Just how powerful is the X-Men’s Psylocke? Marvel’s X-Men comics have sometimes been referred to as the superhero equivalent of a television soap, which naturally means some character backstories have become remarkably convoluted. Psylocke is probably the best possible example. It’s even been acknowledged in-universe, with Beast once quipping that Betsy Braddock was “our resident psionic Japanese-by-way-of-Britain ninja warrior.” Incredibly, that was in the ’90s, and Betsy’s story has become even more complex since then.
Psylocke is the sister of Captain Britain, born with powerful mutant psychic abilities. But her mind and body were swapped with those of a Japanese ninja assassin named Kwannon, who’s been retconned as a telepath in her own right. That makes it quite difficult to differentiate between displays of Betsy’s own powers, and those possessed by Kwannon. Making matters even more confusing, the two have recently been divided again, meaning Betsy is back in her old British body while Kwannon inhabits her own. They seem to possess roughly analogous psychic power.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men relaunch has seen Betsy Braddock chosen to replace her brother as the new Captain Britain. She currently stars in the ongoing Excalibur book, and is still struggling to familiarize herself with her new powerset. So readers can be forgiven for being rather bewildered at just what Psylocke is capable of. Let’s take a look at her powers in detail.
Psylocke Began As A Precog As Well As A Psychic
Betsy Braddock was created by writer Chris Claremont in Captain Britain #8, as the sister of the titular hero. She initially demonstrated a range of ill-defined psychic powers, with the most prominent being a vague sense of precognition. These precognitive flashes typically manifested in disruptive, uncontrollable visions; one of Betsy’s first caused her to lose control of an airplane she was piloting, and she crashed with her brother aboard. There were subtle hints that the visions were mystical in nature, tied to Betsy’s being part of a magical bloodline, and dark sorcerers could even manipulate them to cause her trauma and pain.
Betsy and Captain Britain had something of a falling out, and went their separate ways for some time, until she was forced to call upon her brother for help. She revealed that her precognitive flashes had grown in frequency, and that she’d been approached by STRIKE - the U.K.’s version of SHIELD - to join their nascent Psi Division. There, she was trained in the use of her powers, developing her precog abilities to the extent that nobody could keep any secrets from her any more. When Betsy joined the X-Men, however, she decided to stop focusing on this powerset and instead developed her telepathy. Over time, her precog talents appear to have diminished; from an out-of-universe perspective, it’s because the writers have forgotten this ability.
Psylocke’s base powerset is psychic
Psylocke’s base powerset is telepathic in nature, granting her the ability to access and manipulate the minds of others. She’s primarily concentrated on developing telepathy as an offensive weapon, projecting powerful psychic blasts and confusing the senses of others. When Betsy’s mind was shifted into the body of the ninja Kwannon, she refined the offensive use of telepathy, combining it with the martial arts knowledge she absorbed to create a unique and distinctive fighting style. When she’s engaging an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, Betsy uses low-level telepathy to probe their mind and identify their next move, making her hard to hit and even harder to block. This trick has become instinctive, and ironically proved a problem when she went up against Daredevil, because she was bewildered by sensing how he visualizes the world.
Psylocke is most famous for concentrating all her telepathic energy into a form of weapon, usually a psychic knife or blade; a single strike with this devastates a target’s mind, and even far more formidable telepaths like Jean Grey can’t resist it. In recent years, Betsy has become increasingly experimental, creating everything from psychic bow-and-arrows to a ball-and-chain. Interestingly, now that Betsy and Kwannon have split into separate beings, each retains the propensity to generate this kind of telepathic weapon.https://screenrant.com/xmen-omega-mutants-marvel-comics/
Complicating the issue, there have been several occasions where other telepaths have extended Betsy’s powers; in fact, an encounter with an alternate-reality Jean Grey left Betsy as an Omega level mutant for a time, with no definable upper limit to her mutant abilities. She also sometimes drifts into telekinesis, and happily blends this with her psychic weapons to give them mass and weight; on one occasion she used a psychic ball-and-chain that she said weighed ninety pounds. It’s unclear whether either Betsy Braddock or Kwannon are currently telekinetics.
Betsy Braddock Now Has The Power Of Captain Britain
Most recently, in the pages of Excalibur, Betsy Braddock has gained a substantial power-up. Her brother fell under the control of the sorceress Morgan Le Fey, and he gave Betsy the enchanted Amulet of Right, thus granting her the powers of Captain Britain. She now possesses all the strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and resistance to injury of one of Marvel’s most potent physical powerhouses, and can even generate an energy field that protects her body from harm. Although Betsy is yet to display the power of flight, it’s safe to assume that comes as part of the package as well, meaning she should be able to fly at supersonic speeds.
There is, however, an important limit to Betsy’s powers as the new Captain Britain. Her abilities are tied to her emotions; she is at her most powerful when she is determined and confident, but is weaker when her attention is divided and when she doubts herself. Worse still, she’s currently dealing with enemies who understand Captain Britain’s powers far better than she does. Morgan Le Fey’s strategy appears to be to encourage Betsy to believe she’s not up to the task, and that she is unworthy of the mantle of Captain Britain. So far, it seems to be working, and as a result Betsy’s current performance leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully that will change as part of her character arc in Excalibur.
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