10 Times Jean Grey Was the Most Powerful X-Man

Over 60 years, the X-Men have recruited some of the most powerful beings in Marvel Comics, with Omega-Level mutants capable of terraforming planets and warping reality with ease. However, none of them can compare to the founding X-Man Jean Grey. From her debut, Jean was widely regarded as the strongest telepath and telekinetic in the universe. And when she seemingly died during a mission into space, she was reborn as the all-powerful host of the Phoenix Force. As old as creation itself, the Phoenix Force is the omnipotent personification of multiversal death and rebirth. This cosmic being views Jean as its perfect vessel, allowing them to perform incomprehensible feats of power regularly.

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Whether with or without the Phoenix Force, Jean Grey’s potent abilities make her an Omega-Level mutant. When working in tandem, the Phoenix Force grants Jean additional abilities, including fire projection, superpower manipulation, energy absorption, transmutation, precognition, reality warping, and resurrection. With all this power that has allowed Jean to become one of the most important entities in the multiverse, it’s mind-boggling that she still keeps dying repeatedly.

10) Restored Emma Frost

Although Jean Grey is most well-known for using the Phoenix Force to resurrect herself, she has also used it to bring other people back from the dead as well. In New X-Men #139, Emma Frost was shot by a sniper while in her diamond form, causing her to shatter into a million pieces and apparently die. Two issues later, Jean senses a lingering consciousness within the shards. Using her immense telekinetic abilities, Jean collects and fuses all of Emma’s pieces back together while simultaneously using her telepathy to borrow Beast’s medical knowledge so that she doesn’t make any anatomical mistakes. Once she’s finished reconstructing Emma, Jean brings her back to life.

9) Restored a Star

As the wielder of the Phoenix Force, Jean doesn’t confine herself to Earth to perform heroic acts; rather, she regularly does courageous feats across the universe that save billions of lives. In X-Men #35, Jean Grey traveled to the edge of the intergalactic Shi’ar Empire to reach a white dwarf star. A star in this stage is near the end of its natural life cycle and would soon die. To save the surrounding solar system and its countless inhabitants, Jean uses the Phoenix Force’s cosmic energy to revert the white dwarf into a yellow star, ensuring that it would continue shining for several billion more years to come.

8) Stabilized a Black Hole

Dying stars aren’t the only cosmic crises Jean handles daily. In Phoenix #1, a supermassive black hole called Ton 618 has become unstable. Ton 618 is about to collapse, threatening to destroy a nearby space station prison. To tame Ton 618, Jean flies into it and becomes one with the black hole. Like a cosmic dance, Jean uses the Phoenix Force’s limitless power to guide and temper the black hole. Once she’s finished, the threat of Ton 618 has been neutralized. In real life, Ton 618 is one of the largest supermassive black holes in the observable universe, dwarfing the Milky Way Galaxy and possessing a mass of around 66 billion suns.

7) Turned Gorr the God Butcher into a Star

As his name suggests, Gorr the God Butcher is a terrifying and genocidal madman who won’t rest until every god is dead. He has slaughtered countless deities, and it once took the combined might of three versions of Thor to stop him. However, in Phoenix #5, Jean Grey defeated him all on her own. When Gorr sought to kill Jean, he used the deadly All-Black that grants its user the ability to slaughter gods and even encase a universe in darkness. To defeat the God Butcher, Jean transformed him into something that brings life. With her reality-warping and transmutation abilities, Jean turned Gorr and the All-Black into a gigantic star that would nourish numerous planets with its light.

6) Used Galactus’s Power Against Him

Even as a teenager, Jean Grey could match Galactus. Fueled by the Power Cosmic, Galactus possesses near limitless power. In Generations: Phoenix & Jean Grey #1, a temporally displaced younger Jean is whisked away to a planet about to be consumed by Galactus. To save the planet, the younger Jean develops a new trick. By absorbing the psychic energy from the inhabitants of the nearby planet, along with that of Galactus’ Herald Terrax, the Phoenix Force, and Galactus himself, Jean constructs a gigantic fist that knocks the Devourer of Worlds flat on his back. The strike was so powerful that Galactus ceded the planet to Jean. To redirect the full power of both the Power Cosmic and Phoenix Force shows the heights of Jean’s absorption capabilities.

5) Created a New Universe

One of the biggest reinventions of the X-Men in the 21st century was that their human ally, Moria MacTaggert, was actually a mutant with the power to reset to the beginning of her life every time she died. By her tenth life, Moria’s obsession with saving mutantkind and escaping her rebirth cycle led her to become an enemy of the X-Men and to begin helping the multiversal villain Enigma. However, in Rise of the Powers of X #5, with some encouragement from Professor X, Moria sacrifices her life so that Jean can find and defeat Enigma. As gratitude for her help, Jean used the Phoenix Force to create an entirely new timeline where Moria wasn’t born with her power, freeing her of her curse.

4) Weaponized the Power of Every Mutant Ever

In Rise of the Powers of X #5, Jean is the only hope for defeating Enigma, a godlike AI version of the villain Nathaniel Essex, who is unbound by the laws of time and space. Enigma sought to rewrite time and exterminate all life on Earth, but Jean wasn’t going to let that happen. In this battle that shakes all of time and space, Jean channels the energy of every mutant who has ever lived across infinite dimensions. Jean then takes this unlimited energy and morphs it into three all-powerful claws that she uses to skewer Enigma’s head. The resulting impalement fractures Enigma and scatters him across the multiverse, ending his threat to Earth.

3) Fractured Reality and Destroyed the Dark Gods

In Phoenix #9, Jean is forced to battle her friend Adani, who the Dark Gods of the Dark Realm had corrupted. Through Adani, the Dark Gods threaten to engulf the multiverse in darkness. To lure Adani and the armies of the Dark Realm, Jean purposefully creates a gigantic fracture in reality so vast that it lures them right to her. When legions of monsters enter the fracture, Jean trapped and destroyed them. Once she dealt with the foot soldiers, Jean connected to Adani’s mind to deal with the Dark Gods and the rest of their nightmarish army of darkness. With this connection to Adani, Jean annihilated the Dark Gods and their army from across the multiverse.

2) Threatened the Multiverse

As “The Dark Phoenix” storyline shows, the risk of Jean and the Phoenix Force becoming corrupted and evil can threaten the multiverse. In Phoenix #7, Jean faces off against the Mad Titan Thanos, who has yet another plan to exterminate all life. After stealing a mystical artifact known as the Eye of Warlock, Thanos uses its power and his connection to Death to corrupt Jean. In this state, the Phoenix Force begins to lose control and threatens to create a void that would swallow Marvel’s infinite cosmology. Luckily, although her body was paralyzed, Jean mentally relinquishes her connection to the Phoenix Force and depowers the Eye of Warlock. Once the corruption ended, Jean reclaimed the Phoenix Force.

1) Became Omnipresent

In Phoenix #5, Jean takes her spot as one of the most important beings in existence. After her latest death and resurrection following her fight with Gorr the God Butcher, Jean is met by Eternity, the omnipotent and omnipresent personification of the universe. Eternity offers her a place among the cosmic order, which includes omnipotent beings that govern the fabric of existence like Infinity, Death, Oblivion, the In-Betweener, Watcher, the Celestials, Eon, the Living Tribunal, and the One Above All. Although Jean is initially hesitant, she eventually agrees and unlocks her true power. As the Phoenix, a part of Jean now resides within every star, planet, and being in existence, making her the personification of creation itself.

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