I love a good power mimic. One of my all-time favorite comic book characters is the Mimic from the X-Men. His original comic appearances from the 1960s X-Men were some of the first comics I read growing up, just some old, beat-up issues from my dad’s collection. I’ve loved the Mimic ever since!

I also love his super-power, the ability to mimic and/or copy the super-powers of others. And wouldn’t you know it? That power shows up in a lot of other places, causing me to instantly like these other characters simply because they match my boy Mimic. Maybe it’s not the best way to pick a favorite character in a super-powered TV show or cartoon, but it works for me! And this week, I feel like celebrating all of these other power-mimics. I thought of including other power mimics in comics, but there are a bunch, same with video games. So I looked far and wide to see where the power was used on television. Super-power shows are much rarer.

Join me after the jump for for a handful of nifty neat power mimics from some pretty interesting shows! Warning, there are SPOILERS for the show Umbrella Academy, in case you’re not caught up.

6. Princess January

Have you watched the Secret Society of Second-Born Royals movie on Disney+ yet? Of course you haven’t. Why would you? But to sum it up, all second-born royals have super powers! I think. I haven’t seen it either, but my research uncovered Princess January, the second-born royal with power mimicry. She’s one of the main character’s best friends! Or is she? Dun dun dun! Sorry to spoil the Secret Society of Second-Born Royals on you, but you know you were never gonna watch it. January is royalty in Luxemborg, born only a minute after her twin brother. That minute means he gets to become king while she’s stuck as a second-born royal. But hey, she’s got the super-powers, so that’s the bigger deal, right? I don’t know, I haven’t watched the movie and never will.

5. Skylor Chen

Ninjago, baby! I don’t know what it’s about and I’m not going to learn. I did see the Ninjago movie…but I’m pretty sure it is very separate from the show. What I do know is that everybody has super-powers, and Skylor Chen, the Elemental Master of Amber, is a power mimic. All of the Ninjago have element-based super powers. There’s the core cast of the show, and then a bunch of randos off to the side. Skylor Chen is one of those randos. Her Ninjago wiki page is a mile long, but I’ve gleaned that she got her powers from her father, betrayed him to join the good guys and runs Chen’s Noodle House on Ninjago Island. I’m sure there’s a lot more of deep Ninjago lore, but I’m just interested in her powers.

4. Neito Monoma

Monoma is the character who inspired this list because I’ve been catching up on season 5 of My Hero Academia over the past week and he’s got some major appearances. All of the students have super-powers on My Hero Academia, which is a superhero high school. The main characters on the show are all in class 1A, while Monoma is a member of class 1B. Monoma is a bit of a crazy person with a Napoleon complex, always crazily insisting that class 1B are the real and better heroes. It’s fun. His hero name is “Phantom Thief”, which is a pretty darn awesome name.

3. Lila Pitts

Surprise if you haven’t finished Umbrella Academy season 2! The new friendly character introduced, Lila, ends up being a power mimic by the end of the season. She also ends up being a bad guy…but then maybe a good guy after all? Lila is an ally of Diego, so her powers were pretty easy to hide, considering his powers are all physical. Then when Lila started interacting with the rest of the cast, she was really able to show off her skills. Lila received her powers in the same weirdness that gave everybody else their powers, she just wasn’t adopted and raised by Sir Reginald Hargreeves. Fortunately, she survived the end of the season, so hopefully she’ll come back some day.

2. Peter Petrelli

The first season of Heroes was legit people. I was instantly drawn into the show, and especially one of the lead characters, Peter Petrelli. He was a power mimic and went on a long, emotional journey coming to grips with his powers and…just a whole bunch of other nonsense. Everything went off the rails in subsequent seasons, and it was clear they regretted giving Peter such an insane power. What are you supposed to do when your main character has a dozen different super powers? But at least for that first season, Peter was a good dude with a cool power.

The main villain, Sylar, could also copy powers…but he was not a mimic. Sylar’s power was to understand the clockwork of things, and then he’d kill people and apply their powers to himself. This led to both the main hero and the main villain having a bajillion powers each, with no budget to actually make that work.

1. Copycat

I saved the best for last! We’re all big Paw Patrol fans, obviously. And we all know that the Paw Patrol dogs eventually gained super powers and became the Mighty Pups, right? We all know the lore? Anyway, when they became superheroes instead of just first-responders, the Pups also had to go up against super-villains. This included The Copycat, an ordinary cat who also gained super-powers, specifically the power to copy the powers of the Mighty Pups! And this cat was a hardcore bad guy. He caused so much mischief and mayhem, and often made it look like the Mighty Pups were behind it! I tell you, some days it just doesn’t pay to be a heroic rescue dog with super-powers.

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