Logan (2017): Cast, Plot, Ending Explained and Where to Watch

The full plot of Logan (2017) is a road movie in which Logan, Charles Xavier and Laura run from Transigen, and it ends with the lab children crossing the border after Logan's death.

In 2029 Logan drives a limo and secretly cares for a sick Xavier, helped by Caliban. A nurse named Gabriela pays him to take Laura to a place called Eden near the Canadian border. Gabriela is killed, and Transigen's security chief, Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), hunts for Laura with a squad of cyborg soldiers. Caliban is captured and forced to track the girl.

Logan learns that Laura was grown in a lab from mutant DNA, as one of many children bred to be weapons, and that she is effectively his daughter. That turns a reluctant escort job into a family story. Xavier, Logan and Laura flee across the country and are sheltered for a night by a farming family, the Munsons.

During that night, X-24, a savage clone of Logan made by Transigen, attacks and kills Xavier and the Munson family. Logan buries Xavier, then takes a drug that briefly restores his strength and fights through many of the soldiers.

Logan finds the children from the lab gathered at the border, and the soldiers close in on them. Dr. Rice is killed, and the children overpower Pierce. X-24 stabs Logan, and Laura kills the clone with an adamantium bullet. Logan dies in Laura's arms, telling her not to become the weapon she was built to be. The children bury him, Laura speaks lines from the western Shane, and she turns the cross on his grave on its side into an X before they cross the border.

Laura tips the cross on Logan's grave into an X, which, in my opinion, claims the X-Men name for him and for the children who carry on without him.

The ending shows Logan dying after a last fight against his own clone, with Laura beside him. The children bury him in a forest grave, Laura says a few words over it using lines from the western Shane, and then she turns the cross. The children head on toward the border and Canada. The sideways cross is the cleanest image in the film, because it answers the question the title keeps asking: is Logan a man or a weapon?

Here is why the clone matters. X-24 is a savage clone of Logan made by Transigen, and Laura kills it with an adamantium bullet. A copy of Logan is ended by a girl who was built in a lab in much the same way. It could be argued that Logan's last words to Laura, telling her not to become the weapon she was built to be, are the real thesis, and the burial is the proof she heard him.

There is also a quiet echo of the start of the saga. In X-Men (2000), a runaway teenager named Marie meets the drifter Logan in Canada. Seventeen years later, a girl who is almost his own daughter heads north, and this time he does not make it.

Is Logan the best Wolverine film? In my opinion, yes. Mangold had already directed The Wolverine, and here he swaps the Tokyo set pieces for a quiet road movie built around a dying man and a girl who barely speaks, with the Munson farmhouse night as its emotional center. For the full ranking across the saga, see X-Men movies ranked.