Dafne Keen has come a long way— a gap of eight years since she played Laura, also known as X-23. Keen’s character, X-23, a biological clone of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was made using his genetics in a lab. When she debuted in the X-Movie, Logan directed by James Mangold, she was just 11 years old but stunned everyone with her astonishing performance as Laura, Wolverine’s only surviving bloodline following his death in the movie. Now, about eight years later, Keen found her way back into her character which gave her the spotlight at a young age but playing Laura again was not the same as before.
Dafne Keen Explained The New Version of Laura In Deadpool & Wolverine
When it seemed that Dafne Keen moved on from Laura in the X-Men universe after her appearance in HBO’s His Dark Materials and Star Wars show for Disney+ The Acolyte, the recent and last trailer of Deadpool & Wolverine took Marvel fans by surprise. Of course, getting back to the skin of Laura was fun for Keen but a lot has changed since her last appearance nearly eight years ago.
Laura who struggled to speak English fluently delivered a dialogue in the language in the trailer. “Laura has now been around a lot of English-speaking people, so she has a neutral accent every so often. She spats a little bit in Spanish, obviously,” Keen explained adding that she also had to include a bit of Spanish for her upbringing in Madrid as she detained her character during her chat with Entertainment Weekly.
Most importantly, her return as Laura has also differentiated the character arc of the teenage Laura that she played in Logan to her return in Shawn Levy-directed Deadpool & Wolverine as a grown-up. “It was wonderful to get to come back to that and explore that as a grownup,” Keen said of her return. The secret she kept in her sleeve until the final trailer drop just a week before the release of Deadpool & Wolverine worked as fans were stunned and of course, excited to see her back after her constant denial about her return.
How Different Is The Deadpool & Wolverine Version Of Laura From Logan’s?
Judging by her dialogue it is possible that Keen will play the grown-up version of the same Laura but the Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine is not her biological father who saved her and a bunch of mutant kids from a hunt by a secret organization in Logan. “You’re always wrong guy till you weren’t,” Keen’s Laura said in the new trailer of Marvel’s only theatrical release of 2024 alluding to Logan’s sacrifice in her world when the new version of Wolverine in classic yellow costume was confused to join Deadpool while dealing with his devastating past.
It was fascinating for fans that the trailer was also a tribute to the Wolverine from Fox’s superhero universe as the beautiful flashback of the titular hero ended with his sacrifice to save his daughter, Laura. But Laura’s appearance in Deadpool & Wolverine will be very different from her character arc in Logan. She is wiser now compared to her angry and violent nature in the 2017 movie.
“Now understanding more parental rage so much more and bringing that to the table for her. I found that Laura in Logan stumbled into having a dad and then having lost her dad. We find her again really knowing how to appreciate — and with this kind of wiseness to her — how much her father means to her.” Keen told EW.
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Although it was not easy to jump right into the shoes of her character from eight years ago, she finally found herself fit to return when Keen peeked into herself. “There wasn’t a lot of looking. She was just kind of in me. The first thing I did for Deadpool was stunt training before I shot anything. I put on the costume and was like, ‘Oh! She’s back,'” she added.
It is unclear about the duration of the screentime of Keen’s Laura in the movie. The younger version of her character was also shown in the flashback of Wolverine in the trailer. But considering, the cameo-dense multiversal trait of the Ryan Reynolds starrer movie, it is fair to assume that Keen will appear for only a few seconds.
Deadpool & Wolverine arrives in theaters on July 26.
