By now, you should know that Logan does not have a post-credits scene (and, no, there's no mid-credits scene either). The final film in the Wolverine trilogy doesn't tease what's to come or delight fans with bloopers of star Hugh Jackman dancing around with his claws out. Once the credits begin to roll, Logan is over. It's an anomaly among superhero movies not to have a post-credits scene. Popularized by Marvel, these scenes have become a staple of the genre, almost as crucial to the superhero arc as the inevitable superhero outfit. So just why isn't there a Logan post-credits scene?
There are a many possible reasons why Logan doesn't have a post-credits scene, but I'll let director James Mangold explain his own reasoning. "We were trying to make a movie that begun and ended on its own terms. There was nothing else to say, because we had said it," Mangold explained in an interview with The Toronto Sun. For Mangold, the story of Logan began in the first frame of the film and ended in the last, any tag at the end wasn't necessary for the story. In that same interview, Mangold also admitted that part of the reason he insisted on not shooting a post-credits scene was because he wanted to subvert convention. "I was pretty fanatical about saying, 'If this is how these other movies are doing it, we're going the other way,'" Mangold said, adding that he didn't want to turn the film into "a product."
It's true that — spoiler alert — Wolverine's story ended pretty decisively in the last few scenes of Logan. Jackman has already said that this would be his last turn as the iconic X-Men character, and unless Wolverine is going to come back as a zombie, the Logan we all know and love is dead. Any post-credits scene would have cheapened that ending. Tentative plans for an X-23 spinoff aside, Logan is the closing chapter to Wolverine's story. In many ways it marks the end of the X-Men as we've come to know them, especially with Jackman leaving the franchise. Any post-credits scene would only be there to tease future X-Men movies, aka movies without Jackman.
For a few years now, the X-Men franchise has been pulling in different directions. X-Men: First Class offered a fun reboot to the franchise, casting a brand new Professor X and Magneto, but then the reboot met the original franchise in X-Men: Days of Future Past, muddying the timelines and confusing nearly every single X-Men fan. Putting it very simply, there are currently two separate timelines in the X-Men franchise: there's X-Men: Apocalypse, which takes place in the '70s, and Logan, which takes place in 2029.
Logan takes great pains to exist outside of the scope of the new, connected timeline put forth in Days of Future Past, and, as a result, is not connected to the thread of the franchise being advanced in Apocalypse. If there were a post-credits scene in Logan, it would likely be teasing the planned Apocalypse sequel, which would take place a good 40 years before the events of Logan. It would completely throw off the narrative of Wolverine's trilogy, not to mention represent a huge shift in tone.
Logan doesn't have a post-credits scene because it doesn't need one. Fans disappointed by the lack of breadcrumbs leading to the next X-Men film will just have to be satisfied by the exclusive Deadpool 2 teaser that played at the beginning of the movie. Come on, you didn't think they'd really leave fans with nothing, did you?
