Two decades of mutant cinema laid out in chronological order — from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 to Logan's desolate 2029, through Days of Future Past's timeline-shattering reset, all the way to Deadpool & Wolverine's collision with the MCU.
The X-Men films span 24 years (2000–2024) and nearly 70 years of in-story history. Multiple timelines, time travel, and a soft reset via Days of Future Past — this chronology follows the in-story order as the films themselves establish it.
The X-Men franchise contains some of the most tangled canon in comic book cinema. Days of Future Past soft-rebooted one timeline into another, Logan exists in its own continuity, and Deadpool & Wolverine tore the walls down completely.
Hugh Jackman played Wolverine for 24 years across 10 films — retired after Logan's tragic death in 2017. Then came back one more time for Deadpool & Wolverine. These are the three most important versions of the character he portrayed.
The moments that reshaped mutantkind on screen.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr part ways on the beach — Erik takes Mystique and others to form the Brotherhood. Xavier is paralyzed by a ricocheted bullet. The defining fracture of the X-Men mythology begins.
Mystique attempts to assassinate Bolivar Trask — which historically led to public fear, Sentinel approval, and mutant genocide. Wolverine (mind sent back from 2023) stops her. The timeline is rewritten. The dystopian future ceases to exist. Every death from X1–X3 is undone.
The first mutant awakens after millennia. Recruits four horsemen (Storm, Psylocke, Angel, Magneto). Jean Grey unleashes the Phoenix force for the first time to defeat him. The new timeline's team begins to form.
Jean Grey — possessed by the Phoenix — kills Professor X and Cyclops. Wolverine reluctantly stabs her to save the world. Magneto is depowered. This entire event is ERASED when DoFP succeeds. But the emotional weight still shapes the franchise.
Wolverine wakes up in a changed world. Jean is alive. Cyclops is alive. Professor X rolls in. The bad future is gone. Hugh Jackman's Logan gets to see a happy ending — before Logan (2017) re-establishes tragedy in a different timeline continuation.
Logan dies in Laura's arms after saving her and the young mutants. She inverts his cross grave marker into an "X". The closing shot of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in the original Fox continuity — a genuinely tragic, beautiful western-flavoured farewell.
Deadpool uses Cable's time-travel device to go back and shoot Ryan Reynolds before he accepts the role of "Merc With a Mouth" in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fourth-wall-breaking canon retcon that officially erases the mouthless Deadpool from the franchise.
The TVA confirms Earth-10005 is dying because Logan died. Wade resurrects a variant Wolverine. They save the timeline and officially cross over into the MCU multiverse. The Fox-X-Men history is now canonically part of Marvel Studios' multiverse going forward.