Characters / Marvel Comics: Jean Grey

6 Following

• Phoenix: The Untold Story (1984)
• The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1994)
• Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1996)
• X-Men: Phoenix Endsong (2005)
• X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (2008)
• Marvel Girl (2011)
• Jean Grey (2017)
• X-Men: Red (2018)
• Jean Grey (2023)
• Phoenix (2024)

• Alias
• Uncanny X-Men
• X-Factor Vol. 1
• X-Men
• New X-Men
• All-New X-Men
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Extraordinary X-Men
• X-Men: Blue
• X-Men (2019)

• The Dark Phoenix Saga
• Inferno (1988)
• Onslaught
• Avengers vs. X-Men
• Battle of the Atom
• The Trial of Jean Grey
• Phoenix Resurrection
• Judgment Day (Marvel Comics)

• Marvel Anime: X-Men (2011): Voiced by Yurika Hino in Japanese and Jennifer Hale in English.

• X-Men Film Series
  • Portrayed by Famke Janssen:
    • X-Men 1 (2000)
    • X2: X-Men United (2003)
    • X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) — Haley Ramm as a child.
    • The Wolverine (2013)
    • X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
  • Portrayed by Sophie Turner:
    • X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
    • Dark Phoenix (2019) — Summer Fontana as a child.

• The Marvel Super Heroes (1966) (Guest Star)
• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1983) (cameo)
• X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-1997): Voiced by Catherine Disher.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1994-1998) (Guest Star): Voiced by Catherine Disher.
• Fantastic Four: The Animated Series (1994) (cameo)
• X-Men: Evolution (2000-2003): Voiced by Venus Terzo.
• Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) (2009): Voiced by Jennifer Hale.
• The Super Hero Squad Show (2009-2011): Voiced by Hynden Walch.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures (2009-2012): Voiced by Venus Terzo.
• X-Men '97 (2024-): Voiced by Jennifer Hale.

• X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants (1990): Appears as playable hero.
• X-Men (1993): Appears as an Assist Character.
• X-Men: Mutant Academy (2000): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Catherine Disher.
• X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 (2001): Appears as a playable hero.
• X-Men: Next Dimension (2002): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Jenette Goldstein.
• X-Men Legends (2004) and X-Men Legends II : Rise of Apocalypse (2005): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Leigh-Allyn Baker.
• X-Men: The Official Game (2006): Voiced by Katherine Morgan.
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006): Appears as an NPC. Voiced by Sarah Waits.
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Molly Hagan.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Jennifer Hale.
• Super Hero Squad Online (2011-present): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Tara Strong.
• Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth (2012): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Laura Bailey.
• Marvel: Avengers Alliance (2012-2016): Appeared as a recruitable playable hero.
• LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (2013): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Laura Bailey.
• Marvel Heroes (2013-2017): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by April Stewart.
• Marvel Future Fight (2015-Present): Appears as a playable hero.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (2019): Appears as a playable hero through DLC. Voiced by Jennifer Hale.
• Marvel Rivals (2025): Appears as a playable hero in Season 3. Voiced by Crystal Lee.
• Marvel Cosmic Invasion (2025): Appears as a playable hero. Voiced by Jennifer Hale.

• The Ace: Jean is brilliant, and insanely powerful. She’s the best telepath in the world with a cosmic entity as her other half. And even without that she can regular kick the asses of gods like Nightmare. Charles Xavier has even called her a “Prodigy beyond imagining.”
• Action Mom: Oddly enough Jean fits this despite never having actually carried a child, or, technically, formally adopted one (the situation with Cable is complicated beyond belief). All her offspring, Rachel, Cable, and X-Man are from alternate universes or timelines (although Cable was actually born in the present, but he had to be sent to the future as mentioned above. Oh, and his mom is Jean's clone). That said, she considers all of them to be her children, despite having got off to a rocky start with Rachel due to her own traumas (Phoenix related issues, discomfort with memories of being married to Scott from Maddy Pryor, and feeling like the universe is railroading her into marrying him, which she took out on Rachel and immediately regretted).
• All-Loving Heroine:
  • Most of the time, and particularly since her return in Phoenix Resurrection, with the emphasis of X-Men: Red (where she leads the titular team against Cassandra Nova) being on the power of compassion. Indeed, she's at least a rival for Superman or Wonder Woman in this department. However, like them, as she also reminds people, 'compassionate' most definitely does not mean either 'weak' or 'stupid'.
  • While her clone Madelyne Pryor has deeply resented Jean, Jean has generally responded by trying to forgive and spare her. Their last confrontation, which turned out to be Maddy trying to get at Jean's memories of raising Cable, led to Jean incredulously saying that all she had to do was ask, and sharing them freely.
• Almighty Mom: She's just about the only person with any control whatsoever over Nate Grey - or at least, the only one he's really willing to listen to for more than 10 seconds when he's in a real mood. While this has its limits, it's been exploited in the past by Mystique (granted, he was disoriented at the time and found out in short order - he was not pleased). She also has more influence over Cable than anyone else does, which is worth noting, again, since Cable - like his little brother - is very much someone to act unilaterally on a grand scale. She has acted as a Morality Chain for them both, just as she has for their father.
• Always Second Best
  • Without telepathy, her telekinesis has been consistently trumped by the invisible force fields of Susan Richards. Luckily for Jean they're usually on the same side
  • With telepathy, Jean still got her clock cleaned by Moondragon, and while Moondragon is no longer evil, whose side she's on is often an open question. Even with the Phoenix it's doubtful if Grey can do anything if Moondragon has the mind gem short of accessing the White Hot Room, if somehow allowed to. The reconfigured mind stone doesn't favor Moondragon, but Phoenix had become more open to dating outside the Grey family by then too.
• Anti-Hero: She's this in the new X-Force run, though she eventually leaves the team after Beast crosses a line.
• invokedAngst? What Angst?: Jean Grey seems totally fine about her mother, father, niece, nephew, aunts, uncles, and cousins all being mass murdered while she was gone - though considering that as the White Phoenix of the Crown, she was seen ushering them into the White Hot Room, and that she has a very unique perspective on death, perhaps this isn't so surprising.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: The Phoenix, as avatar of Phoenix Force. Her costume as Phoenix, Dark Phoenix, and White Phoenix also has the golden firebird emblem on her chest.
• Apocalypse Maiden: As Dark Phoenix. In The Dark Phoenix Saga, the Phoenix Force, pretending to be Jean, becomes so powerful that she loses control and becomes the Dark Phoenix, risking the destruction of the universe. She eventually makes a Heroic Sacrifice to end the threat. It gets retconned back and forth all the time whether it was actually Jean or the Phoenix Force pretending to be Jean who did this, but it fits the trope either way. In at least one What If? (Marvel Comics) issue, the Heroic Sacrifice doesn't happen, and Dark Phoenix does destroy the universe.
• Arch-Enemy: If the Shi'ar Empire had their way, everyone genetically related to Jean Grey would have been purged years ago.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the White Hot Room after her physical death by Xorn in New X-Men, to gather fragments of the Phoenix Force. Immortal X-Men states that this will always happen to Jean when she permanently dies; she just pops off to the White Hot Room to renew herself.
• Back from the Dead: Once... for one quite permanent example.
  • For not-so-permanent examples, she has undergone this repeatedly in Phoenix Endsong (See Death Is Cheap below for details). But each time she's resurrected, it's always Came Back Wrong, so she finally decides that she’s not yet ready to come back to life, instead returning to the White Hot Room to continue gathering the fragments of Phoenix Force.
  • Finally, she returns for good in Phoenix Resurrection.
• Battle Couple: With Cyclops, combining his optic blasts with her potent psychic abilities. Many stories featured them charging into battle together, hand-in-hand, and blasting their way through opponents.
• Because Destiny Says So: Classic X-Men has a pretty creepy moment when it's suggested Jean's entire life was manipulated so she'd wind up in the right position to be approached by the Phoenix Force.
• Been There, Shaped History: X-Men: First Class has a story claiming it's Jean who inspired Black Widow's famous Spy Catsuit look.
• Best Friend: She and Ororo Monroe are very close, and are on a level of understanding with one another unlike any other of their fellow X-men.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • In early days she had to choose between Angel (Betty) and Cyclops (Veronica). And later Cyclops became her Betty while Wolverine became her Veronica - though aside from some attraction, it was Tony Stark who perhaps best summed up Logan's role in that context, describing him as "Jean's therapy animal."
  • She was briefly the Betty to Psylocke's Veronica for Cyclops' Archie in the brief period of time they had a Love Triangle, with Betsy playing up her sex appeal to seduce Scott while he was dating Jean.
  • She later become the Betty for Cyclops while Emma Frost is the Veronica. Emma is gloomily aware that she will always come second to Jean in Scott's eyes, no matter how fond he is of her. The two more or less get on these days, though.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's sweet, motherly and level-headed, practically overflowing with compassion. Unless you wrong her or her loved ones seriously. Then, you're in for a world of psychic pain.
• Big Good: Like her husband, she is The Paragon of mutantkind to whom everybody looks up, also post-mortem. Her teenaged self finds it alternately intimidating and irritating, on the grounds that people tend to see either The Paragon or the Apocalypse Maiden and don't bother to look further - this irritation extends to when adult Jean's ghost (understandably annoyed at being stuck as a ghost) starts haunting her, though the two come to an accommodation and get on just fine once adult Jean has her own body again (and teen Jean bullied the Phoenix into resurrecting her).
• Blessed with Suck: She used to have great difficulty controlling her powers. Her telekinesis wasn't so bad, but her telepathy was a huge hassle because she couldn't shut it off. It went From Bad to Worse when she became the host of the Phoenix — she had even more power, but less control since the Phoenix isn't always content to stay in the passenger's seat.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: Jean doesn't like using Betsy's tricks, but Braddock's been in Grey's head so often that Jean found herself developing Betsy's signature telepathic knife, and calling it the "focused totality of my psychic powers!"
• Brainwashed: Has been a victim of Mind Control several times and can inflict this herself if particularly pissed (or possessed by the Dark Phoenix).
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Her buxomness used to be emphasized during the days she worked as a model, which is why her sleazy agent liked her to work as a swimsuit model. He once described her as a "tasty package of goodies". Logan also wasn't above staring at her cleavage at times.
• The Chosen One: For the Phoenix. An afterlife talk with a cosmic entity (who may or may not be the One Above All) has him explain that it's an Excalibur thing; the Phoenix would never have answered her call and offered Jean her power if she wasn't meant to have it. The Phoenix Force itself has complained that Hope doesn't measure up to Jean Grey as a host, though it has often settled on others when Jean(or Rachel) was kept away from it or told it to go away.
• Civvie Spandex: Not usually, but when the majority of the X-Men are going in street clothes with an "x" on them, Jean Grey will follow the trend. She particularly tended toward this look in New X-Men.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Jean is capable of getting very jealous, especially where Scott is concerned.
• Combat Tentacles: Late in the Claremont days, Masque temporarily turned her arms into tentacles (because he's a dick). This being Claremont (who kind of likes tentacles), Jean got used to it pretty quick.
• Continuity Snarl: The Phoenix Force with all the RetCons (or in some instances, continuity gaffs) surrounding it.
• Costume Evolution: Her first two changes, along with the rest of the teams', were all designed by her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jean as Phoenix can be quite witty and sarcastic when she wants to be. This character trait lingers.
• Death-Activated Superpower: Something the Phoenix Force seems to do. However, how this works is very much Depending on the Writer.
• Death Is Cheap: Though wrongly assumed to be her main trait, or wrongly singled out for it, she is still a comic book superhero. A comic book super hero with "phoenix" as one of her powers. And since phoenixes are best known for dying and coming back to life...
  • Presumed dead piloting a space shuttle through a solar radiation storm, re-emerges as the Phoenix.
  • After becoming corrupted and turning into Dark Phoenix, she committed suicide on the Moon. It's later explained that it was actually a Phoenix-created duplicate of Jean who died. Jean’s psychic link with the Phoenix was what caused her to sacrifice herself. Real Jean's physical body, on the other hand, was actually in a stasis cocoon underwater. The portion of Jean's consciousness that had bonded with the Phoenix force awoke in a realm called The White Hot Room. The cocoon is later discovered by Avengers and Fantastic Four, then she re-emerges back to life, initially with no memory of Phoenix or Dark Phoenix.
  • She's one of many people who is temporarily erased from existence by Thanos in The Infinity Gauntlet. Along with everyone else, she gets restored later on when Nebula decided to start undoing everything Thanos did, out of spite.
  • Presumed killed by Trevor Fitzroy's Sentinels along with the Hellions, and Emma Frost who fell into coma. Jean instead transferred her psyche into Emma's comatose body. She was eventually transferred back into her own body, which was only brain-dead at the time, by Xavier.
  • Seemingly mercy-killed by Wolverine in the remains of Asteroid M. Her Phoenix Force powers are reawakened and she was able to fly them both back to Earth. Unfortunately, she's shortly after physically killed by Xorn with an electromagnetic pulse that gives her planetary-scale stroke.
  • In Phoenix Endsong #3, a wounded part of the Phoenix Force makes it way to Earth and brings Jean back to life to help heal itself. Feeling the Phoenix power taking control, she asks Wolverine to repeatedly kill her to weaken the Phoenix. Each time, the Phoenix is able to help resurrect Jean almost immediately. Later, she submerges herself in a glacier, even this fails to hold her, though, and she comes back once again. In Phoenix Endsong #5, Jean decides that she’s not yet ready to come back to life, instead returning to the White Hot Room to continue gathering the fragments of Phoenix Force.
  • And then she returns in Phoenix Resurrection, where she apparently puts a stop to this for good by firmly telling the Phoenix to bugger off and leave her alone. However...
  • She's killed by Sentinels in House of X / Powers of X, only to be revived as a demonstration of Krakoa's Resurrective Immortality.
  • And again at the start of Fall of X, but she gets better thanks to Phoenix.
• Depending on the Writer: The nature of her relationship with the Phoenix. Is it a separate entity? Are they one and the same with the Phoenix being a part of her? Is she a part of the Phoenix? Don’t expect the answer with one writer to be same as it was with the writer that preceded them, EVER.
• Deus Exit Machina: In Avengers volume 8 # 41, Marvel Girl and all of the other telepaths the Avengers can find are locked away and prevented from communicating with the Phoenix Force when it comes by Earth again. Black Panther tries to use a hibernating Celestial to find out what it wants as the Phoenix enters Earth's atmosphere, but he's interrupted by Namor the Sub-Mariner, the one really responsible for calling the Phoenix Force so that he could burn the surface world with it. Marvel Girl is able telepathically send advice to Echo, the first casualty of Namor's rampage, after Phoenix decides Echo will make an interesting host and heals her, but she's no longer able to do that when reality is overwritten with a time line where Jean was torn to pieces and scattered amongst the cosmos or Marvel Girl a giant cannibal.
• Discard and Draw: Her revival just before X-Factor caused her to lose her telepathy, but gain a boost to her telekinesis she didn't have before the Phoenix.
• Divergent Character Evolution: While Jean Grey and Betsy Braddock were never the same character, they did initially have the same ability. Upon joining the X-Men it was emphasized that Jean didn't actually like telepathy, seeing more as a tool when needed while Betsy enjoyed it and would frequently "enter" Jean's head for whatever reason, to Jean's mild annoyance. Betsy then did a 180 and became a more physical fighter, from gaining a suit of armor, to body swapping with a ninja, to becoming Captain Britain again, while even when Jean can get an immense strength boost from the Phoenix she's still known mostly for keeping distance.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: Her Quesada-mandated death at the end of Planet X had "Magneto" kill her out of spite when he realized he was losing.
• Dude Magnet: Jean is the object of affection for many male X-Men members, including Professor X himself for a brief period in the old days. Outside of the X-Men, aside from Attuma's rather disturbing interest, as of 2025, she's also left Nova in jaw-dropped awe (cue Rocket snarking that she's married).
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It was initially explained that Rachel Summers was a superior Phoenix Force host to Jean Grey because the Phoenix didn't fully grasp human emotion when it was with Jean, and saw Rachel, the time displaced daughter of a dead Jean, with all of her mother's potential power and good nature, as a chance to make up for what it did to Jean after she had already been brainwashed by the Hellfire Club. This explanation was already a bit shaky with the introduction of Feron, who definitely understood both the Phoenix and human emotion, but The Avengers volume 8 and spinoff Phoenix Song: Echo establishing that the Phoenix had numerous human hosts before Jean really ran against this. The Phoenix is also shown to be inherently corrupting, while Jean had little trouble keeping it in check before being targeted by the Club and Rachel had no trouble, as it became less arrogant and more understanding.
• Evil Costume Switch: When she becomes Dark Phoenix, the outfit turns red. In a more subtle version, as the normal Phoenix, the size of the phoenix logo slowly grew as time went on and she became more Anti Heroish.
• Evil Redhead: When she was Dark Phoenix.
• Expy: Jean Grey has generated several, most obviously Supergirl's best friend Thara Ak-Var, a.k.a. Flamebird, a female hero who is avatar of a firebird-shaped cosmic force. Others include Olivia Reynolds, a girlfriend of Green Lantern's who was originally a dormant telepathic telekinetic that only superficially resembled Jean but was brainwashed by a nefarious organization that lost control of her due to a cosmic power she hosted that they underestimated. Lilith Clay of Teen Titans, a telepathic redhead who usually wears green (though Clay has precognition that Grey does not usually have, and Lilith isn't a combatant). Then there's New Teen Titan Raven, who is basically a more hardcore Jean Grey, DC attempting to eclipse The Dark Phoenix Saga with Terror of Trigon. Then there is Soyuz leader Serafina Arkadin, AKA Firebird, a telepathic telekinetic who takes the opposite approach to Raven, being far weaker but far more controlled than Jean, also having the fashion designer elements of Grey in designing Soyuz disguises that look similar to what Jean made for the early X-Men. Then there is Superman's unwanted suitor Maxima, who is basically an evil parody of Jean Grey...until DC Rebirth, which has a new Maxima who is more parody and less evil...until new Maxima was antagonized by an older, evil Maxima, in a parody of Adult Jean's forced haunting of her teenage self. Legion of Super-Heroes has Kinetix, another loving parody of Jean Grey, focusing on her telekinesis instead of telepathy, with an involuntary "terror form" that invokes the Phoenix. Then there is Superman villain Psych, who is basically an evil Jean dating an evil Scott Summers in Taser.
• Expy Coexistence
  • Rachel Summers was created to replace Jean as a member of the X-Men, first to show that Jean had died in the Bad Future, then brought back when Jean was killed off in the main timeline. The reveal that Jean was still alive has seen Rachel off on Alternate Timeline adventures, or space adventures, or multiverse adventures, wherever Jean isn't, though they also can work in the same place from time to time, as friends
  • Madelyne Pryor was created as a replacement lover for Scott Summers and a way of getting Cyclops off of the X-Men's "active roster". With Jean's return, Madelyne became a villain out to kill Jean and herself to spite Scott. After a few deaths between the two of them, Grey simply surrendered to Pryor, and they managed to come to terms that allowed her to live in peace with Scott and Jean
• Fairytale Wedding Dress: When marrying Scott, she wore a mermaid dress with a hooded white cape and High-Class Gloves.
• Faking the Dead: When the Phoenix revived Jean, following Xorn murdering her, Cassandra Nova sent Rachel Summers to go murder Grey as soon as possible. Nova even left a message in case Summers was having too much trouble killing Grey, promising Rachel would be returned to her right mind if Jean just let Rachel kill her. Jean managed to fool both Rachel and Cassandra with an illusion of her death, so Grey could acclimate to being alive again in peace.
• Fan Disservice: She is stabbed in the gut by Logan after she stripped down to her bra and pants while on Asteroid M as it's hurtling into the sun in New X-Men.
• Fashion Model: Jean Grey has slightly more outfits than most X-Men, and in her earlier years had aspirations to start a modeling career.
• Fiery Redhead: Classic Marvel example. And as the Phoenix, quite literally too.
• Fiery Sensuality: Jean Grey's phoenix powers are often viewed as a for female desire and sexuality, and how it can cause harm if corrupted.
• Fire/Ice Duo: Not literally, but the imagery is used to contrast her with Emma when she becomes her romantic rival. Jean is constantly associated with fire and heat because of her red hair and her connection to the fiery Phoenix Force, and her personality is known to vacillate between warm compassion and unpredictable fiery temper; Emma is associated with ice and the cold because of her surname "Frost", her all-white attire and her cool temperament, and she resembles an ice sculpture when in her organic diamond form.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Her revival in Fantastic Four #286 has Jean thinking she's still dealing with Project: Armageddon's Sentinels, since the Fantastic Four have differently coloured uniforms. Later still, she has to learn Magneto's now considered one of the good guys.
• Flaming Hair: She sometimes has flaming hair when she's all Phoenix-y.
• Flight: She can levitate herself using psychokinesis.
• Flying Firepower: As the avatar of Phoenix Force she can blast and burn things beyond the scope of her telekinesis.
• Foot Popping: When she married Scott, the cover shows Jean doing this as they kiss◊.
• Forced Transformation: Once got turned into a water-breather along with her sister by Attuma, who wanted them to be his concubines. Jean very emphatically refused.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Her Phoenix costume, X-Factor costumes, and 90s costume, all accentuate her body and bust. Even her wedding dress fit her curves.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: When she is possessed by the Phoenix Force.
• Good Counterpart: Just like Emma Frost, Jean saw a potential in taking down her enemies through Angelia Jones. Unlike Frost, Grey was upfront with Jones about her intentions, actively helped her as often as possible, and didn't have Empath subjecting Firestar to Mind Manipulation.
• Happily Married: Often with Cyclops. But marriage only lasts until death does two part, and for a phoenix to be reborn it has to die. Once Jean Grey herself pushed Cyclops towards Emma Frost, while Jean herself couldn't be around.
• The Heart: Of the X-Men. Having been the only one who could call both Wolverine and Cyclops into line and mediate all their issues, she was the one who kept the team honest, which might explain why they became so much Darker and Edgier after her death.
• Heroic Build: Depending on the Artist, she has a fairly muscular build. The X-Men regularly train, so it could be justified, but Jean's never been portrayed as particularly physical, or the dieting type, Phoenix star/unborn eating aside.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Knew piloting that space shuttle would kill her, and she still went through with it.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Jean Grey is one of the nicer X-Men, but she's still a mutant, and one of the most powerful beings in the universe even without the Phoenix, with even Everret Ross, who often has to put up with an angry Black Panther, flat out admitting Jean terrifies him even when she's being her most friendly, smiling self. Her reputation only got worse after the Dark Phoenix Saga. That may have ulimately been Mastermind's fault, but Jean's likeness was still the wrecking ball. Over time, this has largely improved, because Jean is an All-Loving Hero, but a fairly large subset of people across the universe are terrified of her.
• High-Class Gloves:
  • Her first appearance in the comic is her in a fancy blue outfit with white gloves (like a debutante about to go on a trip), to show her upper middle class status.
  • Her wedding dress includes long white gloves.
  • And of course forearm-length and over-the-elbow yellow gloves are a standard part of many of her costumes.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Storm. They are best friends and even keep in contact when Storm takes several X-Men and splits off to go search for Destiny’s diaries.
• High-School Sweethearts: With Cyclops.
• Horrible at Horticulture: Women of Marvel volume 2 shows Marvel Girl killing a house plant the first day she waters and "feeds" it. Groot enjoys her company, but he also doesn't require her care.
• Human Popsicle: The true fate of Jean while the Phoenix was running around pretending to be her. She was stuck inside a cocoon to regenerate, which wound up in the bottom of Jamaica Bay for years.
• Hypocrite: She’s pretty furious when she finds out Cyclops and Emma are having an affair via telepathy and even mind rapes Emma for it. While it’s understandable that she was mad, she was also considering something with Logan, and had kissed him a few times.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Regarding the above, given that Emma was Scott's therapist when he was an intensely vulnerable state after the hellish experience of being mentally and physically fused with Apocalypse, and she exploited that vulnerability, persuading him that a psychic affair 'wouldn't count', an ethical violation on every conceivable level... she did have a right to be pissed.

• I Hate Past Me: Zig-Zagged. In the latter's book, adult Jean - who, in fairness, might have been grumpy thanks to being a ghost visible solely to her younger self - appears to regard Teen Jean as an immature, whiny brat who can't deal with the fact her life wasn't a painless fairy tale. Teen Jean reciprocates. Emma Frost dryly remarks that it's ironic that all it took was dying to turn Jean into her. However, they ultimately get used to each other, with adult Jean becoming something of a mentor to her teenage self, and the two get on much better once adult Jean has her own body again.
  Teen Jean: Stop acting like it's so embarrassing you used to be me.
• I Have Many Names: Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Marvel le Fey, Redd Dayspring, Crimson Countess
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: At the end of New X-Men, a temporarily dead Jean used her powers to convince Scott to start a relationship with Emma (also to prevent a Bad Future she'd just annihilated).
• The Lancer: Jean Grey was the second in command during New X-Men.
• Levitating Lotus Position: As seen here◊.
• Light Is Good: Her outfit as the White Phoenix of the Crown, the Phoenix Force at its highest state, is white with gold. However...
• Light Is Not Good: It's still the Phoenix, capable of burning entire universes to the ground.
• Lingerie Scene: We get a few panels of Jean Grey in her underwear during Uncanny X-Men #144.
• Little Black Dress: Has worn such dresses, to show her sense of style is sophisticated, not gaudy.
• Love Triangle: Briefly there was Scott-Jean-Logan, then Madelyne-Scott-Jean and for a longer stretch, Jean-Scott-Emma.
• Mama Bear:
  • Usually averted with Rachel, who is a psi of talent close to or exceeding her mother's own. Baby can take care of herself and Mama knows it too well. Plus, Mama's dead a lot. However, it's Played Straight in X-Men: Red when Rachel is controlled by Cassandra Nova and Jean steps in. And on. Hard.
  • Played straight in regard to her students. When the U-Men turn up, looking to harvest the organs of the students, Jean proceeds to humiliate and terrify them without moving, or, indeed, even raising her voice.
  • Played straight in regards to her time travelling son Cable, having raised him as a baby with Scott in the future, protected him as he grew up and taught him how to use the vast telekinetic powers he inherited from her to hold the techno organic virus at bay.
  • Also played straight towards Nate Grey. While he's probably the strongest mutant in the Marvel Universe (possibly excepting Franklin Richards), and a fighter from the start, his powers were unstable and slowly killing him. He was also extremely emotionally vulnerable and a definite Momma's Boy - when he resurrected himself, the first bone he had to pick with Mystique was her making him believe that his then-dead mother was alive. She is also the only person in the known universe with any real influence over him when he's in a real mood (though he minds his big brother Cable and Big Brother Mentor Spidey enough to at least use his words).
• Messianic Archetype: What she has become with time, especially in and after Grant Morrison's run.
• Mind Over Matter: She provides the page image and is one of the most powerful examples in fiction. Her telekinetic strength and skill are both of a supremely high power-level, capable of grasping objects in Earth orbit and manipulating hundreds of components in mid-air in complex patterns. She often uses her telekinesis to lift herself and others, giving her the ability of levitation and flight, create durable shields and energy blasts, sometimes even extending to full on molecular manipulation.
• Mind Rape: When Jean catches Emma Frost and Cyclops in bed (inside of Cyclops' mind), Emma's cavalier response provokes her to psychically tear Emma to shreds, making her relive her worst memories.
• Mindlink Mates: with Scott.
• Minidress of Power: Her second outfit is a green dress with a miniskirt. It didn't age well, so it's now the colour scheme of the Marvel Girl outfit mixed with the style of her X-Men: Red uniform.
• Modeling Poses: In the very first X-Men issue Jean does a fashion pose when she puts on the uniform.
• Moment of Weakness: There were a few reasons why Jean called out for the Phoenix and why she accepted, but as she admits one of the biggest reasons, besides saving her friends, is just she didn't want to die.
• Morality Chain: Conventional wisdom is that she serves as this for Cyclops, with her compassionate and empathetic nature balancing out his jerkish/Well-Intentioned Extremist tendencies. Plenty of Alternate Universe stories (and the mainstream universe once, but we don't talk about that anymore) have shown him going full Magneto without her to reign him in. However, there is some evidence that she needs him as much as he needs her, as he appears to be the only one who can talk down the Dark Phoenix - something that a What If issue showed emphatically does not apply to Logan - and his rock-solid mental stability and clinical logic providing a grounding point for her.
• Morality Pet: She and Scott served as each other's Morality Pets before their relationship went south. She helps him to live life and not brood so much, he helps her to calm down and balance the Phoenix's power with her humanity. Once she dies, the gap between Scott and his teammates widens, as she's isn't there to mediate between them any more.
• Ms. Fanservice: Jean is a very beautiful redhead who tends to wear very form-fitting costumes that highlight her body.
• My God, What Have I Done?
  • On one hand, Jean's body was underwraps while the Phoenix Force was parading around with a puppet Jean Grey body, but that puppet body was grown from stolen pieces of Jean's psyche and soul, which make Grey wonder if the Phoenix had actually merged with her body if it really would have changed anything. The solar system destruction wasn't her fault twice over, regardless, since she had been brainwashed and then lost control of the Phoenix Force because of that brainwashing, but she has at times felt guilty for it nonetheless. Not helped by the scores of adversaries that want her to feel guilty for it.
  • Outnumbered, Jean once used her telepathy to convince frequent enemy but fellow mutant Frenzy to help her. Jean was horrified at just how fanatically zealous Frenzy became for the X-Men. While this was undone, it turned out Frenzy didn't completely hate the experience and eventually joined the team voluntarily after Age of X.
• Nice Girl: Alongside Nightcrawler, she is often seen to be the kindest, most nurturing and most compassionate of all the X-Men, and a paragon and symbol of the good that Mutants can do for humanity. Not a pushover by any means, though.
• No One Should Survive That!: The end of Uncanny X-Men issue #100. Through the last few issues, it's been noted a really nasty solar flare is headed for Earth, just as the X-Men wind up in a villain's orbital base, with the only shuttle back to Earth damaged to just the extent someone needs to fly it manually, but due to the radiation this will be certain death. Jean volunteers anyway, and the issue ends with the cockpit being bombarded with radiation. Issue #101 begins with the space shuttle face-planting into the Hudson, but just as the X-Men despair, the water boils and out bursts Jean, very much alive and well.
• Not Quite Flight: She possesses telekinesis whereby she manipulates atoms with her mind, enabling her to effectively fly by moving around her own atoms.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • The Shi'ar won't forgive Jean for having been possessed/replaced by a cosmic entity and later corrupted by two psychic villains; every so often, Inspector Javerts from the Shi'ar Empire come to try to kill Jean (and did kill her entire family) because apparently merely being capable of hosting the Phoenix equals "may wake up one morning and decide to end the universe any day now."
  • And they aren't the only ones. During Judgment Day, Jean is ascribed all the blame for the Phoenix's genocidal actions, the Progenitor throwing back the proclamation of "now and forever - I am Phoenix" at her (though it is a theme through the whole crossover that the Progenitor is inconsistent and often arbitrary in its judgements, and one thing that gets thrown straight back at it is that if it goes through with this, it'll be at least as guilty as she was, if not more, as it is doing it in cold blood).
• Pals with Jesus: The Phoenix Force has had several hosts, but when it comes to 616 at least, the big bird considers Jean Grey it's best friend. Just how much Jean agrees depends on the time period, and the writer, but Phoenix has complained about Hope not being Jean enough. However, if Jean is Phoenix's best friend, Rachel is its favorite child, but there's not much competition there, since Jean also (eventually)considers Rachel her child.
• Parental Favouritism: Between Nate Grey, Rachel Summers and Cable, the last one is by far her favourite. Probably because he's the only child she raised.
• The Phoenix
  • Depending on the continuity, or even the writer at the moment in the main continuity, she was either the Phoenix itself (later Dark Phoenix), possessed by it, or replaced and impersonated by it at some point. She keeps an equally variable connection to it from her return onwards. The Phoenix wasn't even originally intended to give her an ability to come Back from the Dead. Becoming the Phoenix in the first place was considered her "death and rebirth". None of this helped her overall reputation much, and by now she has become the poster child for Death Is Cheap even by comic book standards.
  • Finally, at the end of Phoenix Resurrection, she kindly but extremely firmly tells the Phoenix to go away and leave her alone, as it's not good for either of them. Eventually, they get back together at the end of the Krakoan era, but on a more equal footing, with Jean herself in the driving seat.
• Pink Means Feminine: Whenever she is not using the Phoenix's powers, which is coloured red and yellow, Jean's signature colour in the comics for her telepathy and telekinesis is pink. Fitting, since she was the original "the girl" of the original five X-Men, and is considered a motherly character.
• Playing with Fire: Her Phoenix powers give her cosmic pyrokinesis, essentially magic fire.
• Power at a Price: The Phoenix did warn Jean going in that there was a great risk, and that once she agreed they would be forever linked. It even admitted it was a Deal with the Devil for her.
• Power Incontinence: When she was a child, she couldn't control her telepathic ability and ended up in a catatonic state. Later on she had a similar problem with the Phoenix Force. She really was mostly in control of Phoenix before Mastermind messed her up, though.
• Polyamory: In recent times, it has been hinted and speculated by fans/readers that she, her husband Scott Summers, and teammate Wolverine may be in a polyamorous relationship. Evidence to support this is that their rooms◊ on Krakoa are next to each other◊, as well as separated from the rest of the Summers family. Her bedroom is in the middle of her husbands and James's, and the map layout shows that their rooms are connected by hidden doors◊.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Lifting to much weight or stopping too much force can over tax Jean Grey's conciousness. This is pretty hard to do when she's at her full potential, and harder still when working with the Phoenix Force.
• Primary-Color Champion: Jean has red hair and in the 90s wore a yellow and blue costume. Usually her outfits contain some gold-yellow in there somewhere, and often red.
• Pretty in Mink:
  • In the 70s, she has a blue winter coat trimmed with gray fur.
  • In the early 90s, she buys a white fur coat after she lost her coat coat the previous issue, and she's so excited that she didn't even want the salesman to wrap it up. She just wore it out of the store, gushing about how soft it felt.
  • The first time we see her mother, Elaine, she's wearing a brown mink coat. Even a 90s retelling of the X-Men's early years still showed her wearing the coat.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: X-Men: First Class gives her and Wanda Maximoff one, spending lots of time just hanging out doing stuff (Wanda being the only other known girl Mutant at the time).
• Psychic Powers: Her main powers aside from Phoenix Force, which mainly include Telepathy and Telekinesis.
• Punny Name: Perhaps merely by coincidence, Jean has mutant powers because she possesses the X-gene.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
  • In an issue of Bizarre Adventures, Jean and her older sister Sara are kidnapped from a boat by Namor's enemy, Attuma. He intends to use them for breeding purposes. They escape using Jean’s powers, but it’s implied this isn’t the first time Attuma has done this. Nor the last.
  • Then there are the separate times where Mastermind or Mesmero had Jean completely under their control before other X-Men intervened.
• Redhead in Green: Some of her costumes have been green. She even designed her first two costume changes, the second being a green Minidress of Power (with gold-colored accessories).
• Redheads Are Ravishing: Jean's long red hair is one of her most striking features and one Logan constantly notices and appreciates. It's why he sometimes calls her "Red".
• Relationship Revolving Door: Since 1963, Jean and Scott live in a constant cycle where they're unsure whether a relationship is a good idea or they should stay just friends, they get together, live happy for a while until one of them dies temporarily or something makes them break up, and the cycle begins anew. Since their latest returns from the dead, at the start of the Krakoan era, they're on and apparently staying that way.
• Restraining Bolt: As a young girl, Xavier placed mental blocks in Jean's mind to keep her telepathy from growing out of control. Xavier would later remove these so her telepathy could grow naturally.
  • After repairing the M'Kraan Crystal, Jean subconsciously sealed much of her power as Phoenix away, realizing a mortal wasn't psychologically capable of handling that much power for long. Then Mastermind and the Hellfire Club started feeding her dark side, causing those mental barriers to crumble...
• Retcon: First the Phoenix was Jean Grey's ful potential reached. Then Claremont played with the idea of the Phoenix being a cosmic being who needed to go back where it came from as his coworkers complained about Jean becoming overpowered. It was eventuality decided that Jean tormented into turning evil and die. Then when Rachel's full potential was reached, she was also called Phoenix, until her Phoenix became the same cosmic entity Jean hosted. Then Jean never hosted the Phoenix! It stole some of Jean's life force and paraded around as Jean because it was curious about emotions it never sensed before in Jean, and was envious of Jean having friends she cared enough to die for! It was trying to atone for all the harm it caused imitating Jean by helping Rachel. Also, Jean wasn't the first humanoid creature it ever encountered, new character Feron was. Then it wasn't a remorseful cosmic entity trying to fix its mistakes but an inherently corrupting force, if less so to Jean/Rachel than everyone else. Writers have spent 50% of entire issues doing nothing but retconing the Phoenix Force and it's relation to Jean/Rachel.
• The Rival
  • Betsy Braddock liked seducing Scott Summers. She didn't have romantic aims, but that was enough for Jean. Emma Frost also had her eyes on Scott, and went further than Betsy ever did.
  • John Sublime and Cassandra Nova have tried to knock Jean Grey aside so that they could have the Phoenix for themselves.
  • Every mutant of the Mastermind family has at some point become an ally of convenience to the X-Men, Lady Mastermind was even a full fledged member of Rogue's team. Jean Grey will always kind of side eye them, however, especially the family patriarch, as he is responsible for some of the worst things to ever happen to her, he tried to do the same to Rachel, and they're all kind of prone to betrayal besides, needless boasting and competition even when they're loyal. The only exception to this is Pixie, who's the Token Good Teammate of the family and had nothing to do with her biological father.
  • Hosts of Le Bete Noir, The First Fallen, Tiger God and the Ratha'kon Star Hawk are supposed to be this to Jean on account to the first two being similar but antithetical forces to Phoenix, the Ratha'kon being a legendary god born from a Shi'ar myth of a divine Phoenix predator, and the Tiger hating anything that anyone fears more than itself. The Goblin Force is also technically fundamentally linked to and rival of Phoenix, but the 616 Goblin has no issue with Jean or the Phoenix (Goblin got with Madelyne and ate them in an alternate universe though), First Fallen ended up facing Rachel due to Jamie Braddock's manipuations, Stryfe attempted to use Bete Noir only to prove self disposing, and Rath'akon was turned away before it got to Phoenix.
• Rogues Gallery: Mesmero, the Morlocks Masque and Bliss, Madelyne Pryor, the Mastermind family and sometimes the Shi’ar Imperial guard.
• Secret-Keeper: Being one of Xavier's first students, he burdened her with many secrets throughout the existence of the X-Men. Some examples:
  • Xavier "dies" fighting a creature named Grotesk in X-Men #42. He is not dead, obviously, because he goes into hiding to prepare for an upcoming Z'Nox invasion (issues #65-66).
  • In X-Men: The Hidden Years (an in-continuity series between the original title and Giant Size X-Men #1), Jean, Scott and Hank meet Ororo for the first time. Beast comments that they should report her existence to the Professor, but Jean explains he knows about her already.
• Secret Public Identity: The name "Marvel Girl" didn't age well and was dropped decades ago (then brought back, to mixed reactions), and (usually; Depending on the Writer) she only uses the name Phoenix when actually supercharged by the cosmic critter. This leaves her as just plain "Jean Grey" the majority of the time, even during action. It's been Lampshaded more than once; Jubilee once even referred to her as "Miss I'm Too Sexy For A Codename, Too Sexy For A Codename," and in the X-Men: Evolution tie in comic, when Nightcrawler asked why Rogue was just Rogue, Cyclops said "The same reason Jean's just Jean," and they were interrupted before Nightcrawler could get finished asking about that.
• Sensual Spandex: Her Phoenix costumes (green, red, or white) are the least modest compared to her other costumes.
• Sheathe Your Sword: The first time Jean Grey fought her clone, Madelyne Pryor, Pryor opted to just kill them both both and Grey just barely survived. Madelyne caught Jean in an ambush, handily winning round two, and though Jean picked herself up ready for another go, she ultimately to just surrender and negotiate with Madelyne for terms that would be least painful for all involved, since Pryor was ruler of Limbo and just beating her wouldn't fix everything, even with Limbo's Sorceress Supreme Magik with the X-Men. Pryor ultimately agreed to Grey's terms and even promised to start cleaning up her mess. While Madelyne has since regressed, even joining the Masters of Evil, she technically has done nothing to betray Jean's trust and has also come to the X-Men's aid more than once.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Has red hair and green eyes. Her mother was retconned into one (She was a brunette at first).
• Simple, yet Opulent:
  • Her dress when she arrives at the mansion, in the first issue, wouldn't look too out of place at a high class party.
  • She has several evening dresses when she attends high class events (although usually undercover).
  • Her wedding dress was also grand and simple.
• Star Killing: When playing host to Phoenix Force, Jean can eat many things, and Grey has to be careful when it gets hungry, such as that one time she ended feeding on a star that had two habitated planets in its orbit...
• Superdickery: The cover of Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #1 features Jean burning Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Prestige and Cable alive. While they do run into a bit of trouble, the only fires Jean is responsible for are those cooking food at the diner she is working at, and she's oblivious to the X-Men's misadventures.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: All of her children are from the future or alternate realities, or both - Nate is ten years her junior (or less, considering how long she was dead for), Rachel is only a little younger than she is, and Cable is considerably older thanks to all the time travel. Hope is also maybe 15 years her junior, at most, also due to time travel. Though, only Cable she actually helped raise, thanks to Rachel's Mental Time Travel related assistance. None of this stops her from loving them dearly, rocky start with Rachel aside, and being just about the only person who can reliably control any of them.
• Superpower Evolution: Prior to the Retcon, Jean Grey's transformation into the Phoenix was meant to be her telekinetic and telepathic powers reaching their pinnacle.
• Superpower Lottery: She gets this, but she went mad with power. Now Jean didn't actually have that much power after she fused with the Phoenix Force, but then she suddenly is more powerful than ever before, and more dangerous: Jean Grey alone can supposedly lift upwards of twenty tons with her brain (and given the stuff she has lifted, that is likely to be an entirely arbitrary underestimate). With limited Phoenix power, she can use external objects as a sense of touch and recompose matter at a molecular level. Unhinged, she can teleport anywhere in the universe at will and devour stars. Then it turns out she has one more level beyond that where she can exist outside of reality proper and has total control over space and time itself. On top of all that, if you kill her she comes back whenever she feels like it. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
• Taking the Bullet: Her first conversation with Rachel might have gone better if Ahab hadn't been attacking X-Factor at the time. Jean's chance to make up for that outburst is similarly put off by her taking a spear tossed by Ahab at Rachel, after Jean's telekinesis had been weakened.
• Talking to Themself: In Jean Grey #7, Ghost Jean holds a conversation with her younger self. Ghost Jean notes with irony her younger self doesn't want to appear she's talking to herself as she's actually literally talking to herself.
• Team Mom: The oldest example in X-Men. Even when they were still teens, Jean would do things like enforce proper table manners among her teammates. Her solo series indicates that she deeply resented this role at the time, though she's much happier with being this to the younger students. Adjusting to her own bevy of time-travelling/universe jumping children might have helped.
• The Smurfette Principle: Jean was the only girl of the original X-Men team.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Unleashed one on Wolverine in Uncanny X-Men issue #100, after reaching the end of her tether with him. Worth bearing in mind this was pre-Character Development Wolverine, and that it's only after this he starts having a crush on her.
  • She gives a scathing one to her time displaced younger self in Issue 6 of her solo.
  Jean Grey: You have convinced yourself that I'm the nightmare. That my life - a life you've only glimpsed in other people's heads - was some kind of dark tragedy. Because there was pain. Because it ended in Death. Because that's not the life you envisioned for yourself. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, princess, but that's just life. Grow up.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the early days of the X-Men, Jean was explicitly labelled the weakest member of the team. One little shuttle accident later, and Jean became capable of punching former Heralds of Galactus across Manhattan, grabbing passing asteroids, and restructuring clothing out of nothing. Even once that turned out to be a Phoenix duplicate, most of the levels in badass still remained when the real Jean came back - she was capable of flying through hyperspace, for one thing, and on a smaller scale she can crush bones telekinetically. Teen Jean, meanwhile, has proved capable of going toe to toe with Gladiator and creatures that give Namor trouble - in both cases suggesting that it was more a matter of her potential needing to be kicked into gear. And there was a reason that Emma Frost made a snarky remark about how coincidental it was that Teen Jean's telepathy, (and the extent of her telekinesis, come to that), only kicked in when she was away from Charles Xavier.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Jean's telepathy first came in when her best friend was struck and killed by a car right in front of her, with Jean feeling every second of it.
• True Blue Femininity: Some of her outfits are blue, including the civilian dress she wears in her very first appearance.
• Uniqueness Decay: She was the first and only human that bonded with the Phoenix. Then it turned out Feron did centuries before, then Avengers vs X-Men introduced Fongji Wu, then a Phoenix host in 1,000,000 BC. However, with the possible exception of Rachel, it is made quite clear that she is its favourite.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Cyclops when they're not together; sometimes with Wolverine.
• Unstable Powered Woman: She was a heroic member of the X-Men up until the events of The Dark Phoenix Saga, where she is possessed by the Phoenix Force, one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. While she initially handles this new power well, Jean is targeted by the supervillain Mastermind, who shatters her control over them in a mental battle. This causes her to lose it and become Dark Phoenix, an intergalactic menace who casually indirectly kills billions of people by devouring a star, and by doing so paints a big target on her back. This storyline was extremely influential, and many comics storylines parallel or homage this directly.
• Unwanted Harem: She was the only girl in the group for years. She's also been the target of villain's affections, as well. Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind) wasn't above committing Mind Rape to get her to fall in love with him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She berates the Phoenix Force for continually fragmenting and suppressing the memories of Rachel Summers, even as Rachel tries to suppress the Phoenix to recall her memories and get them in order. Jean pulls her punches, however, because her goal is to make the Phoenix release Rachel from its proverbial talons long enough for someone else to try to heal her, and Jean's not confident in her ability to force the Phoenix off.
• Winter Royal Lady: Conversed a bit. After she bought her fur, she and Scott had a Snowball Fight with their powers, and Jean jokingly called herself "the Queen of the Icy North!".
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • Played straight initially as host of Phoenix Force, until it's inverted in New X-Men. It's implied that Jean only lost control because she was afraid of her power before, and repressed it. Now, she's out and proud, and completely in control of herself. Sadly, she's killed there.
  • Also, it's frequently ignored by fans and writers that though she had to fight her anti-heroic urges she was actually in control for a very long time, only becoming Dark Phoenix after Mastermind and Emma Frost put a lot of time and effort into their More than Mind Control of her to get her to join the Hellfire Club. It worked too well and we all know what happened next.
• World's Strongest Man: As an Omega level mutant, Jean Grey is legitimately one of the strongest mutants in her universe. Though it should be noted it only applies to her telepathy, not her telekinesis (depending on the fluctuating definition of Omega level - and even then, being just behind Exodus is nothing to sniff at).

Marvel Girl/Jean Grey

Jean Grey arrives in the future to discover she will fall in love with and marry Cyclops, and also that she is destined to wield the Phoenix Force, go mad, kill one planet worth of people and die twice. She is also confronted with the fact Scott cheated on her even though she was technically faithful. Of all the O5, she is the most reluctant to return home having seen what is to become with her, a prospect she fears immensely. Jean leaves the team during the time skip after Secret Wars and returns to lead the X-Men: Blue team.

• Action Girl: What she became with time. Jean is highly capable of defending herself and others whenever the time calls for it. She proves to be the most powerful of the Teen X-Men, psychically flattening the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree Empire and several dozen Kree accusers in one shot, overpowering Gladiator and, without her telepathy, wiping the floor with the Blob.
• Anti-Hero: Jean is more antiheroic than her future self, more callous with her mind-reading and far more troubled. She gets better as time goes by and she gets a better handle on her powers, becoming more like her classic All-Loving Heroine self.
• Badass and Child Duo:
  • The child to Old Man Logan's badass in Extraordinary X-Men.
  • Briefly with a seemingly absolutely hammered Odinson in her solo series, when looking to learn about how to fight godlike beings.
• Betty and Veronica: While it wasn't drawn out for particularly long, she was the Betty to X-23's Veronica with Teen!Scott, with Jean visibly jealous when she noted that Scott and Laura were mutually attracted.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: It's Jean Grey. To begin with, she's drawn relatively normally, mostly, for a teenager, but by X-Men: Blue, she's built more like her adult self. Given that her adult self is naturally like that, she's in her mid to late teens, and they spent a while in the past, it's possible she just developed naturally.
• Character Development: She goes from scared kid terrified of her own future and her own powers, barely more than a basic telekinetic and a profoundly inexperienced telepath, to discovering a whole new level to her powers and escaping a supposedly inescapable restraining Shi'ar bubble while taking out about half the Imperial Guard in one shot, before going toe to toe with freaking Gladiator and coming out honours even. As of her solo series and X-Men Blue, she gains the confidence to lead the X-Men, as well as striking out on her own and learning how to take on the Phoenix - which is apparently coming to merge with her whether she likes it or not. To top it all off, she later bullies the Phoenix into resurrecting her after it killed her in Phoenix Resurrection. She also apparently dies again when absorbed by the Poison Hive... which she ends up vaporising from the inside and reconstructing her body from remnants of her genetic material. And after that, she becomes much more comfortable with life, thanks to her worst nightmare having passed her by.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Though she's trying to keep a low profile at the start of Extraordinary X-Men and turned down a chance to join the titular team in favour of going to college, intent on studying and enjoying life with her new boyfriend, she can't let bad stuff pass. In issue 2 when she sees someone who does not look human (assumed by all to be a mutant, but actually an Inhuman) being beaten up by a gang. Her boyfriend, proving to be mutant-phobic, tells her to leave the mutie. Jean informs him that he's in for a nasty surprise and starts kicking butt.
• Civvie Spandex: Her costume in her solo series and X-Men Blue, though she doesn't always wear the jacket.
• Death Is Cheap: Deconstructed, because she's actually genuinely horrified that her future self has died more than once.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After the Phoenix Force kills her she winds up in the White Hot Room and berates the cosmic entity for picking a fight with her, half blackmailing and half annoying it into resurrecting her.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Regularly hears how attracted everyone is to her, like her Ultimate counterpart. She's had a conversation with Scott about how irritating it can be.
• Dude Magnet:
  • This aspect of her character is discussed, with all of the O5 but Bobby practically falling over her (until Angel hooks up with Laura, anyway), and Emma Frost making dry references to her being 'the cute, fresh-faced redhead that turns every man's head'.
  • In the Ultimates universe, she met Miles Morales for only a few hours and he was already crushing hard on her. Also, Ganke, which precipitates Miles's remark that she has apparently seen and heard it all, psychically speaking, and she's comfortable enough to mess with him about it.
  • She even gets older Cyclops's attention, though mostly in respect to his nostalgia — she's the way she was when he first fell in love with her — and when she does make a move on him, he shuts it down gently, but very, very firmly.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: She has shorter hair in her solo series. Supposedly to distinct herself from her future self.
• Fiery Redhead: As hot-tempered as ever, something often made worse by her Power Incontinence, the trauma of her future self's experiences and all the weight that gets dropped on her shoulders. She gets better as time goes on.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Her original costume and second costume.
• Future Me Scares Me: She really doesn't want to become her adult self, seeing her fate as a Bad Future. She even makes this very clear to her adult self's ghost, though the two eventually come to terms with each other and actually get on quite well (Adult Jean getting her own body back helped).
  Adult Jean: How do you think I got ready?! How do you think I became me?!
  Teen Jean: I don't want to be you! Why would anybody ever want to be you?!
• Heroic BSoD: Has one when she sees what happens to her future self. Later she has an even worse one after Teen Angel leaves to join Modern Cyclops.
• Hypocritical Humor: In her solo series where she finally met Hope, both of them remark how they can't understand why some people consider them identical... while looking more or less identical and speaking in unison.
• I Am a Monster: She said this when she's prosecuted by Shi'ar Empire for the crimes of the Dark Phoenix.
• Identical Stranger: To Hope Summers, though both claim that they can't see the resemblance.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Tries living the life of an ordinary college student at the start of Extraordinary X-Men, flirting with a guy in her class. As per usual, Chronic Hero Syndrome means that it doesn't stick, and her would-be boyfriend is mutant-phobic.
• The Leader: Assumes this role to the O5, especially after Scott travels into space, and even after his return.
• Love Dodecahedron: Several examples.
  • She and Teen Scott were in love until they got to the future. Now she's not so sure she wants him anymore given what she knows about who/what he grows up to be, while he's still smitten, thinking that their eventual wedding is "proof" they're supposed to be together. Eventually, they hook up.
  • She and Teen Hank kiss. She instigated it on top of that. The events of Battle of the Atom cause a little fallout. At the end of the first volume they give an actual relationship a try, but she ultimately decides they're Better as Friends during the Time Skip. He later remarks sympathetically and with some resignation to Bloodstorm (an alternate teenage Storm who ended up as a vampire, and had a thing with Scott) that no matter what, Jean and Scott tend to gravitate back to one another.
  • She and Teen Angel have a moment when he catches her when she's falling.
  • She also seems to be attracted to Modern Scott, but he quickly, though not unkindly, makes very it clear that it can't ever happen. Ever.
  • Jean was visibly jealous of Scott's attraction to X-23, especially when it was subtly implied to be reciprocated by Laura. Her relief when Laura and Warren began dating instead was palpable.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Teen Jean's telepathy manifests far earlier for her than it did originally because Beast removed her from the influence of Xavier, who had suppressed it until she was older. After that, Jean at first displays difficulty controlling her telepathy, leading to her hearing thoughts ranging from the uncomfortable (such as Teen Hank's feelings for her) to the outright horrifying (what the Purifiers did to Laura). She gets better as time goes on, and more used to people's minds, with Miles Morales explicitly remarking to Ganke (who's horrified at the prospect that she might be reading his mind) when the O5 wind up in the Ultimate Universe that he thought that himself, but "she has apparently seen and heard it all."
  • For a few darker examples, she reads the Purifiers' minds to learn just how messed up they are towards mutants and their hate crimes. She's also left quite disturbed when she reads part of Laura's mind, and learns about the things that were done to her (Kitty did warn her not to read Laura, though).
• Mind Over Manners: Jean's telepathy shows up unexpectedly due to the stress of seeing the future and knowing her future self dies (more than once). Kitty has to repeatedly remind her it's considered extremely impolite to read minds without permission. Jean apologizes, but her curiosity gets the better of her quite a bit. Sometimes Hilarity Ensues, sometimes it leads to awkward moments, but most times she can't believe what people have done. She's getting better by the time she meets Miles Morales, and later expresses genuine gratitude to Xavier's Antagonistic Offspring (leader of the Future Brotherhood) for reminding her why this is so important with his rampant abuse of his own considerable Psychic Powers.
• Mind Rape: She tried to do it on Teen Angel again in Issue 11, but the Stepford Triplets stop her.
• New Super Power: During the Trial of Jean Grey arc she learns how to combine her telepathy and telekinesis to absorb psychic energy and convert it to power. This makes her entire body glow pinkish purple. It becomes her signature manoeuvre when she's about to pull off something big, using it to stalemate Gladiator, destroy the Poisons, and stun freaking Galactus - though for context, he was occupied with Phoenix at the time and she hit him in the back, it only seemed to knock him over/surprise him, and she did need to draw on his power, her older Phoenix self's power, and that of the planet and people below to do it.
• Nice Girl: Following a bit of Character Development.
• Odd Friendship:
  • She actually winds up bonding with Emma Frost of all people, before Emma's Sanity Slippage kicked in. Magik outright states that this is one of the most disturbing things she's ever seen, which is saying a lot.
  Irma Cuckoo: Jean Grey and Emma Frost are friends now.
  Illyana Rasputin: That is the scariest thing I've ever heard. And I grew up in hell, literally.
  • Later with Old Man Logan in Extraordinary X-Men.
  • And even later with Magneto in X-Men Blue. This is particularly strange since she came from a time when Magneto was a raving mutant supremacist who tried to kill them, not the complex Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain he has become, and neither of them entirely trusts the other (or rather, both of them are keeping secrets). Nevertheless, they're both cordial, aware of their dynamic, and Magneto treats her as more of a respected peer than a student, explicitly stating that while he is overseeing their operation and acting as mission control, they're not his students.
• Parental Substitute: Hilariously, her adult self becomes this, partially as a ghost when haunting Teen Jean and exhorting her to grow up, then more so once she gets her own body back after Phoenix Resurrection, to the point of making pointed comments about Teen Jean's champagne consumption at Piotr and Kitty's abortive wedding, which Teen Jean refers to as "momming" her - and instead suggests that she do so to Rachel, her/their actual daughter, who's standing between them and is developing an understandable headache.
• Power Glows: Her new powers make her glow violet-purple with psionic energy.
• Power Incontinence: Specifically, her telepathy. It's not clear how much this is true or if it's an excuse (probably the former going by the way it sometimes happens with her telekinesis too), but she doesn't have her future self's level of control over it and, until Emma Frost gets over most of her issues, none of her teachers are actual psychics. She eventually gets better.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Her costume in Extraordinary X-Men. Best seen here◊.
• Psychic Powers: As per usual, except that her telepathy is jumpstarted by time travel and consequently has trouble controlling it - at first.
• Sensual Spandex: Semi-regularly, particularly as drawn in X-Men: Blue.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Manages this in her solo series, when fighting alongside the Odinson and being frustrated at the lack of a 'big frigging magic hammer'. When she accidentally creates a large warhammer from her powers, in the same vein as Psylocke's psi-weapons, she asks, startled, what it is. Odinson replies somewhat drily that it looks to him like 'a big frigging magic hammer.' She then gets tutelage in this from Betsy Braddock, an expert in the art.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: She's from the past and Rachel is from the future, so it's a given. Rachel even calls her "Baby Momma" sometimes (and gets an understandable headache at Kitty and Piotr's abortive wedding when Adult Jean starts "momming" Teen Jean about underage champagne drinking, while Teen Jean argues that she should be doing it to Rachel instead). Let's not even talk about Cable.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • For Hope Summers, who is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the still-deceased Modern Jean Grey. Once Hope's storyline needed reason to exist was over, she was taken out of the main X-Men comic books and was "transferred" to Uncanny X-Force to reunite with her adopted father Cable, and Teen Jean appears to take her place. Just like Hope, Teen Jean is a teenaged girl raised in a different time (this time though, the past) who has the traditional Jean Grey look, has a similar personality and tendency to be a brat (at first), has a lot of story focus with the bulk of the current conflict in the books revolving around her presence, and is slowly learning just how powerful she is. In short, Jean Grey is the Suspiciously Similar Substitute to her own Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
  • The two eventually meet in Jean Grey and, ironically Speak in Unison when remarking that they can't understand why people think they look alike (despite looking identical). Of course, Jean also has shorter hair by this time, so they don't look that identical.
• Swapped Roles: Kitty Pryde, who was 13 and a half when she joined the X-Men, studied under Jean and learned techniques for handling telepathic issues. Now she's an adult, teaching 16-year-old Jean from the past those same techniques.
• Took a Level in Badass: Goes from scared teenager to someone who goes toe to toe with Gladiator, grudgingly impresses Namor, stuns (an admittedly otherwise occupied) Galactus, and winds up bullying the Phoenix into resurrecting her.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Due to her Trauma Conga Line, she brainwashes Warren into submission twice! And now in Battle of the Atom she manipulates Teen Scott by flattering him (after kissing Hank) to help her stay in the present, which might cause a Bad Future (events would prove that this was the right decision, if not made for the right reasons). She gets better afterwards.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Once she gets a handle on her telepathy, she develops back into her usual Nice Girl self.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • Jean, a 16 year old girl, has her powers blooming early, with her attempts to deal with Power Incontinence adding to her troubles. She finds out she is going to die (repeatedly) and is, as far as she knows, still dead, while her teammates survive to the current day.
  • And then she finds out that her future self (as in her future self if she stays in the present) is insane and evil, then saw her die, then find out that she might just have been a psychic projection all along and then she gets kidnapped by the Shi'ar Imperial Guard and put in front of a Kangaroo Court.
• Troubled, but Cute: A rare female example. She gets better.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Perpetually, with Scott. It is, of course, mutual. In Issue 36 of X-Men: Blue, it is finally resolved.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She's an extremely powerful telekinetic and telepath, but she has difficulty co-ordinating the two abilities in the heat of battle and so she got punked by the Wrecking Crew in Japan. She's also a hot-head and sometimes thinks with her fists, she got called on it by a Goblin Queen-incarnation of Madelyne Pryor: "Sweetie, that's why we have powers" (before blasting Jean after Jean tried to punch her). In her solo series, she goes to everyone (Namor, Odinson, and Psylocke, among others, though she also gets help from Doctor Strange - an attempted exorcism of the ghost of her adult self - and then, unwanted, her adult self who hangs around afterwards) for tutelage and advice, and learns how to use her powers much more effectively.
• Youthful Freckles: Sometimes depicted as having them, depending on the artist.