This image released by Twentieth Century Fox shows Hugh Jackman in a scene from Logan. Picture: Ben Rothstein/Twentieth Century Fox

After 17 years in the star-making role, Hugh Jackman is hanging up Wolverine’s claws.

Logan, out now, will be his final outing, he’s said.

It’s an appropriate send-off. Logan is set some 20 years in the future and finds the greying X-Man weakened and weary, living in an abandoned factory in Mexico — his only companions an albino mutant (Stephen Merchant) and an increasingly unstable Professor X (Patrick Stewart).

Jackman’s departure marks a Sentinel-size challenge for studio Fox, and whatever solution it comes up with could signal what audiences should expect from superhero movies in the future.

Since the current comic book boom got underway with 2000s X-Men, studios have not really had to deal with the issue of marquee actors moving on, but that day is now upon us, and the coming upheaval could endanger the success of a genre that has dominated Hollywood.

Stewart has said he is also leaving the X-Men. He and Jackman recently watched Logan together and both found themselves wiping away tears at the finale.

“So, I told [Hugh] that same evening, ‘I’m done, too. It’s all over,’” he told a SiriusXM Town Hall last month.

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart: “If you’re leaving, so am I.”Source:AP

Perhaps the most successful purveyor of spandex in Hollywood, Marvel Studios also finds itself with a bill coming due. Robert Downey Jr., who’s owed a lot of credit for successfully launching Marvel’s cinematic universe with 2008’s Iron Man, is likely to walk away after next year’s Avengers: Infinity War.

Chris Evans, aka Captain America, has also said he plans to ditch the role when his contract is up.

So what now?

“My own feeling is almost always to find another actor,” says Roy Thomas, former Marvel editor-in-chief and Wolverine’s co-creator. “No one is indispensable if the stories are good, as good as Jackman was.”

The actor has echoed that sentiment. He has said that the character will almost certainly go on with someone else playing him. (His choice is Bollywood actor Shah Ruhk Khan.)

“You can look to Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Batman as characters that last longer than any one actor playing them,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Variety last year. “There’s a precedent for it in other franchises that suggests it’s possible.”

Some of these Avengers are set to hang up their costumes soon.Source:Supplied

But the problem Fox and Marvel have is not just that the actors have become so closely associated with the roles, but one of continuity. Audiences didn’t much mind when Christian Bale’s Batman gave way to Ben Affleck’s because the movies they were in were not connected. But Fox and Marvel have been telling basically a single story through their movies, and replacing an actor could be jarring. (X-Men has used a time-travel cheat to introduce a younger crop of actors in some roles.)

Another solution would be to take a page from the print comic book universe and pass the mantle to a successor. Logan introduces Laura (Dafne Keen), a little girl with the claws, healing factor and blood lust of Wolverine.

Could she carry the franchise going forward? Would audiences accept Bucky (Sebastian Stan) hoisting up Captain America’s shield?

The studios could also make like Paul McCartney and just let it be — allow the characters to walk off into the sunset.

Marvel Studios is already pushing forward a new roster of heroes (solo movies for Black Panther and Captain Marvel are planned in the next two years) that are likely meant to fill the void if Iron Man and the other vets exit stage left.

Then again, they could always just wait a few years and return with a lukewarm reboot. And that’s something Hollywood definitely knows how to do.

This article was originally published on The New York Post