20th Century Fox's X-Men movie franchise has come to an end with the release of The New Mutants - and it wouldn't be an X-Men movie if it didn't mess up the timeline. Though it's mostly a standalone story in which the X-Men are mentioned but not actually seen, the surprise inclusion of a clip from James Mangold's 2017 movie Logan raises some major questions about when exactly The New Mutants is set.

Having been originally conceived before the Marvel Cinematic Universe came along and made shared movie universes with (mostly) consistent continuity fashionable, the X-Men movies are now notorious for how confusing their timeline is to follow. In the wake of the widely-panned X-Men: The Last Stand and the equally-derided spinoff prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the franchise received a soft reboot in the form of Matthew Vaughn's 1960s-set X-Men: The First Class, which explored the origins of the X-Men and lifelong frenemies Professor X and Magneto. The sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past, attempted to reconcile the first X-Men trilogy with the reboot saga - but arguably only made the continuity more confusing.

Related: How New Mutants Connects To X-Men: Apocalypse & Logan

By now most X-Men fans have come to accept that the movies' relationship with time and continuity will always be a bit loose. In the prequel movies characters have aged decades with little change in their physical appearance, and there are multiple, conflicting versions of characters like Angel and Emma Frost. Logan was deliberately set apart from the rest of the X-Men saga (despite being set up in X-Men: Apocalypse's post-credits scene) and existed in its own, possible-future bubble. That bubble has now burst, however, with the release of The New Mutants, which features clips from Logan that suggest the movies take place at the same time and are connected.

New Mutants Logan Footage

The New Mutants is set in Milbury Hospital, a facility for young mutants with newly-emerging powers that they haven't yet learned to control. They eventually learn that their so-called treatment plan is designed to prep them for training as mutant killers under the control of the Essex Corporation, an evil company owned by comic book villain Mr. Sinister. While undergoing testing, Danielle Moonstar experiences a vision of another mutant facility under the control of Essex Corp. - the Transigen facility in Mexico where Laura/X-23 was created. The vision includes footage from Logan of young mutants being experimented upon and trained to use their powers in combat.

This is where the X-Men timeline gets scrambled again. Logan was set in the year 2029, in a world where Professor X had accidentally wiped out almost all of the X-Men team members a year previously. The New Mutants director Josh Boone has said that his movie takes place in the present day, and a discussion among the movie's teen mutants confirms that the X-Men are still around and active. Moonstar has plenty of powers in the comics but none of them involve the ability to see the future; she is able to see the Transigen facility by pulling images from Dr. Reyes' mind. So, how did scenes from a movie set a decade in the future end up in her vision?

During Screen Rant's visit to the set of The New Mutants, Boone teased that the movie would have "things that fans are really excited about, that will have repercussions in other movies and other parts of the X-Men world." He originally pitched a trilogy of New Mutants movies that would eventually dovetail with the main X-Men saga, so perhaps there was a plan in place to explain the Logan connection somewhere down the line. But since the Fox/X-Men era ends here, it instead simply lobs one last grenade into the X-Men movie timeline - for old time's sake.

More: The X-Men Movie Timeline Explained (From 2000 To Dark Phoenix)