The 5 Best Wolverine Movies & TV Shows To Prepare For ‘Marvel’s Wolverine’
Published onSeptember 08, 2026
If you had to guess who the most popular member of the X-Men is, most people would answer Wolverine. While he was first introduced as a minor Hulk villain in The Incredible Hulk #181 in 1974, once he joined the X-Men the following year, his popularity exploded. Wolverine was a protagonist with an edge in an era where many of the heroes were straight-laced. He wasn’t exactly an antihero, but his aggression and tragic backstory made him an easy fan favorite for decades of comics, film, and television productions.
The same is true for video games. While Wolverine has starred in several video games, most of them were quick cash-grab movie tie-ins. Some were good, like the video game adaptation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine(2009). Still, few have had a budget as big as Marvel’s Wolverine,Sony’s big new PS5 exclusive for the 2026 holiday season. People can’t wait to sink their teeth into Logan’s first solo adventure in a decade, and if you want to see some of Wolverine’s best escapades in film and TV, these five should do the job.
If you were a comic book fan in the ’90s, there was no escaping the X-Men. Their comic was the hottest book on the market, and X-Men: The Animated Series was blowing up the airwaves on Fox Kids. A big part of that had to do with the show’s focus on Logan.
When it came to action, Wolverine always delivered, slicing and dicing enemies while occasionally throwing in a one-liner or snide remark, but what made him so popular with fans was the love-triangle dynamic between him, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. Seeing Logan pine over Jean has become a meme at this point, but for X-Men: The Animated Series’ five-season run, there was genuine drama between the three that would help inspire future attempts at making them a couple, like in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).
The show also adapted some of Wolverine’s classic stories, like “Weapon X,” while giving him original moments unique to X-Men: The Animated Series, like the episode “Nightcrawler,” which did a poignant deep dive into his thoughts on faith. Make no mistake, X-Men: The Animated Seriesis a team show, but Wolverine is easily one of its highlights.
We checked for updates on 369 streaming services on September 8, 2026
at 09:48:57 AM
.
It’s easy for casual fans of Wolverine to think of him as a berserker with a chip on his shoulder who tries to bottle up his feelings. Most depictions of Wolverine tend to paint him as a rogue loner, but the Wolverine of X-Men: Evolution humanizes him like never before.
Here, as one of the few adults in a series where the majority of the classic X-Men are presented as teenagers, Wolverine steps into the reluctant mentor role wonderfully. It would be easy to call him a grumpy uncle, but he brings a paternal warmth here. He knows when to be harsh and not go easy on his students, but he balances that with being soft and letting the younger mutants have fun. Granted, it’s still Wolverine, and he isn’t afraid to get angry when someone threatens him, but he really only gets mad when someone threatens the kids under his protection.
In a way, he’s almost like a kid-friendly Brcok Sampson from The Venture Bros. (2004). It’s weird to call a version of Wolverine wholesome, but that’s exactly what makes the version in X-Men: Evolutionone of the most balanced takes on the character.
Buy
4 Seasons4 Seasons4 Seasons
We checked for updates on 369 streaming services on September 8, 2026
at 09:32:42 AM
.
When most people picture Wolverine, they think of Hugh Jackman. The man became a Hollywood celebrity off of Logan’s stout shoulders, and almost all of Fox’s early X-Men movies managed to make him the main character, but none did it as well as X2.
While the first film made Logan into the audience surrogate and X-Men: The Last Standawkwardly rewrote his involvement in the “Dark Phoenix Saga”, X2centered most of its plot on exploring Wolverine’s backstory. We learn about his time with Weapon X and the effect it had on him, and the fight between Logan and Lady Deathstrike was one of the best action scenes of the era, with tight choreography and solid special effects.
Even if you don’t want to see X2 solely as a vehicle for Wolverine, it balanced many of the themes that help make the X-Men stand apart from other franchises, like discrimination and xenophobia, which wouldn’t be explored in depth again until X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). It’s just an all-around great superhero movie that proved Fox was right to make Wolverine the centerpiece of this era of the franchise.
Rent
$3.994K$3.994K$3.994K
Buy
$9.994K$19.994K$19.994K$14.99DVD$17.65DVD$30.59Blu-Ray$218.75Blu-Ray
We checked for updates on 369 streaming services on September 8, 2026
at 02:29:33 PM
.
Logan is not a happy film. While most of Fox’s X-Men movies loved to deliver slick action scenes meant to be seen on the big screen, Loganis a depressing story that gives Wolverine the send-off he deserves.
What makes Logansuch a striking film is how it truly feels like an ending for a character that audiences had followed for 17 years. Logan is dying, and we know that there’s no happy ending at the end of this long road trip. Much like No Country for Old Men (2007), there’s a sense of fatalism that is impossible to ignore. The world of Loganis harsh, with very few rays of sunshine, and it hurts to watch Logan writhing in pain, seeing Professor X plagued with dementia, and witnessing children suffering in the wake of the film’s villains.
Logan doesn’t shy away from the heavy R-rated material, but that also gives it a ferocity few superhero movies dare to depict in such gruesome detail. This is a mature take on Wolverine’s lore and a great potential ending for the character, even if Marvel saw otherwise.
Rent
$3.994K$3.994K$3.994K
Buy
$19.994K$19.994K$19.994K$7.35Blu-Ray$12.55DVD$18.89Blu-Ray$23.99Blu-Ray$30.99DVD
We checked for updates on 369 streaming services on September 8, 2026
at 10:29:47 AM
.
A lot can be said about how Deadpool & Wolverine completely mocks and ridicules almost every aspect of Fox’s tenure with the X-Men, as well as its handling of other Marvel properties. Still, one thing can’t be denied: Wolverine is the best thing about the movie.
While it would have been easy to just pluck Hugh Jackman’s character from the myriad of Fox movies he was in for some multiversal shenanigans, making the version of Wolverine used for this film the “worst” Wolverine adds some interesting wrinkles. This Wolverine has lost everything, so watching him go from the bottom to regaining that spark of heroism makes for a solid character arc. Even better is watching him have absolutely zero tolerance for Deadpool’s brand of humor, which Deadpool haters are sure to love.
There are also plenty of little bits of love thrown Logan’s way, like references to his numerous fights with the Hulk and a height-accurate Logan in the MCU. The opening scene may present Deadpool & Wolverineas a film happy to desecrate the legacy of Hugh Jackman’s tenure as the character, but give it some time, and its true colors will show.
Rent
$3.994K$3.994K$3.994K
Buy
$9.994K$19.994K$19.994K$14.96DVD$21.99Blu-Ray$26.99DVD$29.42Blu-Ray$34.74Blu-Ray
Cinema
CinemaCinema
We checked for updates on 369 streaming services on September 8, 2026
at 03:24:28 PM
.
