He's the best! Around! Nothing's ever gonna keep him down!
Return of Wolverine is a five issue limited series from Marvel Comics, written by Charles Soule with art by various artists and released as part of the Marvel: A Fresh Start relaunch.
After his death, his friends mourned him. With his reappearance, everyone looked for him. But how did Wolverine return? The final part of Charles Soule's Wolverine trilogy, starting with Death of Wolverine and followed by Hunt for Wolverine, Return of Wolverine will tell the tale of how Wolverine escaped his inescapable death.
Waking up with no memories but a name and people to protect, Wolverine must once again outrun his past as he tries to piece his life back together. But some parts are better left forgotten, and some people don't want Wolverine to return...
After this series, Wolverine will go on to reunite with an also resurrected Cyclops in Uncanny X-Men (2018). Monica Rambeau said it best: "X-men come back more than Jesus."
Tropes applying to Return of Wolverine:
- Animate Dead: Persephone's chief ability, which she uses to form an army by animating corpses. Doing this to Wolverine reactivated his healing factor, resurrecting him actually coming backi from the dead.
- Big Damn Kiss: Ava kisses Logan because... reasons? He just saved her life, but still. She later turns out to be Dead All Along and possessed by Persephone, who was presumably just screwing with Logan.
- Call-Back: The way Logan destroys Persephone's final satellite is similar to how he destroyed Cornelius' adamantium reserves in Death of Wolverine.
- Continuity Nod: This series uses the plot elements introduced in the Hunt For Wolverine series and naturally elaborates on the clues the others found towards Logan's situation.
- Weapon Lost: Logan was under the control of the villain performing black ops for them.
- Claws of a Killer: The villain has the power to animate the dead, for which they were experimenting with machinery to do more strongly over longer distances.
- Adamantium Agenda: Sinister's database of everyone's DNA was pilfered to keep track of every powered person on Earth, as those with powers retain them after reanimation.
- Continuity Snarl: The series seemingly takes place before all the stuff in Legacy with Logan wielding an Infinity Stone, as he very clearly has his memories in those stories, as well as his little cameos during said relaunch. However, the original Jean Grey is back in this story (and leading her own group of X-Men)... which happened a while after Legacy began. However, Wolverine: Infinity Watch #1 later revealed that the Logan who did the Infinity Stone stuff is actually Old Man Phoenix from Jason Aaron's Thor series.
- Elite Mooks: Superhumans reanimated by Persephone retain their powers.
- Evil Plan: Soteira has a Kill Sat network literally capable of instantly killing everyone on Earth and then projecting her powers to reanimate everyone under her control. Complete, undetected world takeover.
- Fossil Revival: One of Soteira's projects is research into reviving extinct species.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Wolverine's resurrection is the result of this, as Persephone's ability of animating the dead backfired when she tried it on him, reactivating his Healing Factor and ending up actually resurrecting him.
- Offing the Offspring: Logan kills Daken one more time, by setting him on fire.
- One-Steve Limit: Two months after this series started, Dead Man Logan began, which promises to do away with the Old Man Logan character that Marvel had brought in to replace the original Logan.
- Remote Body: Because of her powers Persephone has an unlimited amount of proxy bodies at her disposal.
- Ret-Canon: The heat claws are apparently inspired by Marvel vs. Capcom of all things.
- The Reveal: Persephone is a mutant with the ability to reanimate the dead under her control. Logan was revived when she acquired his corpse and an unexpected interaction between her powers and his healing factor brought him back completely.
- Revisiting the Roots: The series' approach to Wolverine seemingly resets him back to his original state: he is now amnesiac and doesn't know how he got his powers. This hasn't been a thing since House of M happened and gave him full access to his memories. In the end it's averted, as Logan releases all his memories and aspects anyway... except his berserker side — what this means going forward in unclear.
- Unstoppable Rage: The aspect of Logan that embodies this side of him is monstrous, and entering his berserker mode now aslso causes his claws to heat up.
- Wolverine Claws: This series introduces Wolverine's light-up action, the so called "heat claws" that cause his claws to heat up and glow orange, seemingly a new aspect of his berserker mode.
