Marvel’s Wolverine is one of the most anticipated single-player superhero games of all time, and is set to release in just a few months. However, a new look at Insomniac’s upcoming game may have a solid blueprint for future stories in the MCU.
Looking darker and more mature than its Spider-Man games set in the same universe, Insomniac’s Wolverine game promises to have a pretty unique story as it expands the lore of Earth-1408 with the introduction of mutants like Logan, Jean Grey, and more. However, one of the most interesting reveals has less to do with Wolverine and more to do with the status quo of the X-Men in this reality.
As the MCU prepares to introduce more mutants to its main reality of Earth-616 following Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel’s Wolverine may be showing an exciting way for the franchise to establish the X-Men without creating major continuity headaches.
In Insomniac’s Marvel Universe, The X-Men Don’t Exist (Yet)
One of the most recent details revealed about Marvel’s Wolverine is the apparent absence of the X-Men. It’s not that they won’t be featured in the upcoming game; they don’t exist in Insomniac’s Marvel Universe at all (at least not yet).
While the game will naturally keep its focus centered on Wolverine, the story will also revolve around a group Logan works with known as Team X. Described as a collection of mutant mercenaries, the organization appears focused on protecting fellow mutants, with the existence of mutantkind still being a secret and largely hidden from the public.
Overall, this is a pretty surprising status quo reveal, especially with Marvel’s Wolverine sharing the same continuity as Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, which have confirmed the existence of The Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, The Defenders, and more heroes. Nevertheless, it seems as though the X-Men aren’t a thing, and the same likely goes for Xavier’s School for the Gifted. However, nothing says the X-Men can’t be formed in the future.
While it may seem like a strange choice, a version of the Marvel Universe full of heroes sans X-Men does sound an awful lot like the MCU.
Marvel’s Wolverine Offers A Pretty Fascinating Blueprint For The MCU
While it’s been confirmed that Marvel Studios intends to introduce more mutants to the MCU following Secret Wars, a big question will be where they’ve been all the time during the events of the previous Infinity and Multiverse Sagas. It’d certainly be difficult to explain where the X-Men have been during all the MCU’s past crises. Instead, the cleanest alternative may be to do something along the lines of Marvel’s Wolverine, with the X-Men having not yet formed.
The MCU could reveal that the X-Men/Xavier School is only just being created, perhaps in direct response to a growing number of mutants being born. Audiences could then see Professor Xavier recruiting his first students and building the team of mutants from the ground up. At the same time, perhaps individual mutants could have been active before the X-Men’s creation, like Wolverine and/or Jean Grey in the upcoming Insomniac game.
There’s a solid chance Marvel is already moving in that direction. After all, there’s been persistent speculation surrounding Sadie Sink’s role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day and that she’s secretly playing Jean Grey. If Sink is ultimately revealed to be Jean, it’d be another prime example of Marvel Studios laying some groundwork with individual mutant characters in the MCU before launching a dedicated X-Men project (other examples include Ms. Marvel being a mutant rather than an Inhuman, King Namor, and She-Hulk’s Mr. Immortal).
Nevertheless, these new story details for Marvel’s Wolverine suggest that audiences may not need the X-Men right off the bat for mutant stories to work. Delaying the team’s formation may even make their eventual debut even more exciting.
Marvel’s Wolverine releases September 15th from Insomniac Games.
- Released
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September 15, 2026
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases
- Developer(s)
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Insomniac Games
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Franchise
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Marvel
- Number of Players
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Single-player