Power Loss Depression

"Nothing but little Billy Batson..."

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who could fly. Now, I walk...just like plain folks. Once I would have ridden the wind. Now it drives me. The elements I shaped to my will have me at their mercy... And always, the wind - my friend, my servant, taunts me with its fury. It howls, it laughs, it mocks my very being. Without me, Ororo, it cries, you are nothing."

— Storm laments the loss of her powers in Uncanny X-Men #198

Sometimes, Power Loss Makes You Strong. Other times, it breaks you.

This trope is when a character who gets De-Powered becomes utterly miserable following the loss of their incredible abilities. Whether the character is The Cutie or a Jerkass, the point is that losing cool powers sucks. If the character was born with their abilities, the powers could be seen as comparable to their limbs or senses, hence why the loss hits them so hard.

I Just Want to Be Special is also a factor. May be a result of a Single-Episode Handicap, in which case the character will regain their superpowers at the end.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Despite maintaining that he wants to go back to his normal life, once Ichigo loses his powers following Aizen's defeat he realizes he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, his friends have been excluding him, and that he can't properly defend himself — let alone the people he cares about — and settles into a funk that's only broken when Kūgo Ginjō offers him a way to regain his powers. When this turns out to be a trap and Ginjō steals his newly-mastered Fullbring, Ichigo is left screaming in despair and anguish at the loss of his powers for a second time.
• Hunter × Hunter: During the Yorknew City arc, Neon Nostrade had her fortune telling Nen ability stolen by Phantom Troupe leader Chrollo Lucilfer. Later, Neon is shown to have fallen into a major depression, with her father's criminal empire crumbling as its finances were heavily dependent on his daughter's powers (especially inconvenient since he recently spent 2.9 billion Jenny at an auction) and later taken over by Kurapika. While what happened to Neon is tragic, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for her, considering she was a Spoiled Brat womanchild with a morbid hobby of collecting body parts (including eyes from Kurapika's clan) who hardly cared about anyone but herself, not to mention ignoring every warning and instruction given to her by her father and bodyguards while the Phantom Troupe rampaged through Yorknew meant she practically brought it on herself.
• Monster Rancher: In the third season, Tiger of the Wind loses most of his abilities after being sealed into and reborn from a mystery disc, forcing him to relearn them all. He goes into denial over this, repeatedly insisting that he's just as strong as ever and doesn't need any help, going through several Break the Haughty incidents in the process of slowly rebuilding his repertoire.
• My Hero Academia: Mirio Togata loses his Quirk after being shot by Overhaul's Quirk-destroying bullet while trying to rescue Eri. He puts up a strong front and fights hard against Overhaul regardless, but he soon breaks down into tears as he's forced to flee with Eri, despondent over how he can't do more to help. After the incident, he once again puts on a smiling face and doesn't seem to be angsting over his lost Quirk, but he is clearly a Stepford Smiler who's trying to be strong for the sake of the people around him.

Comic Books

• All Fall Down is a meditation on grief in the superhero community after all of them lose their powers when they're siphoned away to a teenage girl, who becomes the only superpowered being left. Some handle it better than others.
• The DCU:
  • JLA: Act of God: The story has every single superpowered hero becoming complete wrecks after losing their powers. Particularly sad cases are Superman who becomes drunk and homeless after his relationship with Lois ends; Wonder Woman who nearly commits suicide; and Kyle Rayner who obsessed with Sonar, a villain Kyle failed to stop when his ring was deactivated.
  • Poison Ivy (2022): Ivy loses most of her Green powers due to merging with Queen Ivy back in Fear State. The flashbacks in issues #1 and #2 show that she is deeply saddened by this, though the news that she is dying may also be a factor.
  • Suicide Squad: Enchantress joined the team with the promise of having her corruptive magic either brought under control or removed entirely. However, after a catastrophic mission in which the entity empowering her was destroyed, Enchantress tried force Nightshade at gunpoint to return her magic. One of Belle Reve's psychiatrists noted that there's a big difference between voluntarily relinquishing the power and having it unwillingly taken away.
  • Superman/Batman: Annual #2 has Superman losing his powers after an encounter with the villain Mr. Socrates. At first, Clark seems to be taking it rather well but when Bruce comes to visit him at the Kent farm, it becomes clear that he is not happy about losing his powers.
    Clark: What am I without those powers? Nothing! You said so yourself! Didn't you?
• Marvel Universe:
  • Fantastic Four: In Fantastic Four (2018) #25, Franklin lose his powers after a fight with an enemy called the Cormorant. Desperate to restore his powers, he tries to enter Krakoa using a special gateway only to find it doesn't work for him. Xavier contacts him and reveals that Franklin was never really a mutant but someone who altered himself to have an X-gene in order to fulfill his subconscious desire to be special. This revelation utterly devastates Franklin who was already moping about being a "normal" person.
  • X-Men:
    • Storm had her powers accidentally removed by Henry Gyrich with a gun invented by the mutant machinist Forge. It took some time for her to overcome her depression over this, especially since she was in a relationship with Forge before learning he created the weapon that de-powered her. Her journey of self-discovery across Africa in Uncanny X-Men #198 explores how psychologically shattered she feels before coming to terms with her new (temporary) status quo.
    • Angel had his wings amputated after they were mutilated by Harpoon, one of Mr. Sinister's Marauders, costing him his power of flight. Apocalypse takes advantage of Warren's emotional turmoil over the loss of his wings by offering to give him new wings in exchange for becoming one of his Four Horsemen.
    • In Astonishing X-Men, Wing, a student with the power of Flight and one of Armor's friends, commits suicide after Ord injects him with the Mutant Cure.
    • Magneto is left a shell-shocked and broken man at the end of House of M after the Scarlet Witch strips him and the majority of Mutants of their powers.
    • Polaris is among the Mutants who lost their powers during M-Day. Issue #177 of X-Men Volume 2 opens with her lamenting how empty and lifeless she feels without her powers. For a time, she tries to keep her depowerment a secret before revealing what happened to her and leaving the team.
    • The first issue of X-Factor (2006) opens with Rictor about to commit suicide due to losing his powers following M-Day. He is talked out of it but still has his moments of sadness and volatility over it. He regains them via Terrigen Crystals provided by Quicksilver only to lose them again and become even more depressed leading to him having Sex for Solace with Rahne. He almost quits the team because he feels useless as the only one without powers.
    • Downplayed with Professor X in X-Men: Deadly Genesis. Scarlet Witch restores the world to normal with Xavier once again possessing the ability to walk but he loses his telepathic powers. Xavier likens it to being deaf or still being a cripple but he handles it considerably better than most of the other examples on this page, especially his fellow X-Men.

Fan Works

• The Karma of Lies:. Played With. Out of everyone, Alix takes the revelation that she's no longer going to be a Miraculous hero the hardest, despite the fact that she technically hadn't become Bunnyx yet, but had met her time-traveling adult self. Part of the reason she's so shaken by this is the implication that, in order to maintain the timeline, the Bunnyx she met may have been an imposter all along.

Film — Live Action

• X-Men: The Last Stand:
  • Magneto is injected with the Mutant Cure and loses his powers in the film's climax. His reaction is one of complete horror and despair.
  • Inverted with Rogue whose powers were one of the worst examples of Blessed with Suck in the X-Men universe. She willingly took the Cure and is happy that she can touch Bobby without killing him.

Literature

• Matilda: Subverted. As it turns out, being put in a class appropriate to her mental abilities results in the loss of Matilda's telekinesis. But as Ms. Honey explains, it was being bored out of her skull that gave her powers, so she doesn't regret the loss because she's finally found something to occupy her brain. In the film she keeps her powers in the end.
• The Power: After her father and half-brother steal her skein, Roxy falls into quite the funk over the perceived loss of her ultimate Action Girl persona.
• The Wheel of Time: People who lose the ability to channel the One Power, which comes with a Power High and an incredible sense of feeling more alive, almost universally succumb to Death by Despair within a year or two. A rare few manage to survive by throwing themselves wholeheartedly into a new cause.

Live-Action TV

• The Flash (2014):
  • In "Power Outage", Barry's powers are drained by a metahuman named Blackout who can control and absorb electricity. This greatly upsets Barry who had come to see his speed as being a part of him.
  • Barry's powers are drained again in "Versus Zoom" by the eponymous villain. The next episode, "Back to Normal", opens with him feeling depressed about it. Not helping matters is that his friend Caitlin has been abducted by Zoom while Barry was unable to stop him.
• Ghost Whisperer: In "The Vanishing", Melinda seemingly loses her ability to talk to ghosts after falling and suffering a blow to the head. At first she pretends to be relieved because she thinks Jim prefers her this way but he is able to see through the facade and gets her to tearfully admit that losing her gift has really hurt her. Ironically, Melinda often sees her powers as a curse, rather than a gift.
• House of Anubis: Downplayed in the series finale. Having lost his Osirian powers in a Heroic Sacrifice, Eddie is the only student not shown having fun at the graduation party. He initially refuses Patricia's offer to dance, pointing out she hates dancing and that he isn't a "superhero" anymore when she calls him one. However, he does end up dancing with her as the series ends.
• Power Rangers:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Rita places a curse on Tommy that will drain away his Green Ranger powers after a magic candle burns out. In order to save the Green Ranger powers, Tommy gives his power coin to Jason the Red Ranger. Feeling he is of no use to the team, a saddened Tommy leaves Angel Grove but returns after the Rangers find a way to preserve his powers through constant recharges. However, Lord Zedd eventually finds a way to drain away all of Tommy's powers causing him to once again quit the team because he feels he has no place among them. Fortunately, he returns as the more powerful White Ranger.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force: Downplayed in the finale. The Rangers are forced to give up their morphers after defeating the Big Bad as their mission is now completed. While they do go on to lead happy, satisfactory lives afterwards, the team isn't happy about giving up their powers and having to disband.
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: The Milestone Celebration episode, "Once A Ranger", has the Overdrive team reveling in the fun of being Power Rangers before being de-powered. Feeling they have nothing to contribute as Rangers, they decide to leave saving the world to the returning veteran Rangers. However, they find their lives without being Rangers unsatisfactory and they return to action.
• Powers: Christian spends the series trying (with varying success) to deal with the fact that he no longer has superpowers. It doesn't help that superpowers in this series are implied to come to people who have a desperate, even neurotic, psychological need for them.
• Smallville: Usually inverted. Whenever Clark loses his powers, he is often happy that he can live a normal life. If anything, regaining his powers makes him feel depressed.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: After being exposed to two-dimensional alien beings in "The Loss", Counselor Deanna Troi suffers brain damage that causes her to lose her ability to read the emotions of other beings. She takes this very badly, becoming frightened, depressed and angry. She even decides to resign as Ship's Counselor because she feels she can no longer perform her duties. In fact, she wasn't actually brain damaged, it was just the sheer volume of emotions of the two-dimensional beings that temporarily overloaded her empathic powers.

Video Games

• BioShock Infinite: In the Burial at Sea 2 expansion, Elizabeth dies and is revived by the Luteces but loses her power to access alternate timelines. This results in her feeling very distraught.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: Shantae is shown to be very upset about the loss of her magic at the end of Risky's Revenge and openly wonders if she's nothing without it.

Western Animation

• Legend of Korra:
  • When we first meet Tahno, the leader of the pro bending Wolfbats team, he is an arrogant and sexist creep who mocks Korra's chances against him. Tahno is shown to be even more despicable when he and his team use blatantly illegal moves against the Fire Ferrets such as freezing and filling up water blasts with rocks, all of which is ignored by the referee. Normally, Amon taking away Tahno's bending would put someone like him in the Asshole Victim category, but Tahno looks so miserble and broken afterwards that one cannot help but feel sorry for him instead of reveling in his misfortune. It helps that Tahno does show a nicer side after what happened to him.
  • Despite unlocking her airbending to defeat Amon in the finale, Korra is devastated when he takes away her fire, water and earthbending. Korra needs the power of all four elements to be a fully realized Avatar and with only one element, she is simply an airbender. As Korra had built her entire identity around being the Avatar, this takes a massive blow to her sense of self-worth that not even her love interest Mako can heal. Fortunately, Aang is not only able to restore her full bending abilities but also gives her the power to reverse Amon's De Powering of other benders.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes:
  • Dr. Greyman lost his powers when examining some unusual orbs he found in a mysterious laboratory. His lack of powers causes him distress, and his students tease him for it.
  • Laserblast lost his powers by accident when trying to destroy that same lab, which was his lab, which he was using to try to enhance his powers. He continues experiments to attempt to get his powers back or give himself some sort of power, but ends up losing his muscles and eventually turning himself into his current form: Professor Venomous. As Venomous, this trope is zigzagged; in "Big Reveal" he states that he doesn't need powers, but in subsequent episodes he gives up everything trying to obtain power, even merging with or getting taken over by his evil other personality, Shadowy Figure, becoming Shadowy Venomous.
• Transformers: Prime: Bumblebee is devastated when MECH steals his T-Cog, leaving him unable to transform or use his arm blasters. Fortunately, they're able to get it back for him and Ratchet is able to fix the damage. MECH subsequently steals Starcream's T-Cog, leaving him unable to transform for most of the season.

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