We might simply suggest that the professor simply used his psychic abilities to fake his own death and go into hiding to recuperate and prepare for the coming threat, however. This is something else he’s done in the comics, after all.

Whatever the explanation, it’s sure to be an interesting one. The revolving door of death in superhero comics is much-mocked, so applying the same resurrection techniques to superhero movies has the potential to undermine any future deaths. However they explain Xavier’s return, they might want to make sure it can’t be re-used too easily.

The final thing The Wolverine‘s post-credits sequence tells us concerns Wolverine himself. The final moments of The Wolverine are, to put it bluntly, something of a surprise. Much like Marvel’s first 2013 blockbuster, the film isn’t afraid to leave its hero with some rather permanent-looking changes. In Iron Man 3, it was the loss of the arc-reactor heart. In The Wolverine, it was the loss of his metal claws.

The fact that the post-credits scene happens two years later means that one way or another, Wolverine has been walking around with nothing but bone claws for two solid years. And similarly, Yukio is nowhere to be found, suggesting that the two have parted company. It’s hard to say why that two year gap was inserted into the chronology. Is the plan to try and fit a future Wolverine sequel in that gap to explain what happens to Yukio and Mariko? Or was it just an easy way to get those characters off the board without forcing people to ask why he’s simply forgotten about them in X-Men: DOFP? It’s hard to say, but we’ll be thinking about both possibilities while watching the next X-Men movie.

The stinger also leaves us with one final question to ponder: Will Wolverine get his metal claws back? And if so, how? Weapon X could do it, but it’s hard to imagine him voluntarily getting his Adamantium back off them. Magneto could maybe do it in DOFP – after all, in the comics he famously removed the Adamantium from Wolverine’s bones.