What Are X-Men Mutant Levels?

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• What Are X-Men Mutant Levels?

• How Many Mutant Levels Are There?

• Every X-Men Mutant Level, Explained

A terror threat capable of ending the world in an instant or the super-powered saviors of us all, no matter where you stand on the “Mutant Problem” in X-Men you have to admit one thing, there’s a lot of them. Despite numerous moments in the comics that wiped them out, brought them back, wiped them out again, retconned their renewal, and so on, it seems Marvel's Mutants are here to stay.

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Since there are so many, you can get lost for hours just reading about all their powers and what they get up to. So to help with the information overload the writers introduced a classification system. It’s a little long-winded and overly complicated at times, but we’ve streamlined it somewhat to give you a nice primer on the X-Men franchise. So to get you up to speed, here are the X-Men Mutant levels, explained.

What Are X-Men Mutant Levels?

The Mutant Levels are pretty self-explanatory, but we’ll go into it anyway as it’s an interesting system that can really help with keeping character power levels ranked in your mind as you read or watch something X-Men-Related.

So to elaborate, Mutant Levels are essentially the ranking of a Mutant Threat Level through the assessment of their powers using particular qualifiers. So this can be things like their threat to society or reality itself, the amount of force required to subdue or kill them, and their general deadliness.

It sounds more complicated than it actually is. As an example, take Jean Grey. She would be classed as an Omega Type Mutant because of her ability to literally burn worlds when the Phoenix Force is around and her Telepathy is borderline unstoppable.

So she gets the big and scary ranking.

As does Magneto as he can control metal and since everything in society is made from it, he can do a lot of damage.

However, at the low end of the scale, which is Epsilon, you get people like Beak, a guy with a Beak, that’s it. Or Bailey Hoskins, a mutant who can explode but it will kill him, permanently. They’re low-end threats bordering on useless, so their Mutant Level is very low.

How Many Mutant Levels Are There?

Now this is where things get a little tricky and prone to causing arguments. The Mutant Level system has had a bit of a nightmare when it came to what it actually is and its consistency over the years as various creative leads would scrap it, change it, or make it unnecessarily complicated by adding more layers.

To start things out, there are technically six, though it used to be four at one point and before that they just used numbers. Because comics like to be complicated, there are also a lot of sub-groups within those classifications that apply to each particular type of Mutant to further break down each individual's power rating.

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For example, Healers and Psychics, Pyrokinetics, and a lot of mind-based mutants have further sub-ratings as there’s a lot of leeway in their power levels. It’s also common for a lot of mutants to have more than one power which just further complicates things.

Say you have an Omega-level mutant that’s really good at messing with reality, but they’re also a healer, but they’re not particularly good at it. So they would be an Omega rating for reality-bending, but Omega Delta for healing. You can see how it gets confusing.

So we’ll be sticking to a generally wider and fan-accepted version of rating power levels as it’s more straightforward and a lot easier to follow.

Every X-Men Mutant Level, Explained

Since we’re sticking with the general idea of six, it’s worth getting to grips with what’s required to be awarded a particular rank. In that, it’s worth knowing exactly how fast and far you should be running in the other direction from them should they decide to wander into town one day.

Or if you’re a member of the X-Men, what your chances of dying horribly are going to be as some of the powers they’ll encounter as threats range from god-tier lethal to absolutely useless and detrimental to the Mutant's own health or wellbeing.

Omega

To start things off we’ll be diving into the top tier boys and girls first. Omega Class mutants are considered the strongest of their particular type and their powers usually get stronger, evolve, or max out at a ridiculous level.

Equivalent to gods amongst ordinary people, Omega types can bend the environment, reality, the elements, and others to their will depending on their particular mutation. Examples of this would be Magneto, Jean Grey, Professor X, Vulcan, Legion, Iceman, The Witness, and anyone who could easily wipe out a city.

But on the plus side, there aren’t a ton of the top-end city destroyer types as it’s pretty rare for a mutant of this strength to appear. This is usually because they’ve either died at some point from their powers, left our reality, were killed for being too dangerous, or fell afoul of the Dark God known as “Writers Retcon”.

It is common for a mutant of a lower level to “graduate” to a higher level. Either through artificial methods of increasing their powers, like when Apocalypse made his horsemen. Or through plot contrivances in a particular story.

Alpha

The next tier down from Omega are Alphas. These are your run-of-the-mill Superhero and Supervillain types that are strong enough to cause problems to society but not the wider world in one big go. But they are still very powerful in their own rights.

Alphas can still cause some serious problems to a city, or if enough of them band together like the X-Men or Magneto's little crews then you’re going to have a lot of destruction. Examples of Alphas would be Cyclops, Storm, Namor, and Mr Sinister. You wouldn’t want to fight them, but they’re still not going to blow up the world in one big bang.

Beta

The next tier down from Alphas is the Betas. These are Mutants that have powers that aren’t too strong but still have some relatively useful practical applications to their teams or the wider world.

For example, Rogue's ability to steal others' powers and memories whilst also potentially killing someone, and Wolverine's Healing Factor. Which worked well until his Adamantium bones eventually killed him.

There’s also Marrow who can protrude bones from their body but can’t rapidly heal. Or Strong Guy who can absorb kinetic energy and turn it into great strength, but is slowly killing himself every time he uses it.

They’re only useful for one specific thing, their powers have some drawbacks and there isn’t much room to enhance or improve it. So it generally only really benefits the mutant in certain situations so there's not a ton of combat potential.

Gamma

The next one down after that are Gamma Mutants. These are individuals who have powerful abilities they can’t control or are detrimental to themselves and impact their ability to live a normal life amongst other humans. Gammas also often have an inhuman appearance which can make blending in much harder if not impossible.

Examples of this would be Maggot who turns blue and has two giant Maggots inside him. Or Nightcrawler, who whilst being able to control his teleporting, looks like a blue demon and usually needs to see where he’s going so he doesn’t get stuck in a wall.

Beast is another big blue boy who’s a Gamma, and though he isn’t a different shade there’s also Cole Summers whose mutation is just being able to manipulate digital pixels from TVs and Satellite Dishes that are nearby.

A good reminder for Gammas is, are they inhuman and is their power odd, obscure and niche, or specific? If yes, then they’re low-level.

Delta

Another slot down in the tiers is Delta, these are Mutants that possess powers or mutations that don’t have any detrimental effects on their daily life but also aren’t that powerful, if at all. But on the plus side, Deltas tend to have an easier time blending in with other humans as their mutations are not noticeable or particularly useful.

For example, you have Loa who can pass through any solid object, but that object then immediately breaks apart. There’s also Wallflower who can control pheromones, or Domino who can affect probability (Luck) in her favor. Their abilities are generally passive and are relatively safe to be around as they can’t really cause a lot of collateral damage, if any.

Epsilon

Last but not least we have Epsilon, this is the lowest tier on the Mutant Level that you can end up on and if you find yourself on this you’re considered no risk to society or the world in general. Mainly because Epsilon Mutants are incredibly weak, or their powers have no combat and destructive potential.

Also, Epsilon Mutants tend to have a harder time blending into society as their Mutation makes them very noticeable, but borderline useless at the same time. This is where you would find the likes of Beak as we previously mentioned, but also Artie Maddicks, a Mutant that could project basic holograms. Or Flatman, a man that’s flat.

Whilst there is some debate that this classification system was apparently discarded somewhere over the years, it’s still a relatively less complicated method for tracking power levels compared to other versions out there

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