5 Most Powerful Versions of Cyclops, Ranked

The X-Men are Marvel’s biggest superhero team by a long shot. There’s the old joke that everyone and their mother has been an Avenger, but not even the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can hold a candle to the number one mutant team when it comes to an ever-changing roster. Obviously, with any team that big, you are inevitably going to have quite a large variety of extremely powerful superheroes. There’s Phoenix, Hope Summers, Storm, Rogue, and Magneto, just to name a few. The X-Men have an endless army of Omega-Level mutants at their command, but without a doubt, one of the most dangerous heroes they have is Cyclops.

Scott might not be as powerful as many of his compatriots, but his leadership skills are second to none. With a team of X-Men at his side, there’s nothing he can’t do and no villain they can’t defeat. Cyclops is just an Alpha-Level, and his main skills have always been about how he uses his power, not how strong it is. Still, that’s not to say that every version of Cyclops has been weak. Like all long-running heroes, Cyclops has had many alternate forms and power-ups over the decades, and today, we’re looking at the five strongest versions of Cyclops there have ever been. With all that said, let’s consider the most powerful Cyclopses.

5) Bishop’s Future

Scott Summers might not be at the top of the food chain, but that is not to say he’s weak. His optic blasts are much stronger than anyone gives him credit for. While he mostly uses them to incapacitate his enemies, he’s shown that he’s capable of outputting enough raw energy to outmatch a nuclear reactor, according to Iron Man. He generally uses much less power, which is because he’s incapable of truly controlling his blasts. 

The brain damage he received as a child kept him from fully mastering his abilities, but in the potential future that Bishop hails from, the older Scott overcame that hurdle. He no longer relied on his rubyquartz lenses, meaning that he could choose to push out as much power as he wanted, whenever he wanted. This alternate version of the hero lacked the one critical weakness that held him back, making him a whole lot more dangerous than before.

4) X-Sentinels

X-Men: Millennial Visions was released at the turn of the millennium, showcasing different potential futures for Marvel’s mutant heroes. One was the X-Sentinel future, where the heroes became the very things they hated the most. The X-Men took countless beatings that ravaged their bodies, so they turned to replacing their failing and aging parts with cybernetics. Eventually, they fully transferred themselves into robot bodies based on their original costumes. Unfortunately, their brains held too much information, deleting everything but the essential drive to keep mutantkind safe. They began hunting humans, becoming the X-Sentinels.

This robotic version of Cyclops retained all the power of the original, except now in a fully controllable artificial body. We didn’t see him in action, but we can safely assume that his physical strength and durability are on the level of the average Sentinel’s, making him much stronger than the normal Cyclops. On top of that, he’s now fully capable of controlling his optic blasts at a level that the original could never hope to reach. This is easily one of the most dangerous versions of Cyclops out there, and the least human.

3) Black Vortex

The remaining entrants, funnily enough, are all temporary power boosts for the 616 Cyclops. The time-displaced young Scott was exposed to the energies of the Black Vortex, which infused him with the powers of a cosmic entity. Not only could Scott control his optic blasts, but they were amped to an unprecedented level. Before, a blast that could take down a mountain would take a lot out of Scott, but with this boost, he could level an entire army without a sweat. This was even Scott when he was just starting his heroic career, so if a mature Cyclops got his hands on this power, there’s no telling how powerful he would have become.

2) Hulkclops

During the “World War Hulks” storyline, dozens of Earth’s top heroes were mutated into Hulked-out versions of themselves. All of them were granted strength that could level cities with barely any effort, and durability to match. It also had hero-specific effects. For Cyclops, the gamma radiation interacted with his mutation to grow extra eyes all over his head. Not only did this grant him 360-degree vision, but it also made it so he could launch attacks from every possible angle. Of course, like all good Cyclops power boosts, this granted him full control over his optic blasts. This Cyclops is far and away the physically strongest of all, and optic blasts in every direction are no joke.

1) Phoenix Host

The dreaded, infamous Avengers vs. X-Men was not a good story, but it did provide us with the strongest form of Cyclops to date. Originally, he was host to one-fifth of the Phoenix Force, but by the end of the comic, he possessed the full package. The Phoenix Force is one of the strongest cosmic entities in Marvel, granting its host the might to take down forces like Galactus and the Enigma. The Phoenix Force gives its host immortality, infinite energy, and unlimited telekinetic power. There is nothing that a wielder of the Phoenix Force cannot do, and when Scott was in command of it, absolutely nobody could stop him.

Which version of Cyclops is your favorite?

7 Biggest Differences Between Wolverine and Cyclops