Throughout the 1990s, Jubilee was the future of the X-Men. In an era when Marvel’s mutants were defined by chiseled physiques and convoluted storylines, the teenage Jubilation Lee was the embodiment of the youthful ambition and self-discovery that defined the team in its earliest days. Although she was soon relegated to teenage X-Men team Generation X, Jubilee used her power to create fireworks of explosive plasma to hold her own against some of the toughest villains in the Marvel Universe.
While Jubilee has grown up a lot since then, she still stands at the forefront of her generation of mutants as one of its spiritual leaders. And in one of Marvel’s most hopeful futures and one of its most heartbreaking, Jubilee fulfills the promise implicit in her experience to become the leader of two very different types of X-Men who carry on Xavier’s dream for a better world in their own ways.
Jubilee and the MC2 Universe's X-People
Although it’s now most famous for being the homeworld of May “Mayday” Parker’s Spider-Girl, the MC2 Universe offered a fairly optimistic view of Marvel’s future, ostensibly based on the continuity of the late ‘90s. Although mutants were accepted more widely after the modern X-Men died saving the Earth, an adult Jubilee, now a former Avenger, formed the X-People to help guide the next generation of mutants.
Although this Jubilee and her X-People never had a series of their own, they popped up around the MC2 Universe in various roles after their debut in Tom DeFalco and Ron Lim’s J2 #1. Although Jubilee mentored a relatively small group of mutants, they still took in young mutants and worked with other heroes like J2, the son of Cain Marko’s Juggernaut.
Jubilee and the Future X-Men of Battle of the Atom
While the original teenage X-Men were trapped in the present day, two dueling teams of X-Men from the future traveled to the present to deal with the past X-Men in 2013’s “Battle of the Atom” crossover event. As revealed in Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness’ Wolverine and the X-Men #36, Jubilee led one of these futuristic squads as the new Wolverine.
Like her then-modern counterpart, this Jubilee was still a vampire, but she also wielded three Wolverine-esque claws made out of energy. Far from the naïve hero she started out as, this Jubilee was a pragmatist with plans for every occasion, an approach likely forged by this timeline's mutant tragedies, like the assassination of U.S. President-Elect Dazzler. Despite the presence of her adult son Shogo as an armored hero on the team, Jubilee perished while in the past during a Sentinel attack in X-Men: Battle of the Atom #2, by Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic and Giuseppe Camuncoli.
While the futures of these timelines are quite different, they both show Jubilee embracing her role as a leader with a practical approach that’s undoubtedly influenced by her teenage adventures with Wolverine and the X-Men.