Jean Grey has always been one of the most powerful characters in Marvel Comics. Already starting life as an Omega-Level mutant, her power skyrocketed to cosmic levels when she merged with the Phoenix Force. While most people are familiar with Jean’s powers like telepathy, telekinesis, resurrection, and pyrokinesis, there are plenty of other abilities that are part of Jean’s arsenal. There have been countless times when writers seem to make up new powers on the fly for Jean, only never or rarely to use them again. Whether through her natural mutant abilities or her connection to the Phoenix Force, Jean has developed one of the longest list of superpowers of any X-Man.
These are the superpowers of Jean Grey that are so underused and such deep cuts into X-Men lore that even many Marvel writers forget they exist and are rarely seen in recent comics.
5) Animal Communication
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Although Aquaman is the best-known hero who can telepathically communicate with animals, Jean Grey has shown similar abilities in the past. One of the few instances where she exercised this ability is in Classic X-Men #13, when she answers a call for help from a family of dolphins being attacked by a shark. Given that Jean is the most powerful telepath in the universe, it’s not too big a stretch to say that she would be able to talk to animals through her mental powers. Still, this is one of the only instances of Jean using this power, and no recent writer has referenced its existence.
4) Telepathic Camouflage
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With her virtually limitless power, Jean Grey rarely uses her powers subtly. However, when the X-Men need to go on a stealth mission, Jean has the perfect ability to help her and her teammates avoid detection. First introduced in Uncanny X-Men #333, Jean used her telepathy to disguise herself and Gambit as government agents so that they could sneak into the Pentagon and learn Bastion’s evil plans. Jean’s telepathic camouflage allows her to alter people’s perception of her, making her either invisible or appear as someone else. As seen here, she can use this ability to camouflage others as well. She would use this power again in All-New X-Men #13 to infiltrate another secret lair, but otherwise this power is mostly forgotten and unused.
3) Telekinetic Weapons
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Weapons created using psionic energy are the trademark tools of the telepathic Psylocke. Given Jean’s own telekinetic might, it was only natural that after being trained by Psylocke, she would also learn to manifest her own energy constructs and weapons. One of the only examples of Jean putting this skill into practice is in Jean Grey #4, when she manifested a hammer to fight alongside Thor against a horde of monsters. However, given Jean’s lack of formal training wielding melee weapons effectively in combat, she barely ever uses this power despite its near-unlimited potential. The writers also don’t seem too keen on having her expand her already immense skill set by making her a weapons master as well.
2) Psychometry
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Jean Grey will often use her telepathy to pull information out of people’s minds, but sometimes she can pull off the same effect with inanimate objects. Psychometry is the ability to gain information on an object or environment’s past just by being close to it. Jean first displayed this power in Uncanny X-Men #54 when, after Havok was kidnapped, she scanned a room for lingering mind patterns to discern who had taken him and where they had gone. This power gives Jean even greater detective skills, and she used it again in X-Men #71 to erase any psychometric traces of Bastion. Still, it’s a very situational power that most X-Men writers generally ignore.
1) Power Negation
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Jean Grey’s most overpowered but underused ability is that she can put up psychic inhibitors inside people’s heads to switch off their superpowers. This ability first appeared in X-Men Unlimited #27, when she suppressed the hero Thunderbird’s pyrokinetic abilities as they were getting out of control. She would use this power again in X-Men: The Search for Cyclops #4 to exorcise Apocalypse from Cyclops’ body. Despite being shown to be strong enough to shut down even Apocalypse’s powers, Jean rarely ever uses her power negation abilities. This is probably for the best because if writers constantly had her immediately turn off villains’ powers to make them helpless, her stories would get boring pretty quickly — and they probably would have to kill her off again.
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