The attack of a Demon Bear.
The accidental eradication of all mutants.
Clones, alternate realities, and resurrections.
Deadpool's baby legs.
Here's the entire 'X-Men' timeline explained.
The franchise opens in 1944 at a concentration camp.
A Nazi scientist notices a young prisoner manipulating metal with his mind and becomes
instantly intrigued.
Meanwhile, in upstate New York, a young boy with telepathic powers meets a young girl
who can shapeshift out of her blue, scaly form whenever she wants.
Fast forward to 1962 and the young boy from the concentration camp has become a Nazi hunter
and the young telepath works with his face-swapping foster sister to study and find more of their
kind.
Just like that, the franchise has established Mystique as well as Magneto and Professor
Xavier, the two pillars in the war for mutant supremacy.
When Magneto tracks down the Nazi that killed his family, he discovers that he's not only
a mutant as well, but actively fighting for mutant supremacy by trying to start a nuclear
war between the U.S. and the USSR in the hopes of wiping out anyone that isn't a mutant.
Magneto and Xavier discover that the CIA has been hip to mutants as well and meet a young
scientist named Hank McCoy, who is revealed to be a mutant too.
"Another mutant, already here!
Why didn't you say?"
"Say what?"
"Because you don't know…"
He's also a super-genius who invented a machine called Cerebro that can be used by a powerful
telepath to track down anyone on Earth.
Although they stop the bad guy together, Magneto and Xavier become estranged and the team splits
due to differing views of how humanity should co-exist with mutants.
After the events of 'First Class' wake the world up to the existence of mutants, one
man, Bolivar Trask, hypothesizes the destruction of all mankind at their hand.
However, Trask is laughed out of most academic circles for his beliefs and is forced to form
Trask Industries in 1967.
With the funds of a successful company, Trask sets out to create an army of robots known
as Sentinels designed to identify and kill mutants.
In order to make the Sentinels a reality, Trask experiments on mutants.
Unfortunately for him, he chooses some of Mystique's close friends.
Distanced from Magneto after a falling out, Mystique seeks revenge on Trask.
She eventually tracks him down to the Paris Peace Conference being held between the U.S.
and Vietnamese military leaders, where he's pitching the concept of mutants as a greater
enemy to the world leaders.
She assassinates Trask but is captured in the process.
The world continues to live in fear of mutants, and the Sentinel program continues its development.
Although it doesn't have its fearless leader at the helm, it does have Mystique's shape-shifting
DNA.
But back to the 1800s.
The audience meets James Howlett and Victor Creed, two half-brothers who ran away from
home.
When a groundskeeper kills Howlett's father, the stress triggers James's mutation, including
claws made of bone, and a healing factor.
He kills the groundskeeper, who reveals himself to be his birth father, Thomas Logan, before
running off into the night accompanied by Creed.
Because of their healing factor, the two ageless beings fought in the American Civil War, both
World Wars and Vietnam.
While in Vietnam, they're sentenced to death when Victor kills a senior officer who tries
to stop him from sexually assaulting a woman.
Of course, both men survive their execution and are approached by Major William Stryker.
"The warden tells me that your sentence was carried out by firing squad at 1000 hours.
How'd that go?"
"It tickled."
Stryker enlists them to join an elite team of mutants as they set out on morally questionable
missions.
James, going by Logan, quickly gets tired of the team and by 1979, when "X-Men Origins
: Wolverine" takes place, has moved back to Canada.
He shacks up with a woman who Creed, also known as Sabretooth, eventually kills.
Logan seeks revenge but is quickly defeated.
He's then approached by Stryker who offers to fuse his skeleton with adamantium, an indestructible
metal.
However, when he overhears Stryker talk about wiping his memory in order to use him as his
personal muscle, Logan escapes, now with razor-sharp claws.
He seeks revenge on Creed and Stryker by chasing them to an island where they're experimenting
on mutants, who are able to escape thanks to the surprise arrival of Professor X.
However, Logan is tagged in the skull with an adamantium bullet, wiping his memory.
Wolverine survives the next two decades by drinking and generally being awesome.
Meanwhile, Professor Xavier has opened a school for mutants to learn to use their powers and
live safe from persecution.
However, when the U.S. government suggests a Mutant Registration Act, he and Magneto
cross paths again.
"It was a long time ago.
Mankind has evolved since then."
"Yes.
Into us."
Having spent the years they've been apart forming the Mutant Brotherhood, Magneto leads
a handful of villains, including Mystique, on a mission to use a machine that will turn
all humans into mutants, or simply kill them.
All he needs are the power-absorbing abilities of a young woman who calls herself Rogue.
Because her power can kill anyone she touches, Rogue ran away from home and found her way
to Wolverine.
When they're attacked by Sabertooth, they're both saved by Xavier pupils Cyclops and Storm,
who bring them both to the school.
It's here that Wolverine is introduced to Jean Grey and the other mutants who make up
the X-Men.
Grey does her best to piece together Wolverine's past, but he's more interested in his fatherly
relationship with Rogue, so when she's captured by Magneto and his Brotherhood, he sets off
to find her.
With Wolverine's help, the X-Men chase Magneto to Liberty Island in New York City where they
stop his evil plan.
After the events on Liberty Island, Xavier gives Logan a clue to his past.
He finds his way to Alkali Lake, where his adamantium operation took place.
Meanwhile, a mutant attempts to kill the President of the United States.
In the ensuing fear, Stryker convinces the President to let him raid Xavier's school,
where some of the students get abducted.
Cyclops and Professor X are also captured as they attempt to question an imprisoned
Magneto.
Mystique infiltrates the prison and helps Magneto escape.
He finds his way to the remaining X-Men that evaded the raid, including Wolverine and Jean
Grey.
He informs the heroes that Mystique discovered that Stryker has constructed a new Cerebro
and plans to use his son, who is a mutant telepath, to force Xavier to identify and
kill every mutant on Earth.
Luckily, the base of this operation just so happens to be the Alkali Lake facility where
Wolverine was injected with adamantium.
In an unlikely team-up, Magneto and Mystique join the X-Men in stopping this catastrophe,
before Magneto flips the script and tries to force Professor X to kill all the humans
on Earth instead.
Both he and Stryker are foiled by the X-Men, but only Magneto and Mystique escape.
Stryker is left for dead as the dam protecting the facility breaks.
However, as the X-Men's jet tries to take off, the flood of water surrounds it.
Jean is forced to step outside and sacrifice herself by using her powers to hold the water
back long enough for them to escape.
Months later, Jean somehow returns, revealing that she had a mysterious dark alter ego inside
her all along known as the Phoenix.
Charles helped her repress that part of her mind when he first took her in, but the traumatic
event at Alkali Lake awakened the Phoenix.
She kills Cyclops just before Wolverine and Storm discover her.
Meanwhile, a company reveals that it has developed a cure to the mutant gene for people like
Rogue who may want to be human voluntarily.
Magneto, however, sees this as the first step in mutant extinction and re-forms his Brotherhood.
Their first stop is to rescue an imprisoned Mystique.
In the ensuing fight, they discover that the cure has already been weaponized.
Just as a cure dart is headed for Magneto, Mystique jumps in front of it, sacrificing
her powers.
A curt Magneto simply abandons her now that she's human, opting instead to take other
powerful mutant prisoners with him.
Magneto becomes aware of the Phoenix, and both he and Xavier confront her at the same
time.
Magneto convinces her to join him after she kills Xavier.
Although he has respect for his old friend and rival, he knows that he can use the Phoenix
to stop the cure.
The Brotherhood and the X-Men, including Hank McCoy, make a last stand against the Brotherhood
to protect the cure.
When the battle is over, Wolverine is forced to kill Jean and inject a cure into Magneto.
However, it's implied the cure doesn't work on him.
Killing Jean doesn't do Wolverine's mental health any favors, so he moves to the Yukon
to live alone in the wilderness while he tortures himself with memories of the woman he loved.
However, he's brought out of the wild and to Japan by a rich businessman whose life
he saved during World War II.
The man, Ichiro, who's dying and has used his immense resources to develop technology
that would transfer Wolverine's healing factor into himself.
In an effort to repay his life debt, Ichiro offers Wolverine death, but when the hero
refuses the offer, Ichiro hatches a scheme to take Logan's healing factor by force.
Ichiro sends assassins after his granddaughter, Mariko, knowing Wolverine will help her.
Fortunately, Wolverine is able to stop Ichiro's master plan and regain his powers after Ichiro
temporarily suppressed them.
Frankly, this story doesn't factor into the overall story of the X-Men too much, other
than in the mid-credits scene.
In 2015, Logan is heading back to the United States.
While at the airport, he's confronted by Magneto, who appears to have his powers.
He doesn't want a fight, though.
He's there with Charles Xavier, who is somehow alive and looks the same despite his body
being disintegrated.
"How's this possible?"
"As I told you a long time ago, you're not the only one with gifts."
Together, they warn Wolverine about an imminent threat to mutants - Trask Industries.
By the year 2023, the danger that Xavier and Magneto teamed up to warn Wolverine about
has come to fruition.
Trask Industries managed to build and perfect its Sentinel army to hunt and kill all mutants.
Kitty Pryde has developed the ability to send people's consciousnesses back in time.
Xavier, Storm, and Magneto arrive and pitch a plan to use Wolverine in this way to stop
the assassination of Bolivar Trask.
Here, the X-Men franchise splits into a second timeline.
Sent back to his younger body in 1973, Wolverine essentially undoes the events of every previous
movie except "First Class."
After finding a young Charles Xavier and convincing him that this whole time travel business is
actually legit, he's persuaded to help rescue Mystique from her fate as a villainous assassin.
Wolverine, McCoy, and Xavier enlist the aid of Quicksilver to bust Magneto out of jail
knowing he'd be their best chance to get through to her.
Together, they foil Mystique's first attempt to kill Trask but the ensuing fight furthers
the fear of mutants and bolsters Trask's chances to get his Sentinel program off the ground.
However, Magneto takes control of the Sentinels and attempts to kill Trask, President Nixon
and several other U.S. leaders to declare war on humanity.
He's stopped by Mystique, an event that undoes the 2023 timeline and rescues future mutants
from Sentinels.
Now that there's a new timeline of events, the X-Men encounter a foe in 1983 that helps
shape them as a team.
The world's first and most powerful mutant, Apocalypse, wakes up after being entombed
alive in ancient Egypt.
His method of operation includes claiming four horsemen to fight alongside him as he
destroys civilizations, so that he may rebuild them the way he sees fit.
In an endeavor to start planet Earth from scratch, he convinces a young Storm, Angel,
Psylocke, and Magneto to join him as his horsemen.
Meanwhile, new students Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Kurt Wagner arrive at the mansion
and develop a quick bond.
When Apocalypse figures out that there's a mutant telepath as strong as Xavier, he switches
his M.O. and opts for total human enslavement rather than destruction.
After an attack on the X Mansion results in its destruction, Scott, Jean, and Kurt hatch
a rescue mission.
With Angel and Psylocke defeated, Magneto and Storm turn on Apocalypse and the entire
complement of X-Men are able to defeat him.
Together, they rebuild the X Mansion, but Magneto refuses Xavier's offer to stay and
help him teach mutants how to manage their powers.
In 1992, it's revealed that Professor Xavier recruited Jean Grey to the school when she
was eight years old after losing control of her powers, leading to the death of her mother.
Her father abandoned her out of fear, forcing Xavier to put mental blocks in her mind to
shield her from trauma, as he did in the original timeline.
However, when the X-Men are tasked with saving a space shuttle, a solar flare hits Jean.
Although she survives, she gains significantly amplified powers, which allow her to break
down those mental blocks.
Jean suffers PTSD that makes her powers uncontrollable and fills her with rage and pain.
Eventually, she has to fight the X-Men that are attempting to stop her from hurting innocent
people.
In the ensuing battle, she injures Quicksilver and kills Mystique.
She seeks help from Magneto but is turned away when he sees what a threat she is.
Jean is ultimately embraced by the D'Bari aliens, whose leader, Vuk, explains that she's
been possessed by a cosmic force known as the Phoenix.
Unfortunately, the D'Bari turn on Jean as Vuk seeks to obtain her power and enslave
humanity.
The X-Men win the battle, but it forces Jean to explode in a burst of Phoenix energy.
The aftermath sees McCoy taking over the school and Xavier retiring to Paris to hang out with
Magneto.
One day, a phoenix figure appears in the sky over them, implying that Jean may not be dead
after all.
In the modern day of the new timeline, Wade Wilson is horribly disfigured but given a
powerful healing factor similar to Wolverine after agreeing to an experimental treatment
from the villain Ajax.
The mercenary's quest for revenge gets the attention of the X-Men, who send Colossus
and Negasonic Teenage Warhead to convince him to join.
"When will he grow up and see benefits on becoming X-Man?"
"Which benefits?
The matching unitards?
The house that blows up every few years?"
Wilson, under his new moniker of Deadpool, refuses until Vanessa, the love of his life,
is in danger and convinces the duo to help him.
It's only after Vanessa dies that Deadpool agrees to try being an X-Men team member on
a trial basis.
Unfortunately, he fails his trial period by killing an alleged child abuser.
In a desperate attempt to find purpose, Deadpool meets a time traveler named Cable who tells
him that a boy exists in his timeline who goes on to become a great supervillain.
After convincing Cable that he doesn't need to assassinate the boy to save his timeline,
the duo team up and thwart the second dystopian future nightmare of the franchise.
Once it's all over, Deadpool gets his hands on the ability to time travel, rescues Vanessa
from dying, considers killing Hitler, and murders the version of Wade Wilson that Wolverine
fights in "X-Men Origins" in the original timeline.
However, given Deadpool's meta, fourth-wall-breaking qualities, it's hard to know whether any of
the events of his movies are truly canonical to the larger X-Men timeline.
Due to its lack of visible crossover characters and sparse references to other points in the
timeline, it's a little tricky to pinpoint when 2020's "The New Mutants" is happening.
Luckily, we know that it happened between 2024 and 2027 — after the other X-movies,
but before the events of "Logan."
When a tragic catastrophe befalls her reservation, Danielle "Dani" Moonstar wakes up in Milbury
Hospital.
Dr. Cecilia Reyes leads Dani to believe Milbury is a treatment facility for mutants with recently
emerged powers.
Dani meets fellow teenage patients Rahne Sinclair, Illyana Rasputin, Sam Guthrie, and Roberto
da Costa.
Sadly, Dr. Reyes is not who she claims to be.
Once her secret bosses order her to execute Dani, she's forced to reveal herself as a
flunky for the mysterious Essex Corporation, with an endgame of shaping young mutants into
assassins.
Rahne rescues Dani and the rest of the gang rallies in her defense, but they're no match
for Dr. Reyes' force field powers.
The duplicitous doctor appears victorious until she's eaten by a manifestation of Dani's
powers known as the Demon Bear.
Once the team subdues the Demon Bear, the New Mutants leave Milbury.
After the events of "Days of Future Past," Logan's consciousness is transported back
into his 2023 body.
He finds himself in the X-Mansion, not a dystopia.
He also sees Jean Grey, Cyclops and everyone else alive and well, having no recollection
of the previous timeline.
It's implied that Wolverine unpacks the experience to Xavier, but their celebration would not
last long.
"Logan" brings the audience to 2029, where Logan's healing powers are fading.
It's also revealed that Charles Xavier, now senile, accidentally killed all the other
X-Men in some kind of seizure episode a year prior.
Only Wolverine is left alive and caring for Charles, who he hopes to take to the middle
of the ocean where he won't be a threat to anyone while living out the rest of his days.
"But when I get back we're gonna get outta here.
We're gonna drive down to Yelapa, gonna get ourselves a boat and go live on the ocean."
However, when the duo discovers a little girl that has similar powers to Logan based on
experiments with his DNA, they set off on a quest to get her to safety in Canada.
Along the way, they're attacked by another clone of Wolverine; one with a stronger healing
factor than the aging Logan.
The clone kills Xavier but Wolverine and the girl, Laura, manage to escape.
They reach the border of a safe haven in Canada only to be attacked by Laura's creators, who
want her back for further experiments.
Logan injects himself with a serum that temporarily restores his healing factor, allowing him
to defeat both the soldiers and his clone.
However, the film ends with the hero succumbing to his wounds and being buried underneath
a cross that Laura turns into an X.
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