The X-Men member Jubilee is easily one of Marvel’s most underrated superheroes, but she has the potential to be one of the continuity’s most dangerous mutants.
Jubilee was introduced to the X-Men comics in 1989 and eventually joined their ranks, often working alongside Wolverine, who served as her mentor. Jubilee’s seemingly-harmless mutant powers are often the subject of mockery by both X-Men fans and X-Men characters in-universe, but they’re far more powerful than they seem. Jubilee fires energy blasts from her hands, typically referred to as “fireworks” or “pafs” (a common onomatopoeia for the ability), but this understates their true nature. Jubilee’s mutant power is control over energy on a sub-atomic level, meaning that her “fireworks,” which she has immunity to and control over, could take the form of devastating nuclear explosions if she chooses. Despite this, Jubilee’s powers are typically used to simply blind, stun, or mildly injure her enemies, and anything more powerful is rarely shown in the comics. One comic though definitively proved Jubilee’s powers are actually badass.
In issue 74 of Wolverine, by Larry Hama and Jim Fern, Jubilee and Wolverine are trapped in a facility filled with lethal, mutant-hunting, Sentinel robots, forcing them to face the onslaught together. While Wolverine, unsurprisingly, cuts through the automatons, Jubilee fires uncommonly powerful energy blasts at them, disabling numerous Sentinels. When one Sentinel, who has achieved sapience, pleads not to be destroyed, Jubilee can’t bring herself to finish it off. Later in the issue, Jubilee confronts her parents’ murderers, and similarly can’t bring herself to kill them. What both instances prove is that Jubilee is constantly suppressing her powers, not wanting to hurt others.
Sentinels are extremely dangerous enemies of the X-Men (even the first sentinel was strong enough to takeout Captain America), having been designed to capture or kill them without remorse, yet Jubilee refused to finish off a unit that posed a threat to all mutants and humans because it showed genuine fear of being destroyed. Jubilee would have been more than justified in killing the two mobsters who murdered her parents, with Wolverine even noting that she could easily get away with it by causing miniature detonations in both of their brains, making them each appear to have died of a stroke. For all the pain they caused her, Jubilee refuses to use lethal force yet again and simply incapacitates them without using her powers. The issue ends with Jubilee asking if she’s weak for refusing to kill, to which Wolverine, who often uses lethal force against his enemies, says that her restraint is actually what makes her strong, and strong enough to save the world at that.
Ultimately, it’s Jubilee’s compassion for life that led the damaged Sentinel to abandon its world-threatening plot. Jubilee may be the most underappreciated member of the X-Men, but her undying kindness makes her one of Marvel’s best superheroes.
