At the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, a mysterious employee of the Essex Corp. collected samples of Wolverine’s DNA from the Weapon X facility. Fans of the comic books know that was a reference to Nathanial Essex, a villain better known as Mr. Sinister, and speculation has since been running rampant that we’ll see him make an appearance in Logan next year.
When Richard E. Grant was cast, most of us understandably assumed that he would be playing Mr. Sinister, but the latest black and white image from Logan says otherwise.
Captioned with the word “Rice,” we now know that reports of him playing Dr. Zander Rice were accurate. He’s far from an iconic X-Men villain, but was responsible for creating X-23, the young girl who will join Wolverine on this adventure. Interestingly, his father worked on the original Weapon X Project and was killed by an escaping Wolverine as he fled with a briefcase full of information about the project. That could very well be how Logan ends up tying into X-Men: Apocalypse, and we may still get to see some nods to Sinister here.
Where though will he end up appearing? That remains to be seen, but the next X-Men movie is a strong possibility as is the Deadpool sequel (Sinister has quite the history with Cable).
We’ll just have to wait and see, but Logan will be with us in March, so stay tuned for updates!
