Fact vs fiction: Aging in sci-fi and fantasy
By WiC Staff
Wolverine — (Logan) — 197 years old
In 2017, Hugh Jackman hung up his claws for good when he portrayed Wolverine for the final time in the critically acclaimed Logan. While there are some online whispers of Jackman making a return, for now this is the last time we can expect to see him as the character.
Logan marked Jackman’s 11th time playing the character in 17 years, earning him a Guinness World Record. But with 11 films starring Jackman’s Wolverine, it’s easy to lose track of the characters’ true age.
However, it’s actually quite simple to deduce. Wolverine was born in 1832. We see a very sickly13 year old James Howlett (Logan) in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This scene takes place in 1845.
Logan is set in 2029, when (spoiler alert) the character meets his fateful end. Some simple math will tell you that he lives to be 197 years old when he dies.
In terms of human biology, this is a step too far in terms of real-life possibility. There were recently some stories in the media speaking about an Indonesian man who supposedly lived to be 147. While he did appear to have certain documents, which potentially proved his age, he hasn’t been added to the official list of the worlds’ oldest people. So it should be taken with a pinch of salt.
One animal with a relatively comparable lifespan is the bowhead whale, which can live to be roughly 200 years old. So it isn’t outside the realm of biological possibility that Wolverine could live this long – though he is, of course, a mutant.
Mutation is possible in humans, and can bring about extremely rare, and often fascinating conditions. But no known examples of these have reached the scale of the characters depicted in the X-Men franchise.