While the X-Men franchise knows its way around a space opera, there aren't many obvious similarities between it and the Mass Effect series. However, some parallels can be drawn between the two franchises. Mass Effect introduces a few imposing anti-heroes who become steadfast allies throughout the original trilogy. It also presents human biotics, who have telekinetic powers similar to X-Men like Jean Grey, thus sharing a similar plight to some of Marvel's mutants.
Those similarities converge in one character, the biotic powerhouse Jack. Jack's volatile personality and troubled past make her the character most similar to Wolverine. Her feud with Miranda Lawson is practically a gender-swapped version of Wolverine's rivalry with Cyclops, especially if the player's choices create a love triangle between them and Commander Shepard. However, Wolverine and Jack share similarities beyond their roles as their team's resident rebels.
Jack Is Mass Effect's Wolverine
Jack fulfills a similar role to Wolverine in Commander Shepard's suicide squad. She's the team's resident loose cannon -- a loner with an earned distrust of authority. Even though she doesn't have razor-sharp claws jutting from her fists, Jack is an even edgier character than Wolverine has ever been. When Professor Xavier recruited Wolverine to the X-Men in the comics, he was working for the Canadian government. When Shepard recruits Jack, she's being held in a supermax prison in outer space for a litany of crimes she proudly committed.
Wolverine stood out as an iconoclast on a team of traditionally heroic characters like Nightcrawler, in addition to his tension with Cyclops. Jack is arguably the most morally compromised character in a group that includes an assassin and a mad scientist who committed genocide. Both characters' antisocial attitudes come from an honest place that makes them sympathetic. They were made into weapons by rogue scientists. In Jack's case, she was tortured and experimented on as a child by a breakaway faction of Cerberus, the group that sponsors Shepard's resurrection and mission. It makes forging a bond, or even pursuing a romance, with Jack feel like an achievement on the player's part, given her understandable cynicism.
Wolverine and Jack Undertook the Same Career Move
Like Wolverine, Jack proved that she had the heart of a hero underneath her gruff exterior when she helped Shepard stop the Collectors in Mass Effect 2's legendary suicide mission. She can play a pivotal role if players make the correct choice to have her project a biotic field during a crucial point in the mission. Jack is one of only three characters that can survive in that role. If Jack is alive at the end of the suicide mission, she won't be part of Shepard's squad in Mass Effect 3, but she isn't completely absent from the game.
Shepard can run into their old squad mate and love interest, depending on how they played their cards in the previous game, early in Mass Effect 3. Responding to a distress signal from Grissom Academy, a school that trains young biotics, Shepard and their squad have to rescue the school's students and faculty from an assault by a fully heel-turned Cerberus. Midway through the mission, Shepard and crew are shocked to find Jack defending the students. It turns out that Jack became a teacher at the academy after Shepard's team disbanded following the suicide mission. It's a shocking move, but one that also comes from Wolverine's playbook.
Jack's Teaching Career Could Have an Impact on Her Mass Effect Future
Wolverine has been a teacher in X-Men stories across X-Men media, most memorably in X-Men: Evolution, wherein most of the team were recast as high school students. The story that has the most in common with Jack's surprising career move came in the comics, specifically writer Jason Aaron's run of Wolverine and the X-Men. Aaron, working with artists including Chris Bachalo and Nick Bradshaw, cast Wolverine as the Headmaster of the Jean Grey School following his falling out with a radicalized Cyclops following the "Schism" storyline.
Wolverine being the last person who should lead a school full of super-powered children was a running joke in Wolverine and the X-Men, but the series ultimately came down on the side of Wolverine being a good influence on his students. Mass Effect 3 took the same stance on Jack working at Grissom Academy. Like Wolverine, Jack's dark past actually makes her the perfect person to protect her students. With her return being a possibility in the upcoming sequel, Mass Effect developer BioWare could make her the leader of Grissom Academy, among other matronly roles that would have been unthinkable when she was introduced. It's one last cue she can take from an iconic X-Man.