresses the audience, it follows that he becomes the defacto narrative force of the movie or comic he’s in. Deadpool becomes a kind of Dr. Watson, telling us the story — however unreliably — that he wants to.
This paradigm is often useful for analyzing metafictional pop culture. Is the “author” of the story a character or an author in our world? Usually, when anyone discusses major pop culture stories like the MCU, we do so objectively. But if we accept that there are subjective narrators, then suddenly, Deadpool’s movies can represent a skewed version of canonical events. The movie is still canon, but the details are unreliable because Deadpool himself is the storyteller.
So, yes, Laura is the same Laura from Logan, and those are Logan’s bones from Logan. And if you’re worried about why the years don’t quite match up, blame the narrator. Because somewhere, outside of Deadpool’s movie, other characters have different perspectives on how this all went down.
