WHEN Hugh Jackman hung up his super claws in 2017, he scratched out the end of an era.

For almost two decades, Jackman had embodied the role and very being of Wolverine. It seemed impossible to conceive of any other in the part - an irony, given the part in Bryan Singer’s original X-Men film was written for Russell Crowe.

Moreover, as the credits rolled on James Mangold’s heart-breaking Logan, Wolverine supposed final bow, they crowned Jackman a record breaker as the longest-serving Marvel superhero of all time. He’s since lost the title to Sir Patrick Stewart but remains one of the studio’s most popular to date.

In spite of his protestations to the opposite, a feeling that Jackman hadn’t truly left the claws and sideburns behind has haunted him across the last seven years. This was less owing to any unfinished business the character may have - Logan tied things off splendidly - than due to Jackman’s off-screen connection to another Marvel icon.

It took Ryan Reynolds three attempts to crack superhero success. His Green Lantern flopped hard in 2011, just two years after his first stab at playing Deadpool, in 2009’s risible X-Men Origins, quickly became a popular punchline. It wasn’t until 2016, with the release of Tim Miller’s Deadpool - a veritable second coming - that Reynolds nailed it.

Firmly established in the pantheon at last, Reynolds has been gunning hard for a Deadpool face off with Jackman’s Wolverine. A gauntlet thrown time and time again. Off-screen, the pair are frenemies of legend, their playful feud stretching back almost 15 years. An on-screen showdown simply had to happen.

As per most comic book films these days, Deadpool and Wolverine is another multiverse adventure. With all of reality at stake, the pair find themselves reluctantly recruited by the Time Variance Authority on a mission that is promised to change the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever.

Directed by Shawn Levy, Deadpool and Wolverine co-stars Emma Corrin, as Cassandra Nova, the twin sister of Professor X, and Matthew Macfadyen, as TVA agent Mr. Paradox. A dozen familiar faces from across the MCU are expected to cameo, alongside the franchise’s first ever canine supe.

Expect crude humour, a raging soundtrack, fourth-wall breaking and for tongues to be held firmly in cheek. Expect this also to be the very final showcase for Jackman’s Wolverine. Probably.