From being killed and resurrected over and over again, to travelling through time millennia in the future as well as years in the past, Jean Grey has had a particularly complicated life throughout her time within and without the X-Men. However, while Jean has been through quite a bit during her tenure as an X-Men, there are perhaps no other mutants on the planet more equipped to deal with the events of her life (lives).
As one of the fourteen confirmed Omega-level mutants in existence after Jonathan Hickman’s reintroduction to the iconic team, Jean is one of the most capable telepaths and mutants that the world has ever known.
10 Her Powers Awakened When She Watched Her Friend Die
Like many young mutants throughout the course of Marvel comics history, Jean Grey would manifest her powers around the age of adolescence, during a very traumatic period. When Jean was just ten years old, she was playing with her best friend, Annie Richardson, when tragedy struck. Young Annie was struck by a car and died very shortly afterward. Not only did Jean have to live through the trauma of watching her best friend die before her eyes, but as this happened, Jean’s abilities manifested and she was forced to feel every emotion that Annie felt as she lay dying on the street.
9 Professor X Used Young Jean To Help Calibrate Cerebro
After the death of her best friend, Annie, Jean fell into a deep depression and her parents began sending her to a psychologist. While the psychologist was of very little help, she did recommend that her parents schedule an appointment with Professor Charles Xavier.
Unbeknownst to her parents, Charles would explain Jean’s abilities to her and begin working to develop and control them. When she turned thirteen Charles would teach her how to levitate and control objects with her mind when she developed telekinesis. He would even use the young girl when he began calibrating Cerebro.
8 She Was The First Student Enrolled In Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters
Though Charles had long since had the idea to create a school, Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters, as a front for teaching young mutants to not only harness their powers, but to use them for the good of the world, and had long since been working with Jean, his first student, he had yet to officially create the school. While Charles was off to a good start with the work that he was doing with Jean, he needed at least a few more students before he could officially make his first class.
7 Her Connection To Scott Summers
It’s no secret that Jean Grey and Scott Summers have a very long and complicated history, however, their story actually begins a long time before any casual fans may realize. During one of her early sessions with Charles and Cerebro, before Charles had even founded his school, Jean psychically reached out to the young orphaned Scott in the form of a phoenix.
While their lives would eventually become infinitely complicated throughout the course of their relationship, the first innocent encounter is very telling of the relationship they would eventually share.
6 Time Displaced Leader
After Cyclops had killed Professor X, Beast decided to travel back in time in order to bring the past versions of the original X-Men to the present in order to, hopefully, fix everything that had gone so lethally off-track. This time-traveling adventure had some very unintended complications, however. First off, after seeing the man that Cyclops would eventually become, the rest of the original X-Men team became disgusted with their leader and eventually elected Jean to take his place as their leader. Beyond that, because Professor X was not present, the mental blocks surrounding Jean’s telekinesis would drop allowing her access to them a year earlier than she would have otherwise.
5 Empathetic Abilities
Though Jean is commonly known as one of the most powerful telepaths in the Marvel universe, one of only three Omega-level telepaths/telekinetics, an ability that is often overlooked when it comes to Jean is her immense empathic capabilities.
Jean is not only able to very easily understand the emotions of those around her, but should she choose to, she can control these emotions. In fact, it is because of her empathetic abilities more than anything else that the Phoenix Force has chosen Jean as its rightful human host.
4 The Phoenix Force Treatment
While the Phoenix Force has been a source of constant anguish for Jean, Scott, and the rest of the X-Men, it isn’t an inherently good or bad force. The Phoenix Force is simply the multiversal entity responsible for all life within the multiverse. This means that the Phoenix Force is responsible for creating life as much as it is responsible for destroying it. Though the Phoenix Force has often been a massive burden on Jean, it has also helped her to fully realize the potential of all of her vast powers. Even after it’s been expelled from her body.
3 Proposing To Scott
From the very beginning of their relationship, Scott had never been the most telling when it came to his feelings for Jean. While he cared about her immensely, he had a hard time when it came to being able to relay these feelings to her in any meaningful way.
Not only was Scott afraid of hurting her with his optic blasts, but he was afraid of hurting anyone that he developed a close relationship with. However, after years of working together as X-Men, Jean would propose to Scott on Thanksgiving day and the happy couple would eventually be married.
2 Redd And Slym Dayspring
Not even able to take a break on their honeymoon, the consciousnesses of both Jean and Scott would be transported two-thousand years in the future by an aging Rachel Summers. While their consciousnesses would inhabit bodies cloned from their descendants, Jean and Scott had been brought to the future for a purpose. Rachel had dropped them at a time right before a young Nathan Summer (soon-to-be Cable) would appear in the future after first contracting the techno-organic virus. Under the guise of Redd and Slym Dayspring, Jean and Scott would help to raise their young son who was constantly fighting back against the techno-organic virus’ progression.
1 Numerous Deaths (And Resurrections)
While it is very commonplace for characters in comics to die and be resurrected throughout the course of their long histories, there is perhaps no character more famous for this feat than Jean Grey. Thanks to her connection to the Phoenix Force, Jean is seemingly unkillable. Though she has been taken out time and time again, there will likely never be a death of Jean Grey that isn’t swiftly followed up by her subsequent resurrection. But hey, being the perfect host for the Phoenix Force has to come with at least a few perks for all the trouble that it’s caused her.