Dafne Keen first played Laura/X-23 in 2017's Logan. The actress, a child at the time, delivered a star-making turn as the character, and the stage was set for her to be put front and centre—alongside other young mutants—in an eventual spin-off.
Unfortunately, there wasn't time for it to happen. The Disney/Fox merger quickly followed (bringing the X-Men back to Marvel Studios), and it seemed like we'd seen the last of Keen's take on Wolverine's female clone. Deadpool & Wolverine ultimately changed that with an unforgettable return for the character; she's since been reunited with her "father" on Earth-10005.
The expectation is that Laura will return in the next Avengers movies, Doomsday and Secret Wars, alongside Hugh Jackman's clawed mutant and Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool.
Many fans would love to see X-23 suit up as Wolverine in those movies, and there's a lot of support for Jackman passing the baton to Keen and her becoming the main Wolverine in the post-Secret Wars MCU and Jake Schreier's X-Men reboot. It happened in the comics, after all!
This weekend, we got to sit down with Keen to discuss her stellar turn in the must-see new horror movie, Whistle. At the end of our conversation, we asked The Acolyte and His Dark Materials alum what it means to have fans rooting for her to become the MCU's Wolverine, costume and all.
"Yeah, I mean, it means so much to me," Keen says in the video above. "I always think it's so special that something that we made 10 years ago still has an impact. And I know that I love that character so dearly. And it means so much to me that so many people love her as much as I do. And it's so special to know that what you've made means something."
"And I think that what we made really did mean something. And it's great to keep receiving that. I also think it's very important to connect with people. And every time I hear that a performance of mine has made someone feel a type of way, I feel very connected," she continued. "And I think it's so beautiful. So many people are excited by it. And I'm very happy anytime anyone wants to speak about it."
In other recent interviews, Keen has refused to say when or where she may return to the MCU, so we steered clear of the predictable Avengers: Doomsday question.
Instead, it's great to hear how appreciative she is of the support from fans, and it's clearly not lost on Keen that social media is flooded with fan art depicting her in Wolverine's classic blue and yellow suit. Something tells us Marvel Studios will make that happen, and likely in the not-too-distant future...
A misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the deadly artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.
Whistle is now playing in theaters.