Hero Profile: Jubilee

Sorry I’ve been away, I have excuses, but you’re not here to read those, you’re here to read about fictional people with supernatural abilities. Let’s get to it.

“Mutation. It is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-cell organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few millennia, evolution leaps forward.” The opening monologue from the X2, while sounding very scientific, seems to gloss over the more insane stuff. Like being a human/amphibian hybrid, or being so fat that you’re bulletproof, or shooting fireworks from your hands. All very real “Mutations” in the Marvel Universe. Today we’re looking at the third one, the power made famous by Jubilation Lee.

She must be great at parties. Or Raves.

Jubilee’s formative years were rather…sporadic. She began life as the daughter of a successful Chinese Immigrant family in Beverly Hills, California. She had all the creature comforts a teenager could ask for. She was also a talented gymnast, and had dreams of Olympic Gold. These dreams came crashing down when her parents were murdered, and she was sent to an orphanage. Jubilee ran away, and spent an unspecified amount of time in the Hollywood Mall. She survived on stolen food, and raiding garbage cans. A pretty immense fall from her early life, wouldn’t you say?

Her life began to turn around, again, this time from the most unlikely of encounters. With Mall Security. When the security team had the young girl cornered in a back alley, her mutant powers manifested. She emitted burst of energy from her hands that worked a bit like a Flashbang grenade, the noise and lights disorientated the security guards and she made a hasty getaway. After a bit of practice, she learned to control the bursts and pulled a Spider-Man. Not the “putting on a form fitting costume and fighting bad guys” part, the “use powers to make money” part. She basically became a street performer, creating little fireworks display for people’s spare change. This worked well to keep her fed, but annoyed Mall Security enough that they hired a group of Mutant hunters to put a stop to it. Everyone’s a critic. She was saved from capture by a small group of X-Men, most notably Rogue and Storm. Intrigued by the heroic Mutants, Jubilee follows them to their secret base.

Not knowing how they’d react to a troubled teenager, Jubilee falls back on mall habits and starts stealing food and clothes. Her little hide-and-seek game actually became useful, as it allowed her to witness the X-Men Superstar, Wolverine, being kidnapped by a group of cyborg gangsters. They’re called the Reavers, and this kind of group is a perfectly normal occurrence on Marvel Earth. She watched helplessly as the sort-of-machine men tortured Wolverine, and seized an opportunity to release ol’ Logan between torture sessions. She’s able to nurse him back to health, and after escaping the Reavers, again, Wolverine brings her to Professor Xavier. She’s welcomed into the Xavier School, and becomes another of Wolverine’s unofficial adoptive daughters. First Kitty Pryde, the Jubilee, and later his clone/sister/daughter Laura, Logan just has a huge soft spot for troubled teenage girls that are in need of a mentor/father figure.

She is a major part of the X-Men and other X-Men affiliate teams over the next few years. But, after being crucified by a group of xenophobic anti-Mutants called the Church of Humanity, and some rougher missions, she’s put on the disabled list. Which turns out to be a bit more permanent of a change than Jubilee would have liked. Magneto’s daughter, yes I still consider her to be Magneto’s daughter despite the recent retcon, Scarlet Witch altered reality twice. Once to make her father the undisputed ruler of a Mutant World, and then back again following her twin brother’s death. But, instead of just returning the world to normal, Scarlet Witch stripped 99% of Mutants of their powers. Jubilee was in the 99%. Jubilee makes do, somehow, and even starts up a half-way house to look after depowered Mutants. This operation is largely destroyed when X-Men Enemy Omega Red busts in and kidnaps her in a bid to get at his real target, Wolverine. He is able to save her, but she’d taken a beating.

Jubilee and Laura, sibling rivalry level: Extreme

Over the next few years, Jubilee finds different ways to reclaim her status as a superhero. For a time, she worked with a group known as the New Warriors, and used some fancy tech to give her superstrength. When that group falls apart, she’s hit by a bio-engineered virus, which eventually leads her into becoming a Vampire. Oi, the troubles this woman goes through. After fighting the undead horrors, the X-Men are able to come up with a solution that lets Jubilee live a more normalish life. Basically, she subsists on a diet of Wolverine Blood. The healing factor in Logan’s bloodstream temporally reverses the transformation process. After that, she and Wolverine join Gambit and X-23 on a mission in Paris. While there, Gambit points out that Wolverine treats the two young women very differently, despite the fact they both view him as a father figure, which helps Wolverine be a better surrogate parent to both. And, despite a lot of tension between them in the beginning, Jubilee and X-23 do eventually start to bond. X-23 helps Jubilee learn how to live with the more…intense impulses her new Vampiric fills her head with, and Jubilee helps X-23 learn to be more human. Er… more Mutant. To not be as much of an emotionless assassin. There we go. Most recently she’s become a part of Storm’s branch of the X-Men. An all-female team, I might add. She also found, and later adopted, a baby boy whom she names Shogo. From mallrat to superhero to mythical monster to superhero again, and a single Mom. Sounds about right for the rollercoaster that is the superhero life style.

Jubilee has had a number of different abilities. Initially, she had the ability to create brightly colored bursts of energy she called her “fireworks.” The explosions varied in strength from brightly colored but harmless bursts, to energy blasts intense enough to blow off the head of a giant attacking robot. She could also focus the bursts very precisely, enough so that she could basically cause someone to have a stroke. After losing her powers, she briefly wore a battle suit that gave her superstrength, and went by the codename Wondra. She’s since gained Vampire Powers, superstrength, speed, rapid regeneration, and a need to feed on blood. Her weakness in that area, silver, garlic, sunlight, and so on, are reduced thanks to ingesting Wolverine’s blood. The healing properties of said blood keep her in the “not quite” stage of Vampirism. She later received training from a Vampire group called the Forgiven, whom have helped her somehow move beyond the need for blood, and move about in the day.

Jubilee is a character that appears a lot in X-Men franchise, but, baring one case, is only a background or secondary character. Not sure why.

Jubilee and her son, Shogo. They're just
so gosh darn cute. 

In X-Men: The Animated Series she’s a major character, and apparently the only student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Seriously, I didn’t see one other Mutant below the age of, I’ll be generous, 25 at that school throughout the course off the show. She’s a bit of a mix with the other young teen X-Man, Kitty Pryde. It’s mostly little changes, she was in foster care rather than being homeless on the streets, that sort of thing. She still has a very close relationship with Wolverine, and the rest of the team as well. I didn’t realize this growing up, but Jubilee was included in the show as the “young character that kids could relate to.” In theory, I guess I can understand thinking that a show about 25-35 year-old characters could use the kid for the kids to relate to, but on the other hand Jubilee got kidnapped a lot. And, thinking back, my favorite characters were Wolverine, Cyclops and Beast, while Jubilee was more grating than anything else. If you want a character kids can relate to, make them a character worth relating to, is all I’m saying.

She was a background character in seasons 2 of X-Men: Evolution. She mostly got into antics with the other “New Mutants,” and rarely did anything of note. I don’t even think she got a line of dialogue with Wolverine, just saying. She and another X-Man background character, Wolfsbane, were written out of the show in season 3. In universe reason, her parents no longer felt that Xavier could keep their daughter safe after a very publicized fight with a Sentinel in the previous season finale. Out of universe reason, I think they just had too many extras and decided to cut two so they could focus on others. Don’t know it for sure, but it’s the most logical reason to me. She and Wolfsbane are seen again during the series finale, in a look at the X-Men’s future that Xavier had while he was connected to Apocalypse.

She was a background character in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Not really important, just dropper her name once or twice. She’ll appear in some capacity in X-Men: Apocalypse. Will this movie break her streak of being a background character? Highly unlikely, but there’s always hope.

I’m not sure how I feel about Jubilee. Based solely on her appearance in X-Men I found her to be at times fun, but mostly an annoying side character that was only there for exposition and kidnapping. Based on her in the movies, she’s barely worth mentioning. Based on her from the comics, all I can say is, why the heck isn’t she in more stuff? She’s a complex character that’s dealt with social injustice on more than one occasion, been crucified for her genetic differences, suffered extreme depression after losing her powers, and then had to adapt to a completely different way of life when she became a vampire. Add to it, that her most recent stories involve being a single mother to an orphaned child, and you have a character all but dripping in possibilities. Should somehow, someway, Marvel work out a deal with Fox, I’d love to see Jubilee in another X-Men TV show or movie and have them do the mutant to vampire story, but I’m not holding my breath for that one. She’s the fabulous fireworks flinging hero from Beverly Hills, Jubilee. Next time, the bane of Mutant existence, the Sentinels.  

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