Why It Sucks Being Jubilee
Disney+ went live today and I have spent a cold winter day binge-watching old episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series. It was a show I loved when it first came on the air back in 1992 and watched it religiously for its five-year run. It was the show that really got me into comic books, my most crippling addiction. The show stands up to this day but one thing really stood out, it really sucks being Jubilee.
It All Looked So Promising
This is her entire X-Men career in a nutshell.
In Night of the Sentinels, the two-part pilot, things started off rough for the soon-to-be youngest member of the team. She was a foster child who was coming to terms with the fact that she was a mutant, a class of society that was feared and hated due to their superhuman abilities. Her foster parents don’t know what to do and sign her up for the Mutant Registration Program, a government-sponsored agency that is supposed to help mutants —- somehow? They don’t really explain how having an army of giant mutant-hunting robots are supposed to help mutants, but whatever they’re the bad guys. Jubilee runs away from home, is rescued by the X-Men, runs away again, gets captured, and then is rescued by the X-Men a second time. In the end, Jubilee agrees to join Charles Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters. The whole purpose was so that she could learn how to control her powers, at least that was the whole point.
However, through the run of the series, Jubilee spent very little time being taught how to control her powers (she seemed to adapt to them between episodes) or learning much of anything to be honest. More often than not, the people put in charge of her well being kept on putting her in harm’s way. such as….
That Time Xavier Left Her With a Murderous Psychopath
One of Sabretooth’s little known powers is superhuman groping.
The B plot of episodes Enter Magneto and Deadly Runions featured the feral mutant known as Sabretooth infiltrating the X-Men. Feigning serious injury, Sabretooth is taken into the care of the X-Men despite objections from Wolverine. Wolverine tries to warn the X-Men that Sabretooth is a merciless killer that is beyond redemption. Xavier is more concerned with trying to cure Sabretooth of his uncontrolled rage and gives Wolverine a lot of “I know better than you” speeches inbetween sessions. At the same time, this is happening the X-Men are dealing with Xavier’s old nemesis, Magneto. While the rest of the X-Men are busy fighting Magneto, Xavier tells Jubilee that she has to stay behind and keep an eye on Sabretooth.
Professor X leaves a teenager who can barely control her powers in charge of a homicidal maniac whose mind he just failed to probe earlier. Xavier knows how dangerous Sabretooth can be, but he leaves Jubilee all by herself to look after him anyway. Sure enough, the moment everyone else is gone he tricks her into loosening one of his arm restraints allowing him to escape. If Wolverine hadn’t shown up at the last minute to save her life, she would have been murdered. That is a serious lapse in judgment for the headmaster of a prestigious school, let alone the leader of a group of mutant superheroes.
Went on Vacation, Ended Up in Mutant Auschwitz
Nobody told me mutant Auschwitz would be so much fun!
Later in the episode Cold Vengeance, Jubilee convinces Cyclops to let her tag along with Gambit and Storm, who are sent to investigate claims that the island nation of Genosha welcomes mutants. A few minutes earlier Cyclops thought that Gambit’s claims about Genosha were nothing but rumor and was incredibly suspicious of them, but sure Cyclops, let’s send the teenager that was entrusted into your care go on a vacation to a mostly unknown foreign country. As you’d expect, the episode ends with the trio of X-Men getting kidnapped by Sentinels — robots that would rightfully trigger some kind of PTSD for the poor girl. In the following episode, Slave Island, Jubilee and the others discover that they are slaves of the Genoshan government and strapped with explosive collars that suppress their mutant powers. Not only that, they are going to be forced into labor by their captors and they toss troublemakers into a tiny windowless cell exposed to the elements. It’s as about as close to a concentration camp as you can get on a Saturday morning cartoon.
When Jubilee tries to stage a jailbreak she is ratted out by one of her own teammates. Gambit later comes back and rescues his team, but was that really his intention? It’s not really clear if he is trying to bail on his friends or if it was a larger scheme to free them. That’s because the only reason he, or anyone for that matter, actually get free is when the gun-toting mercenary known as Cable blows up the Sentinel factory. The rest of her teammates only show up after the Genoshan government is already toppled.
Is Told She Has No Future Multiple Times
The cobwebs really punctuate the fact that she has been dead longer than the rest of her teammates.
What sucks more than being a mutant teenager? Being a mutant teenager being told by time traveler that you’ll be dead by the time you’re 30. In the Days of Future Past trilogy, Jubilee comes face-to-face with Bishop a mutant time traveler who tells the X-Men that all of their efforts are doomed. When Professor X probes Bishop’s mind he shows the X-Men images of the future. One of these images is a series of tombstones of the various members of the X-Men who are killed in this dystopian timeline. One of the tombstones belongs to Jubilee. It’s like “hey kid you’re not going to live past 30”. No sooner does she have to face this shocking revelation that she is sent out with the other X-Men to kill a super-Sentinel from the future that is nearly indestructible. Fun times!
And that was only the first season of the series!
Although the X-Men stop that apocalyptic future they end up preventing doomsday futures at least once a year until the end of the series. Time Fugitives, One Man’s Worth, and Beyond Good and Evil all paint horrible futures for mutants.
Irrelevancy, the Suckiest Thing of All
“Shhhh… only 15 more years of this until the sweet release of death little sewer girl — er I mean, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND GOD BLESS US EVERYONE!”
After that, Jubilee was reduced to being even more of a background character as stories focused more and more on the other (more popular) characters on the team. The only times she got a front-row seat in future stories was in Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas an episode where Jubilee and the team celebrate Christmas with the sewer-dwelling mutants they ignore throughout the rest of the year, and Jubilee’s Fairytale Theater where she is trapped in a cave with a bunch of shitty children and tells them fairy tails until they are rescued.
The character was supposed to be the next generation of mutants and she was always put on the sidelines while the grown-ups were either embroiled in soap-opera theatrics or laser fights. In fact, one of the biggest failings of Xavier’s School in this X-Men cartoon is the lack of any actual teaching going on. They don’t admit any new students and Jubilee doesn’t really learn anything other than life is a fleeting series of battles leading to an inevitable apocalyptic future where everyone you know and loves dies, but also you die before them!
