Does Professor X die in Logan?

Patrick Stewart says he won’t be returning to the role of Charles Xavier after Logan, but is there an in-story reason for that?

Note: Hi there! Do you like massive spoilers? Because that’s what you’re going to get for Logan if you keep reading, particularly when it comes to the fate of Professor X. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Hugh Jackman has had an outstanding run playing Wolverine in the X-Men movie franchise, and much of the attention leading up to the release of Logan has focused on how this is his last hurrah. But in slightly quieter fashion, Patrick Stewart is also stepping away from all things X after this film.

Is it because Professor X doesn’t make it to see the end of Logan?

For that, you’ll need to ignore this final spoiler warning and read on.

When we first see Charles Xavier in Logan, he’s already in bad shape. Now in his 90s (according to him, anyway), he’s being stashed away in Mexico to escape the consequences of his powers slipping out of his control, something we learn had a tragic effect during an incident a few years prior.

Eventually, he is forced to go on the run with Wolverine and Laura/X-23, an escapee from a corporate program to create new mutants to use as soldiers. Professor X convinces Wolverine to take Laura toward the Canadian border to a place called Eden before he and Logan buy a boat and sail out to the ocean, where it’s suggested they will both die (as Logan is being poisoned to death by a combo of a failing healing factor and the adamantium in his body).

Alas, he never makes it to the sea. While stopping for an overnight stay at the house of a family they helped out along the way, the heroes are located by a group led by Zander Rice. With the villains is a fully grown Wolverine clone code-named X-24, who stabs Professor X in the chest while Wolverine is out of the house.

Logan is able to (barely) fight off X-24 and rescue both Laura and Xavier, but the latter is too wounded to go on too much further, and he passes away shortly thereafter.

Logan and Laura bury Professor X the next day, but in one of the movie’s first truly sad moments, Wolverine is unable to say much at Xavier’s grave and ends up taking out his frustration on his truck when he finds it doesn’t start.

Next: Hugh Jackman's 21 best Wolverine moments

Of course, Stewart’s version of Professor X has already been killed off once in the X-Men movies, when he was disintegrated by Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand. The events of later films restored him, but even though Logan is kind of in questionable continuity ground with respect to the rest of the series, that seems unlikely this time.

Stewart has had a great run. Time to tip our proverbial caps to him and move on, just like Logan eventually did.