X-23 Creator Craig Kyle Pitches His 'Logan' Sequel

Dafne Keen's X-23 was the breakout star of Logan, a 12-year-old whose intensity and athletic skill wowed fans and critics alike. Now the character's creator, Craig Kyle, has chimed in as well, spilling the details about the sequel to Logan he'd love to write -- and it sounds like it would be quite an x-citing ride.

Craig Kyle's Pitch

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Kyle discussed a script that would explore the consequences of Laura's actions. We saw Laura defend her actions, insisting that she's only killed bad men, but that was too simplistic a defense - especially when we'd earlier seen her pop her claws when a guy tried to stop her shoplifting.

Over in the comics, she was used as an assassin before she broke free from her captors, and some of the most powerful comic book arcs explored her reliving those atrocities. Marjorie Liu's entire X-23 run, one of the highlights of the last decade's worth of #XMen comics, focused on Laura's struggle to truly become human.

Kyle's pitch explores those same ideas, and it's certainly the kind of character-focused arc you can picture James Mangold loving:

"A story I always wanted to tell was, once she’s free and once she’s gone through what she’s gone through, the only way she can have a hope for a future is for her to go back and trace the lives that remained and were harmed by the actions she was forced to commit. You put her on this journey of redemption. She faces the families that lost fathers. The orphans, everyone that was touched by her horrific acts. And she can go through them one by one and face everyone affected by the murders she was forced to commit, if she can get to the end of that road without being killed by those that remain, there’s something on the other side of that. I think it would truly be transformative for the character."

It's a powerful idea, and it has real depth to it.

Would this work?

Of course, in Logan we meet a very different Laura - the younger character Kyle feels she always should have been (he criticizes #Marvel for ageing her up from 16 to 22 and giving her a boob job). That said, it's entirely possible that this version of Laura was used as a living weapon by her creators. After all, they'd want to put each of their X-23s to the test.

If that's the case, Craig Kyle's pitch would work perfectly. It would involve her arriving in a hostile USA, weaving her way back along the trail and revisiting scenes of tragedy. What's more, she'd undoubtedly wind up crossing paths with survivors from Alkali Transigen - perhaps even setting up one of their key agents, her comic-book nemesis, Kimura.

In the comics, Kimura was X-23's handler, and she reveled in abusing her. She has the ability to manipulate her molecules, increasing their density to the extent that even adamantium can't cut through her. (You can see why this was an essential power when dealing with a living weapon whose claws are laced with adamantium.)

Is this going to happen?

While Craig Kyle is best known for creating X-23 (back when he was writing episodes of X-Men: Evolution), his career has become a lot more varied. In fact, nowadays he spends the bulk of his time working for Marvel Studios - whether as the producer of Thor or as one of the writers of Thor: Ragnarok. He's making a public pitch that he clearly hopes will catch Fox's eye.

The truth is, though, that Fox likely already has a plan for #DafneKeen's Laura. First reviews of Logan singled her out, so there's no way the public reaction to the character took the studio by surprise. Craig Kyle's pitch is simply the hopeful dream of a creator whose character has just entered a wider cinematic world, and the fact he's made his idea public strongly suggests he's not been discussing this with anybody over at Fox. Sadly, unless someone like James Mangold or Simon Kinberg reads the article in The Hollywood Reporter and thinks it's perfect, the odds aren't good.

That said, I can't help but feel Logan is the ultimate compliment to Craig Kyle. The character he created has gone from screen to page and back again, and will surely stand at the center of Fox's future plans. At least he can look back at his creation with real pride, muse about what he'd do if he were the writer, and then sit back and enjoy the ride.

(Source: The Hollywood Reporter; Poll Image Credit: Marvel Comics)