Marvel’s Wolverine made a major appearance at San Diego Comic-Con. Not only do we get a brand new Story Trailer, but the panel offered a much better understanding of how Jean Grey, Team X, Trask Industries, the Reavers, the Hand, and Lady Deathstrike all fit into this new corner of Insomniac’s Marvel universe.

Creative Director Marcus Smith, Game Director Mike Daly, Senior Project Director Jess Reiner-Reed, and Narrative Director Walt Williams appeared alongside Marvel Games Executive Producer Eric Monacelli. Liam McIntyre (Logan) and Krizia Bajos (Jean Grey) were also there to discuss their characters and the relationship forming between them.

The biggest takeaway is that Insomniac is not simply dropping Wolverine into the familiar. There is no Xavier Institute. Mutants are scattered, frightened, and largely forced to survive in hiding.

Logan and Jean Grey’s uneasy reunion

The Story Trailer opens with an enraged Logan confronting Jean Grey, only for the situation to suddenly expose a far more vulnerable side of him. Whatever has happened between these two, Jean appears capable of seeing past the anger, sarcasm, and carefully constructed walls Logan uses to keep everyone at a distance.

Bajos described the two as sharing something close to a cosmic connection. It’s no secret to X-Men fans that Logan has carried feelings for Jean for decades. Although Jean hasn’t reciprocated feelings, Jean still cares deeply for Logan. Jean can see his wounds—presumably not just the ones his healing factor can close—and understands that there is more to him than the violent man standing in front of her.

In Marvel’s Wolverine, Jean has been moving from place to place and gradually discovering that other people like her exist. She wants to give those mutants something she never had: somewhere safe enough to stop running. Jean may be laying the earliest foundation for something that eventually becomes the X-Men, even if nobody in this world has thought of that name yet.

Then she meets Logan, a rugged stranger who does not exactly look like the community-building type, yet seems willing to put himself through hell to protect people he barely knows. 

The Hand enters Wolverine’s world

The Story Trailer also introduces the Hand as one of the game’s major enemy factions. For those unfamiliar with the comics, the Hand is an ancient, demon-worshipping order of assassins that serves a supernatural entity known as the Beast.

Although the organization is traditionally more closely associated with Daredevil and Elektra, their reach extends throughout the Marvel Universe. Of course, Wolverine has crossed blades with them many times—especially their leader.

Lady Deathstrike is leading the Hand

Insomniac’s largest change to the Hand may be the identity of its leader. Jess Reiner-Reed confirmed that Lady Deathstrike commands the organization in Marvel’s Wolverine and will be one of Logan’s most dangerous enemies.

Lady Deathstrike is one of Wolverine’s most personal recurring foes. Her father, Lord Dark Wind, developed the process that allowed adamantium to be bonded to bone. His stolen research eventually reached the Weapon X program, where it was used to coat Logan’s skeleton. Believing Wolverine’s body represented the theft and corruption of her father’s legacy, Yuriko transformed herself into a cyborg with long adamantium claws. She dedicated much of her life to hunting him.

She has worked with the Reavers and other anti-mutant forces in the comics, but she is not traditionally the Hand’s supreme leader. That is an Earth-1048 invention, and honestly, it makes a strange amount of sense. Deathstrike already has the design, discipline, Japanese background, and obsessive hatred required to stand at the center of an army of supernatural assassins.

The Hand also gives Insomniac a natural path to Japan. Japan is not just another stop on Wolverine’s worldwide journey. It’s a foundational part of his comic history. Some of his most important stories involve the Yashida family, his love for Mariko Yashida, his friendship with Yukio, his rivalry with Silver Samurai, and his struggle to live by a code of honor that does not always agree with his instincts. Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s original Wolverine miniseries from 1982 is the defining Wolverine storyline—presenting Logan as more than an animalistic berserker with claws.

Whether any of those characters appear remains unknown. Still, sending Logan to Japan while placing Lady Deathstrike and the Hand directly in his path feels very intentional.

Trask Industries is hunting mutants

The other major threat comes from Trask Industries and its billionaire owner, Bolivar Trask. Unlimited wealth combined with an uncompromising worldview can cause enormous damage, and Trask has both. He views mutants as an existential threat and is using his resources to remove them from the world.

In the comics, Bolivar Trask becomes the creator of the Sentinels. His fear of mutantkind leads him to build machines he believes will protect humanity, only for those machines to repeatedly decide that the easiest way to protect humans is to control or eliminate everyone who might produce mutants in the future.

The game has not abandoned that anti-mutant ideology, but Trask’s immediate weapon appears to be the Reavers rather than an army of Sentinels.

Insomniac describes the Reavers as a cybernetic militia operating as guns for hire. They capture mutants and deliver them to Trask. Similar to Lady Deathstrike and The Hand, the Reavers are established comic villains who don’t normally work for Trask. They began as cybernetic mercenaries and were later reorganized by Donald Pierce, a mutant-hating cyborg associated with the Hellfire Club.

Insomniac is effectively combining several different branches of anti-mutant hatred into one ecosystem. Trask supplies the money and ideology. The Reavers provide the technology and manpower. Deathstrike and the Hand bring something older, darker, and far more personal.

There are no X-Men—at least not yet

Eric Monacelli confirmed that the X-Men do not currently exist in this version of Earth-1048, the same universe used for Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games. In this world, Logan is not a member of the X-Men. There is no Professor Xavier available to explain mutant politics, unlock a hidden memory, or point him toward the next mission. The people in this world are still figuring out what mutantkind is and whether it can survive long enough to form any kind of community.

Nathaniel Essex and Team X

The closest thing the game has to an organized mutant team is Team X.

In Insomniac’s continuity, Team X was created during the 1960s by Nathaniel Essex as a special-operations unit meant to combat the threat posed by Bolivar Trask. Logan left the group three years before the events of the game, apparently under ugly circumstances. Essex felt abandoned by his departure, and Logan’s return is not exactly being treated as a happy reunion.

Anyone who reads X-Men comics should recognize Nathaniel Essex as the real name of Mister Sinister. Sinister is an immortal geneticist with a sick obsession to the studying, manipulating, cloning, and improvement of mutant bloodlines. Sinister has a particularly disturbing fixation on Jean Grey and the Summers family, even creating Jean’s clone Madelyne Pryor as part of his experiments.

Making him the founder of a mutant team is new, but it fits his personality in the worst possible way. Essex rarely helps mutants out of compassion. He collects them, studies them, alters them, and treats their lives like pieces in an experiment only he understands.

The comic version of Team X is different as well. There, they’re a covert unit with a connection to the Weapon X and Weapon Plus programs. Its roster has included Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick, John Wraith, Mastodon, and Silver Fox. Their memories were repeatedly manipulated, leaving the team unsure which missions, relationships, and betrayals actually happened.

Insomniac appears to be borrowing that paranoia while changing who brought the team together and why. In Marvel’s Wolverine, the Team X roster is Wolverine, Sabertooth, Mystique, and Sunfire.

Insomniac wants players to feel like Wolverine

Mike Daly said Insomniac set out to create its version of the Wolverine players already understand: cynical, candid, emotionally guarded, and far more compassionate than he wants anyone to notice.

That meant treating his abilities as more than a list of combat mechanics.

Of course, claws naturally sit at the center of the action. However, his healing factor, heightened senses, berserker rage, and adamantium skeleton also influence how he moves through a fight. Logan can track enemies, detect incoming danger, absorb punishment, and push forward with a physical weight that separates him from Insomniac’s much lighter and more acrobatic Spider-Men. 

Adamantium does not simply make Logan difficult to kill; it makes him extraordinarily heavy. Every leap, tackle, and claw strike should feel like it is coming from someone carrying hundreds of pounds of nearly indestructible metal inside his body.

Then there are the missing memories.

Memory loss has followed Wolverine through most of his history. The Weapon X program subjected him to experiments, mental conditioning, and false memory implants until even Logan could no longer separate his real past from the lives other people manufactured for him.

The game is not an origin story, but players will peel back the layers of Logan’s history and discover what happened during his years with Team X. That gives Insomniac a fresh way to explore different periods of his life without reducing the entire plot to another retelling of his story.

Wolverine crosses over with MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls

The panel also revealed a collaboration between Marvel’s Wolverine and MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls.

Wolverine’s stylized Tōkon costume will be unlockable through normal progression in Marvel’s Wolverine beginning on launch day. In return, the Battle Reborn suit designed for Insomniac’s game will arrive in MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls as a free costume for all players on September 1.

A Wolverine prequel comic is available now

Insomniac also released an official digital prequel comic for Marvel’s Wolverine during SDCC.

Written by Narrative Director Walt Williams, with artwork by Luke Ross and a cover by Iban Coello, the comic takes place before the main game. It explores Logan’s difficult relationship with the other members of Team X during a mission to protect mutantkind.

Physical copies are being distributed at SDCC while supplies last, but the comic can also be read digitally through Marvel Unlimited.

Marvel’s Wolverine launches exclusively for PlayStation 5 on September 15th.