Hugh Jackman Stepping Down as Wolverine: 'X-Men' without Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen

Another X-Men star is leaving the franchise alongside Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen, and this one might be the most tragic X-retirement of all. Hugh Jackman, whose role as Wolverine has been a constant since 2000, announced he is stepping down. He made the big announcement Saturday afternoon on Instagram when he said "Wolverine... One last time."

While small, the picture's caption speaks volumes. It signifies the end of a long and successful era. As Wolverine, Jackman saw Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama in office.

Right now Jackman as slated to be in X-Men: Apocalypse so there's no cause to be completely depressed. We have until 2017 when he dons the starring role in Wolverine 3 before he says goodbye for good.

 WOLVERINE ...ONE LAST TIME. HJ

A photo posted by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman) on Mar 28, 2015 at 10:40am PDT

In recent years Jackman went back and forth on whether he should be playing Wolverine or not. In 2014 he announced that he "thinks" Wolverine 3 will be his last movie.

"I don't know yet," he told SFX. "We're talking it through. I still am very ambitious for the character. And tonally I feel like we corrected the ship with the last one. But I feel we can still go further, in a way. If I did another one, I'm 99.9 percent sure it would be the last, so that will inform what it is for me."

Then in February 2015 he swept that notion aside when he said he should be playing Wolverine forever.

"The moral is that I should never stop playing Wolverine," Jackman told E! Online. "I've got to find a way to keep playing him until I die.' I know that someday they'll recast the role with another actor...I'd be happy if the role was eventually recast. It would mean that it had become iconic."

If Jackman wanted that character to be iconic then he did his job. His role of Wolverine spanned three different Presidents – something a James Bond was never able to pull off – and he was in seven different X-Men films.