On first glance, a Captain America movie might seem like a strange place to debut a Canadian mutant best known for killing people with his razor claws. Why not start him off in the upcoming X-Men movie, rumored to release in 2027? If there’s truth to the rumors that the new X-Men cast will feature Julia Butters as Kitty Pryde and Stranger Things‘s Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, then the film may be going for a teenage team, which fits the team’s original conception as students and Professor Xavier’s school. But a character who first appeared as a minor antagonist to the Hulk and later was imported to the X-Men books, Wolverine was always older than the others, never a student. So it follows that he would pop up before the other X-Men.
Furthermore, Wolverine has a long history of dealing with secret government programs and black ops missions, which has brought him into the orbit of Captain America more than once. Uncanny X-Men #268, written by Chris Claremont and penciled by Jim Lee, recounts one of those early adventures, in which a pre-Wolverine Logan and Steve Rogers team up to rescue the child Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) from Nazis and ninjas.
Later, Grant Morrison directly tied Wolverine’s origin to that of Captain America. Morrison retconned the Weapon Plus program, the secret government initiative responsible for killers such as Wolverine and Deadpool, into a continuation of the Super Soldier program that created Captain America. Calling Rogers “Weapon I,” the program continued experimenting with possible variations, reaching Logan in its 10th incarnation, dubbed Weapon X.
The Weapon Plus program wiped Logan’s memory and turned him into a killing machine, sending him on black ops missions for the U.S. Government and for Department H, the superhuman division of his native Canada. Eventually, Logan broke free from Weapon X and went his own way, later getting recruited to the X-Men by Professor X. Through the professor’s tutelage, Logan slowly regained his sense of self (including learning his true name James Howlett) and became more than a animal.
Wolverine’s character arc is long and complex, too big for a single movie, especially one with a whole team’s worth of characters. By starting Wolverine’s story in Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel can give the beloved character the attention he deserves, while also letting him serve as a dark reflection of the super soldier program that the human Sam rejects, thereby building his heroism.
And if the Wolverine connection lets Captain America build an Avengers full of X-Men, as Anthony Mackie himself pitched to Den of Geek, all the better.