The X-Men are filled with powerful mutants who have their own unique powers and origin stories. One of the strongest of these X-Men is Jean Grey, an Omega-level mutant who has been an integral part of various X-Men story arcs. First introduced in ‘The X-Men comics #1’, she is an essential original member of the X-Men right from the start.
Ever since her character has gone through many difficulties and has even been killed off and revived many times. Created by the legendary duo Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Jean Grey’s character arc has been full of twists and turns due to the cosmic nature of her powers. Today, we will break down her story and explore this omega-level mutant’s origins!
Her origins as explored in X-Men Evolution
Jean Grey led an ordinary childhood and was born and raised in New York. She lived with her parents, Elaine Grey and Dr. John Grey, who was a history professor at Bard College. Jean’s powers first revealed themselves at the age of ten, when her best friend ‘Annie Richards’ got into a car accident.
Jean’s powers were instinctively triggered, and she could sense her friend’s pain and share the trauma faced by Annie in her last moments. Experiencing the death of her friend almost kills Jean as well, but she somehow manages to keep herself alive. Instead, she ends up in a coma, and her parents approach ‘Professor Charles Xavier’ of Xavier Academy in order to heal Jean.
Professor Xavier realizes the true potential of her powers and uses Jean as a means to operate his ‘Cerebro Machine’. This machine could locate mutants with the X-Gene, and with Jean’s help, Xavier manages to find many such mutants. While using the device, Jean could sense others’ presence in an astral form. She feels the presence of Scott Summers, who would later on become her love interest. In her mind, Jean creates a Phoenix raptor and establishes contact with Scott Summers who was at an orphanage at that time.
Professor Xavier observes Jean’s powers and concludes that she is not ready to deal with the full extent of her abilities. He uses his telepathic powers to put a mental block on her powers, which would restrict Jean from using them. By doing so, Xavier hoped that her powers would get more time to develop naturally.
After recovering from the trauma of the accident, a teenage Jean decided to join Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and named herself as ‘Marvel Girl’. At the academy, she became the first woman to become a part of the X-Men. She was pretty popular among the X-Men and often helped the young mutants to get used to their powers and looked out for them. When Jean went out on any mission, her X-Men uniform consisted of a deep blue bodysuit with an ‘X’ logo on the sides.
Jean Grey was a part of the core team in the ‘X-Men: Evolution animated series in 2000. She was introduced right from the first episode titled ‘Strategy X,’ and she started out as one of the original X-Men members.
The first episode, ‘Strategy-X’ kicked off with a scene at Bayville high school’s football game, where Jean Grey is taking pictures of the home team’s quarterback ‘Duncan Matthews .’ On a different side, Scott Summers watches the game from the bleachers. It so happens that a young man named ‘Todd Tolansky’ is going around the stadium stealing others’ wallets. Both Duncan and Scott notice Todd, and Duncan and his football friends follow Todd and corner him.
They call him names such as ‘Toad Face’ and try to hit him when Scott Summers arrives at the scene and asks them to leave him alone. Duncan is annoyed by Scott’s interference, and the two boys are ready to fight each other when Jean Grey shows up. She realizes that Scott is about to use his powers to unleash an ‘optic blast’ using his eyes, and while she tries to stop him, the blast hits Duncan and knocks him out.
The blast also hits a nearby propane tank, which causes a major explosion in the school. While the authorities arrive and deescalate the situation, Jean Grey consoles Scott, who tells her that the blast was not intended. Jean even stands by Duncan’s side as he is taken away by the paramedics and comforts him.
On another side, Todd Tolansky catches a fly with his mouth, finally revealing that he is a mutant. We are also introduced to the X-Man ‘Logan,’ and Professor Xavier also recruits ‘Kurt Wagner’, who we also know as Nightcrawler.
The next day at the academy, Scott and Jean are summoned to Xavier’s cabin, where he introduces them to Kurt officially. Todd Tolansky also gets into trouble with the school’s principal ‘Darkholme’ who reveals herself to be a mutant. She then asks Todd to join Xavier’s academy and even tells him all about Scott Summers and his special powers. In the meantime, Cerebro detects the presence of a new mutant and tells Xavier all about Todd Toalnsky.
Todd stirs up trouble as he breaks into the academy late at night, where he finds himself face to face with Nightcrawler. Professor Xavier is willing to let Todd join the academy, but the young mutant ignores him and proceeds to attack Nightcrawler instead. Professor Xaviers telepathically asks Jean Grey and Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops, for help in dealing with Todd.
Todd and Nightcrawler end up in the ‘Danger Room’ when Jean arrives and tries to deescalate the situation. She saves Nightcrawler from Todd’s tentacles, and Nightcrawler soon realizes that the room around him is full of machines and weapons. Without any intentions of hurting anyone, he pulls the plug of one device, which accidentally unleashes an attack on Cyclops and Todd.
Nightcrawler begins doubting if he is ready to be an X-Man and teleports away while Cyclops goes after him. Nightcrawler finally decides to stay after some persuading from Cyclops.
On the other side, even Todd decides to leave the place when he runs into Logan, that is, Wolverine. Logan is ready to attack Todd when Xavier appears outside and allows Todd to leave the place.
Back at his high school, Principal Darkholme scolds Todd over his behavior at the X-Mansion. After Todd leaves her office, it is revealed that Darkholme is none other than the mutant ‘Mystique’ in disguise.
In the next episode, titled ‘X Impulse,’ Professor Xavier seeks Jean Grey’s help in recruiting a new mutant. It so happens that a fifteen-year-old girl named ‘Kitty Pryde’ has strange dreams about flying in the air and then having a fall. She wakes up to find herself in the basement of the house, away from her bed. Kitty’s parents console her while trying to understand how their daughter managed to break the ceiling and fall all the way from her room and into the basement.
On the other side, Cerebro picks up her mutant signal at the Xavier Institute. He tells Xavier all about Kitty Pryde as they prepare to leave in their X-Jet ‘Blackbird.’ Before leaving, Xavier asks Jean Grey to accompany them, as he hopes that she can connect with the young girl. While traveling in Blackbird, Jean asks Xavier about a mutant signal that Cerebro had picked up earlier. Xavier tells her that it belongs to ‘Lance Alvers’ and asks her to just focus on Kitty and leave Lance to him.
The following day, Kitty gets ready to go to school despite her parents’ wishes. After she leaves, Jean and Xavier arrive at her residence and introduce themselves to her parents. Kitty’s parents do not want strangers to meddle in their daughter’s business, and they slam the door in their face.
In the meantime, the infamous Lance Alvers locates Kitty at her school and introduces himself to her. He tells her that he understands her powers and reveals that he, too, is just like her. Lance demonstrates his special powers and creates a small earthquake in the vicinity. Kitty runs away and is convinced that Lance is some sort of a freak.
Overwhelmed by her new powers, Kitty retreats to the school’s auditorium to test her abilities. Here, she finds herself face to face with Jean Grey, who tries to comfort Kitty. She tells the young girl that when she first received her powers, she hated them but later on realized that they were a gift. Jean also demonstrates her levitating powers to Kitty, who thinks that this is just an elaborate trick. However, Jean reads her mind and reassures her that this is no trick. Kitty is surprised to learn that Jean can read her mind as well, and she wishes to be left alone.
As Kitty leaves, Lance shows up in the auditorium and asks Jean to leave the girl alone. He then himself pursues Kitty and gets her to calm down and trust him.
In the meantime, Jean calls Xavier and informs him that Lance is also trying to pursue Kitty. Xavier does not want to lose Kitty and asks Jean to keep trying to bond with her and get her to trust them. On another side, Kitty meets up with Lance, and the two break into the school’s office to change exam grades. They have a brief conversation about powers, and Lance tells Kitty to embrace the fact that though she is an outsider, she can win if she sticks with him. Kitty cheers up and is excited to try out her powers while Jean and Xavier meet Kitty’s parents once again and tell them that she broke into the school’s office.
Lance tries to use Kitty as a means to break through the walls of the school office, and she realizes that he is using her for personal gain. She tries to leave, but Lance forcefully makes her stay when her parents arrive in the office. Lance gets into a brawl with Kitty’s father and then tries to escape with Kitty through a hole in the wall. He soon starts destroying the entire school while attempting to flee with Kitty. Jean approaches Kitty and tells her that these powers would become a curse if she actually joins forces with Lance.
After Jean gives her some advice, Kitty finally realizes that she does not want to go with Lance and starts running back to her family. However, Lance uses his powers to create tremors in the ground that cause the ceiling over their head to fall on Kitty’s family. Jean uses her powers to prevent them from getting crushed under the ceiling and then advises Kitty to always use her powers well. Kitty finally starts trusting the X-Men and wants to join Xavier’s Academy.
Jean Grey was equally impactful in X-Men the Animated Series
Jean played an important role in the X-Men animated series and was one of the show’s core characters. She was one of the original six X-Men, including Professor Xavier, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel.
Jean and Scott Summers’ relationship was explored in quite some detail in this series, and there is an episode focused solely on their wedding. The episode also shows Wolverine in a bad state, as he fights an imaginary version of Cyclops [also known as Scott Summers]. The voice in his head tells Wolverine that he can never have Jean, and he spends the day brooding in the Danger Room at the Xavier Academy. Jean is quite disappointed that Wolverine missed her wedding, and he tries to apologize for it when she returns to the academy.
He tells her that he lost track of time, and Jean brushes him away as she and Scott are headed on their honeymoon anyway.
In further episodes of the series, Jean is tired of having the Phoenix inside her and wishes to get rid of it. She seeks the help of ‘Moira McTaggart’, a leading scientist who works at the Center for Mutant Research. Professor Xavier also appears at the treatment center, and the Phoenix within Jean unleashes herself and causes an explosion. Jean uses what little strength she has to contact Scott through a mental link, and he quickly returns from a mission at a club that deals with an ‘Inner Circle’ that poses a threat to the world.
Jean continues her treatment, and Professor Charles often visits her in order to talk to the Phoenix and find what she wants. The Phoenix once again takes control of Jane’s body and starts conjuring bright lights that overflow from Jane’s body. Scott intervenes and asks Charles to stop this madness, urging him to help Jean regain more control over herself. Scott has to return to the club to deal with the ‘Inner Circle’, and he tells Jean that he cannot stay much longer.
Still under the Phoenix’s control, Jean tells Scott that he can leave her for a new woman. As Jean returns to her regular self, Scott reassures Jean by telling her that he is not going anywhere and they will find a way to get rid of the Phoenix.
However, Jean’s inner demons cause her to have strange dreams about ‘Jason’, a member of the Inner Circle that Scott is fighting against. Jean returns back to her Phoenix avatar, and Jason appears before her, insisting that her fantasies are true. Jason uses his powers to convince Jean that her dreams are true, and they end up kissing. He then takes her to the ‘Inner Circle’s base, and Jean is still trapped under his illusions.
Jason gets her to marry him, and they even have a wedding ceremony before the X-Men finally arrive and snap Jean out of this illusion. The Phoenix finally reveals that she had overtaken control over Jean’s body, and she caused Jean to fall for Jason’s illusions. Phoenix then joins the inner circle while possessing Jean Grey’s body, and becomes an active member of the group. Scott Summers tries to telepathically contact Jean Grey, who tells him she feels much freer in her current form.
Apparently, the Phoenix Force within her body now hungered for more power, and Jean has been sucked into a world of darkness and destruction. Jean Grey now sided with Jason Wyndarde and his Inner Circle, and Jason ordered her to kill ‘Sebastian Shaw’. However, Jean seems to be discovering the full extent of her powers and no longer wishes to act upon anybody’s orders. She decides to leave the Inner Circle headquarters, and Jason pursues her in an attempt to get her to stay. However, she sees through his feeble excuses, and the Phoenix overtakes her body and tells Jason that she has now discovered more thirst for evil.
The Phoenix made it very difficult for Jean Grey to lead an everyday life, as she constantly tried to create more chaos and destruction through Jean’s body.
X-Men movies would be incomplete without her presence
Jean Grey was also a huge part of the X-Men movies, which explored a different side of her known as ‘Phoenix’. She has the same origin story and was raised by her parents’ John and Elaine Grey.’ However, in the movies, Jean’s mutant abilities, such as telepathy and telekinesis, start revealing themselves at home. Her parents then contact Professor Xavier who pays Jean a visit. He is accompanied by ‘Erik Lehnsherr’, who we also know as Magneto.
Jean speaks to the duo in private, and she tries to use her powers to read their minds. However, Professor Xavier points out to her that it is impolite to probe around his mind. They then explain the world of mutants and superpowers to Jean, who does not believe she possesses such powers.
In order to test her powers, Jean uses her telekinesis to levitate vehicles in her neighborhood, which impresses Magneto. Xavier on the other hand, wonders if Jean has the ability to keep these powers in check, or do they take over her being and control; her instead.
Soon after, Jean joined Xavier’s academy, and he categorizes her as a class five mutant. Xavier was still skeptical about Jean’s control over her powers since most of them were tied to her subconscious. In an attempt to suppress Jean’s powers, Xavier decides to create many psychological barriers that will help prevent the full potential of her powers from reaching her conscious mind. However, this process resulted in the creation of a dual personality called ‘The Phoenix’, and this side of Jean revealed itself during her training sessions with Xavier.
Phoenix was Jean’s instinctive side, which felt her deepest emotions such as anger, rage, and joy to the fullest and revealed itself only occasionally. Jean was not fully aware of her alternate personality, and this side remained subdued for most of her life.
Jean trained with Scott Summers, known as Cyclops, and they later got into a relationship. She then pursued her education further to become a doctor and became a core member of the X-Men team, who helped the group get out of trouble on many occasions.
What makes Jean Grey so dangerous?
As an omega-level mutant, Jean Grey’s powers surpass those of most X-Men, and she is one of the most powerful mutants of the lot. She has infinite power in her hands and is capable of manipulating the entire universe from one place. Jean Grey’s alternate ‘Phoenix’, or ‘Dark Phoenix’ persona gives her even more powers, such as the ability to manipulate fire, matter, energy, and even the minds of others. Let us explore these powers in detail, one by one.
First and foremost, Jean Grey’s core powers included the ability to perform telekinesis and telepathy. Her X-Gene gave her a lot of psychic energy that helped her control various aspects of reality. Jean could levitate objects and humans and hover them in their air, irrespective of how heavy they were.
She can also fly by using her telekinesis, create energy blasts, and even conjure protective shields to protect her group from any physical attacks from their opponents. Jean can also create psionic weapons by using her psychic energy, and these weapons had the ability to injure her targets both mentally as well as physically. In terms of physical abilities, Jean possessed superhuman strength and was reasonably well-trained in physical combat.
Jean Grey can also perform telepathy and read as well as share her thoughts with other humans and animals without saying them out loud. Jean Grey can also construct a telepathic defense to block her thoughts from other beings. One such way of doing this is the ‘telepathic cloak,’ wherein Jean masks her presence from being detected by other psychic beings. Moreover, she can hide her team from any psychic detection as well.
Jean also has the unique ability of creating a ‘cloak mind’ by rearranging the mental engrams of the X-Men and other mutants. By doing this, their presence will go undetected even by the Cerebro machine or any such devices. She can also create a ‘psionic shield’ to prevent others from reading her mind.
Jean can also create telepathic illusions and distort reality, making the people around her experience events that are not really happening. She can also telepathically camouflage the physical appearances of herself and her group of X-Men, which helps the group carry out their missions undetected. Jean can use her telepathy to create a psionic ‘firebird’, an animal that can attack her opponents on her behalf.
Jean can even exert control over the minds of others, possess their mind and body, and even alter their personalities.
Jean Grey’s telepathic powers were on a whole different level, and she can even induce a mental paralysis in her opponents. Moreover, Jean can make them feel pain, heal them from their trauma by performing a ‘psychic energy’, and even mentally sedate or jumpstart the minds of other mutants.
If Jean is in a critical state, she can transfer all her powers to the body of another being. She can also create a mental link with any being, so she can connect with them during any crisis. For instance, Jean had maintained one such cosmic link with Scott Summer that went on for many years.
Most importantly, Jean can project her astral form into astral planes. In her astral form, Jean can travel for very far distances on the physical plane and use her psychic energy to create psionic weapons as well.
In her phoenix force avatar, Jean Grey possessed psionic abilities with which she could manipulate time, space, matter, and energy. She could even resurrect, reabsorb, and save all forms of beings from dying since the Phoenix is ‘a sum of all life-force’. Jean had limitless power in her hands as the Phoenix, and she could control almost everything and anything she desired. Jean could fly through space, rearrange matter on a molecular level, manipulate energy to create fire and blasts and so on.
After Jean Grey’s body merged with the Phoenix Force, she possessed the ability to create ‘cosmic pyrokinesis,’ that is, a cosmic fire. This fire does not require oxygen and describes its powers directly from cosmic energy. Jean Grey had the ability to burn her opponents at a molecular, and even sub-atomic level by using this fire, thus leaving behind no ashes. Jean Grey’s cosmic fire usually took the shape of a large Phoenix, and she regulated the use of this fire. She had total control over the level of harm caused due to the fire, and only reserved it for extreme occasions.
In her Phoenix form, Jean Grey had telekinetic sensitivity that enabled her to study the textures of various objects and even examine them at a molecular level. She could also move around these objects by using ‘pyro-telekinesis’ that is, increasing the heat around an object by using fire to move it around. Jean could also manipulate weather, create firestorms, generate electricity, control the air by aerokinesis, and even control the earth and all earthly elements such as rock and sand.
She was quite an invincible being, and had regenerative healing properties to heal herself in case of any injuries. By using her phoenix force, Jean was an immortal being who could return from the dead by transferring her powers to another being and then later return to life. However, she was not immune to aging, illnesses, and other such human ailments; she could die as a result of these natural causes. Nevertheless, she always returned from the dead since her powers could exist in a different body until she revives herself and gets them back.
Conclusion
Jean Grey is one of the most formidable mutants to ever exist, and she was one of the core members of the X-Men. Undoubtedly, she is one of the most interesting X-Men out there, and her character has gained quite a lot of popularity over the years. She has been included in various X-Men timelines across centuries, and her life has been one hell of a roller coaster ride!