Alongside the Avengers, the X-Men are one of Marvel’s most recognizable superhero teams. The team was formed by Charles Xavier (a.k.a. Professor X) and is composed primarily of mutants (humans who were born with a genetic trait called the X-gene). The X-gene causes you to develop superhero powers, which typically manifest around puberty. These powers take a wide variety of forms, such as telekinesis, reality manipulation, magnetism, or weather manipulation, to name a few.
Due to their differences from the majority of humanity, mutants faced much discrimination and prejudice. Society fears what it doesn’t understand, hence, the mutants’ existence was a constant fight for justice and acceptance. Seeing this, Professor X created a school for mutant children, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. The school produced many X-Men recruits. The X-Men team was meant to encourage peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans, by forging mutants into defenders of the humanity.
Over the years, many extremely powerful mutants enjoyed stints as X-Men. The mutants on this list are nearly all Omega-level mutants. These are mutants whose dominant power, basically, has no known limit. With all of these mutants being the most powerful mutants of their power types, who is the most powerful comes down to which powers are most effective. For example, a power like reality manipulation can far exceed the power of weather manipulation. Here are the ten most powerful X-Men, ranked from least powerful to most powerful,
Hope Summers is an Omega-level mutant who boasts power manipulation. Summers is the adoptive daughter of Cable, who raised her in the future to protect her. Upon her homecoming to the present day, Summers joined the X-Men. After the mutant state of Krakoa was created, Summers became one of the Five—a group of five X-Men who used their combined powers to resurrect mutants who had been killed.
Summers’ power manipulation means that she can copy the powers of any nearby mutant. The mutant whose powers she copies, does not feel any adverse effect when she copies them. She also has the ability to regulate other mutants’ powers and bring them to an optimal level. Summers can also track mutants and activate their powers for them. While this certainly gives Summers a wide range of powers, it also gives a great deal of weakness. Her power mimicry is temporary, impacted by distance, and limited solely to mutants. Hence, if her time limit is up or no mutants are around at the moment, she becomes very vulnerable.
Robert Drake (a.k.a. Ice Man) is an Omega-level mutant with the power of temperature manipulation. As a young boy, Drake was recruited to Xavier’s school and trained by Professor X. He became one of the founding members of the X-Men and served alongside some of the Earth’s mightiest heroes since he was just a boy. He has also been affiliated with X-Factor, Defenders, Champions, Marauders, and The Fantastic Four.
His temperature manipulation powers give him the ability to lower both his internal and external body temperature to extreme levels. He can also manipulate and control ice, snow, and cold temperatures. This means Drake can transform water or moisture molecules into ice, thus, allowing him to construct almost anything he desires out of ice. He can also turn himself into complete ice and reform after being shattered. Drake is very powerful, but, at the same time, when other mutants can manipulate metal, magnetism, energy, and reality—his ice isn’t much of a match to them.
Professor X is the only mutant on this list who isn’t actually Omega-level. However, he still deserves a place as he is, by far, one of the most powerful telepaths. He attained his level of power through training and even found ways to significantly enhance his powers through Cerebra. He has one of the greatest minds in the Marvel universe and is among the most powerful telepaths in the world.
On his own, Professor X can project his thoughts into the minds other within a 250 mile radius. With Cerebra, he can connect to every single mind on the planet. He can create telepathic illusions, link his mind to others, exert mind control, and engage in mind possession and alteration. While his telepathic powers are incredible, he does still lack the sheer raw power that Omega telepaths, such as Jean Grey, exhibit. He also doesn’t boast significant telekinetic powers, as most other telepaths do. Through relentless practice and enhancers, though, he still manages to come very close in telepathic power to the Omegas.
Ororo Munroe (a.k.a. Storm) is an Omega-level mutant with weather manipulation abilities. Storm can control all forms of weather and can manipulate Earth’s ecosystems, as well extraterrestrial ecosystems. She can modify temperature, generate tornados or blizzards, manipulate atmospheric pressure, and has even demonstrated control over cosmic storms, oceans currents, and electromagnetic fields. However, Storm does have multiple weaknesses, including claustrophobia, emotional suppression, and sensitivity to nature.
Due to being buried in rubble when she was a child (after a plane crashed into her home and killed her parents), Storm has a very debilitating fear of closed spaces. While she works to conquer this fear, it can, at times, render her completely helpless. Meanwhile, her sensitivity to nature, means she often refrains from using her powers in a way that goes against the natural order of things. Storm also fears the damage she can do if she loses control of her emotions, causing her to suppress certain feelings that could enhance her powers. In short, Storm often puts limits on her own powers that keep her from unleashing them to their fullest extent.
Erik Lehnsherr is an Omega-level mutant with the power to create and control magnetic fields. Magneto starts off as a villain, who believes that mutants are superior to humans and should conquer the world. However, his story arc evolves after it was revealed he was a Holocaust survivor, who developed his extreme views out a desire to protect mutants from suffering a similar fate. He has since become more of an anti-hero and did even serve as a member of the X-Men at times.
Magneto is extremely powerful, with his control over all forms of magnetism, also giving him the power to control and manipulate all forms of metal. He can manipulate the electromagnetic field of an entire planet, form a nearly impenetrable magnetic force field around himself, destroy both metal and non-metal objects with electromagnetic pulses, manipulate matter, fly, and turn off gravity by reversing the polarity of earth’s magnetic field. In short, there is little he can’t do. Still, his powers are limited to metal and magnetic manipulation. In the face of mutants who can control reality itself, his magnetic powers simply aren’t enough.
David Haller (a.k.a. Legion) is the estranged son of Professor X, as well as an Omega-level mutant who was occasionally affiliated with the X-Men. What makes Legion an especially unique and powerful mutant, is that he doesn’t boast just one power. Haller was a young boy when his home was attacked by terrorists and his step-father killed before his eyes. The trauma was a catalyst for his mutant powers, causing Legion to incinerate the minds of the terrorists and accidentally absorb the mind of the terrorist leader. Legion was rendered catatonic for years and when he recovered, his psyche had been fractured into multiple personalities, each personality manifesting a different mutant superpower.
In other words, Legion can spontaneously create mutations with various powers and then creates a persona to govern every new mutation he creates. He has stated he has 200 Omega-level split personalities within him. His personalities have boasted telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, time manipulation, super strength, spirit absorption, postmortem power absorption, hypnotism, flight, and nearly every other power one can think of. Legion basically has unlimited abilities. At the same time, his personality disorder makes it harder for him to exercise control over all his personalities and powers and to use them in conjunction with one another.
Quentin Quire (a.k.a. Kid Omega) is an Omega-level telepath whose telepathic powers are second only to Jean Grey. Kid Omega was a student of the Xavier Institute, though he often debated the policies and beliefs of Professor X. He always had a rebel streak and even once attacked Professor X and led his fellow students on a riot against humans. However, he did become an X-Man, albeit a reluctant one, and later a member of the West Coast Avengers.
As an Omega-level mutant, Kid Omega can read and communicate with other minds across vast distances, utilize mind control, mentally manipulate others, mask his presence from detection, create illusions, make himself appear invisible, induce paralysis, create worlds within his mind, and utilize psionic weapons. He also has telekinesis skills on top of his telepathy which give him such powers as flight and force field conjuring. It has been suggested he will one day act as avatar of the Phoenix Force and come into his full powers. For now, though, mutants like Jean Grey boast considerably more power than Kid Omega.
Gabriel Summers (a.k.a. Vulcan) is an Omega-level mutant with the power of energy manipulation. Summers is the younger brother of Cyclops and Havok. Summers has an interesting history, being an unborn baby when his family was abducted by the Shi’ar. His mother, Katherine, was killed and Summers was removed from her body as a fetus and placed in an incubator accelerator, which propelled him into adolescence. He was sent back to Earth with little memory of his origins and was discovered by Professor X. He became an X-Men, but after nearly dying and being expelled into space, he returned to Earth as one of the X-Men’s greatest enemies.
Vulcan’s energy manipulation means that he can control, manipulate, and absorb extreme amounts of energy. The level of his power far surpasses his brother, Havok, despite both of them having similar abilities. He can absorb just about any kind of energy and can emit energy in the form of heat, light, electricity, and force from his hands and eyes. Meanwhile, he can also use his powers to fly, create constructs out energy, detect energy, and temporarily suppress the powers of others. There are very few mutants who can top his ability to manipulate every form of energy as he sees fit.
Franklin Richards is the son of Reed and Sue Richards, and was once an Omega-level mutant with reality manipulation powers. Of course, his status as an Omega-level mutant is a bit iffy, after it was revealed he wasn’t a mutant, after all. Instead, he used his reality manipulation to make it seem as if he had the X-gene, though he didn’t actually have it. Still, if he was a mutant, his reality manipulation powers would be greater than that of any other mutant. Also, he’s still an X-Men, so that gives him a place on this list either way.
Richards is easily one of the most powerful characters in the entire Marvel universe. Reality manipulation is one of the strongest skills one can have and he has it to a much greater extent than others. He has created entire universes, restarted the multiverse, and can make nearly any thought in his head come to fruition. Even cosmic entities such as Galactus and Eternity have thought Richards’ power to be comparable to their own. Sadly, Richards lost his powers completely while restarting the multiverse. He may get them back, but for now, the fact that his powers can disappear keep him from being the most powerful X-Man of all time.
Jean Grey, an Omega-level telepathic mutant and avatar of the Phoenix Force, is the most powerful X-Man. Even before she was merged with the Phoenix Force, she was an incredibly powerful mutant. Her powers were ignited when she was just a girl, after she experienced the trauma of watching her friend die. She linked her mind with her friend, nearly dying in the process, too, and becoming comatose. Her parents took her to Charles Xavier, who helped her recover and mentally blocked her telepathic powers until she could control them. As a teenager, he recruited her to be an X-Man and she took on the moniker Marvel Girl.
Grey is an Omega-level telepath, as well as an immensely powerful telekinetic, empath, and psionic. Among her powers, she can read thoughts and project her own thoughts, interact with, and manipulate the minds of both humans and animals across a great distance. She can restore, destroy, or implant memories in others, cloak her presence, cloak other mutants to conceal their presence, and create telepathic illusions. Grey can also manifest her telekinesis as a psychic firebird, generate force fields, manipulate matter, and control and manipulate the feelings and emotions of others.
When acting as the avatar of the cosmic entity, the Phoenix Force, Grey is the most powerful of all abstract entities, second only to the One-Above-All. With or without the Phoenix Force, there is virtually no limit to Grey’s power. Additionally, her unique combination of multiple powers make her nearly unstoppable to even the most powerful of Omega-level mutants.
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Rachel Ulatowski is a Freelance Writer, blogger, and aspiring author. As a Freelancer Writer she hopes to give readers the same comfort and enjoyment that she finds in all things nerdy and noteworthy, as a blogger she enjoys snarking on YouTubers and reality stars, and as a future novelist she hopes to raise awareness for child abuse through literature.
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