Thank you, Patrick Stewart, for your fine service to the X-Men franchise

X-Men fans have long known that "Logan" would be Hugh Jackman's swan song in the Wolverine role he originated in 2000. We were prepared for this farewell.

But then word came last week that Patrick Stewart - who has played Charles Xavier/Professor X since 2000's "X-Men" - had decided to make "Logan" his final go-round as an X-character, too.

And, according to Stewart, it was a repeated viewing of "Logan" that moved him to decide to exit, stage right.

During a recent SiriusXM Town Hall event, Stewart shared that a Berlin screening of "Logan" days earlier, with Jackman and Mangold seated near him, sealed the deal.

"I was so moved by it, much more moved than I had been the first time of seeing it," Stewart recounted. "Maybe it was the company of these two guys, but the movie ended and - this is an admission - but at one point [Hugh] reached out, and he took my hand in those last few minutes, and I saw him go [making tear-wiping motion] like this, and then I realized I had just done the same thing.

"Then, the movie ended . . . and we were going to be taken up on stage, but not until the credits were over. So, we had some time to sit there and, as I sat there, I realized there will never be a better, a more perfect, a more sensitive, emotional and beautiful way of saying 'au revoir' to Charles Xavier than this movie. So I told [Hugh] that same evening: 'I'm done, too. It's all over.' "

And with that, we now watch "Logan" with a double degree of poignancy. Because Stewart's rendering of Professor X in six X-Men films has presided over this franchise like a spiritual godfather. And without him, the X-Men might never have spawned the current wave of superhero cinema.

Back in 2000, you'll recall, Jackman was a virtual unknown. And so it fell to Stewart and Ian McKellen (with his riveting interpretation of Magneto) to first lure many filmgoers to director Bryan Singer's curious project.

And because Stewart was already so beloved as Star Trek's Capt. Picard, geek fans readily followed him to this strange new enterprise, where he was immediately credible as the man who so elegantly wielded a superpowered mind.

"Mutation," Stewart's professor said. "It is the key to our evolution." And with that, we feel we are in the surest of hands. Stewart's actorly craft instantly imbued his character with a certain classical grace that - especially in scenes opposite McKellen - elevated the entire proceedings.

"You are in my school for the gifted, for mutants," Stewart's professor tells Jackman's Logan with a warm, paternal air.

Little could we know then just how radically those roles would be reversed. Now, with the new film, Logan is paternal, and Charles Xavier, with his destabilizing mind, requires Logan's efforts to stay alive.

And still, with his character so physically diminished, Stewart so fully holds the screen. He resonates with deep wisdom and love in contrast to Logan's feral ferocity and visceral rage.

Stewart was nearly 60 when this long X-Men adventure began on screen. Now, at 76, he is ready to retire the role that was always there for him, between his varied and much-lauded work in such projects as TV's "Hamlet" and "MacBeth," "Blunt Talk" and "The Lion in Winter."