SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LOGAN! It's been a year already, go watch it!
Every time I watch Logan, there's one character in particular that really stands out, and that's Bobby, the New Mutant with electricity powers and the very same kid clutching a Wolverine action figure at Logan's funeral. And apparently I'm not the only one to think this. Grace Randolph from the YouTube channel Beyond the Trailer said that while she found most of the New Mutants in the film to be "not likable," she enjoyed watching Bobby. But I think the reason I find his character so interesting is not just his likability, but the fact that he might be one of the most important characters in the film.
There's a deleted scene in which Logan awakes to find Bobby standing over his bed, playing out a fight with his action figures. In one hand, he has Wolverine, clad in his classic canary suit; in the other, he has Sabretooth, whose fangs and eyes give him an inhuman look. When he sees Logan is awake, he pushes Sabretooth toward him and quietly asks, "Was Sabretooth real?"
Let me pause for a sec. The movie implies that the lab responsible for giving Bobby his powers took DNA from Christopher Bradley, a mutant with electricity powers who made his film debut in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In that movie, Sabretooth kills Bradley in cold blood, and when Bradley dies, every lightbulb he was powering shuts off. The darkness literally snuffed out the light.
Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox. Christopher Bradley in X-Men Origins.
That moment was formative for Bobby (in that it quite literally helped form him), but it's unlikely he knows anything about that day. He just knows what he's read in the comic books, and he knows he idolizes his hero, Wolverine. Now, he's standing face to face with the real Wolverine, and he's nothing like the legends. He swears, he's scarred, and he's not even wearing yellow. On top of that, he says the stories aren't true. So Bobby asks him, "Was Sabretooth real?"
Logan assures him that yes, Sabretooth was real. Bobby then asks Logan if Logan is a good guy now, and he replies that he doesn't know.
Bobby has an innocence shared by none of the other characters, which is ironic. He is the product of someone dying in the gutter, forgotten by the world, and he's lived his entire life as a guinea pig in a lab, but he still believes there are heroes who will save him and that Eden (the name for the mutant safe haven) is waiting for him. And that's not the only Biblical symbolism James Mangold employed. Logan is a Messiah figure, the savior Bobby chose to believe in who would eventually give his life for Bobby. The bands on Bobby's shirt also resemble a rainbow, the Biblical representation of God's promise to never again flood the earth. His rainbow is a little faded, but his belief in the promise of refuge from his own personal flood still remains. The darkness could not snuff out Bobby's light.
Cut to the final battle. Wolverine is battling his greatest foe yet. Never mind that it's actually X-24; it's got the animalistic nature (and even the haircut) of Sabretooth, and Bobby is watching the whole thing. The legend really was true, which means the good guy had to win. And in the next moment, the legend is lying there, dead, having given his life to save all of mutantkind.
As Laura stands by Logan's grave, Bobby is the first to step forward, and he's hugging the Wolverine action figure against himself. He's clinging to it tightly, clinging to the belief that the legends are true, that evil will be defeated, that the good guys have to win. And with that, they walk off to Eden.
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