Description
Aw shit, here we go again.
So, this match, Ben 10 VS Green Lantern. The match that usurped Goku VS Superman 2 as having the worst like to dislike ratio for a DB episode on YouTube, the one that spawned a few week long discussions on it's accuracy and the portrayals of it's characters, the one that made Ben 10 relevant in VS again.
It's been a while since any relevant discussions about this, which begs the question, why the hell am I bringing it back up to begin with?
...I dunno, was just bored and wanted to talk about it and clear up some misconceptions for the hell of it.
This isn't really meant to serve as a defense for the episode or a debunk any specific video made in reaction to it, just my thoughts on the matter after looking plenty of things over.
But, since this is mainly based off the debate caused by DB's episode, I figured I should keep the rules consistent with that.
-Typical "willing to kill even if they're a pacifist in canon", "don't have prep time", etc. stuff
-Standard equipment, no one-offs like the Potis Altiare or Hal's other Power Rings
-The same continuities that DB used will be used here, meaning Omniverse Ben and Pre-Flashpoint Hal
Though, that last rule does help us segway into the first topic...
Crisis on Infinite Misconceptions
Let me be frank about one thing right off the bat: The Hal Jordan introduced in the Silver Age and the Hal Jordan who existed after Crisis on Infinite Earths are the exact same character, and any complaints about him being composited simply don't understand what happened during Crisis.
The Green Lantern Corps' storyline continued like nothing happened after Crisis, Hal explicitly remembers the events prior to Crisis , there are multiple instances of Power Rings being said to have the power to survive Crisis , along with several storylines from Post-Crisis (Including that one on the Desk of Death Battle where Ch'p got cucked) that can only work under the context of the Green Lanterns being unaffected by Crisis on Infinite Earths.
All of this tells us two very valuable things about Hal Jordan when it comes to this match.
1. Hal is the same character as he was in Pre-Crisis, meaning all of his feats, scaling, and abilities should apply regardless
2. All Green Lanterns have multiversal existence erasure-resistance
This means that all discussions about unfair compositing, how one would go about compositing Hal's weakness to yellow (It was always due to Parallax which Hal is now immune to), and the like are effectively null from here on out.
Should also be noted that all of New 52's feats would also apply to this version of Hal, as his Pre-Flashpoint and Post-Flashpoint counterparts merged during the events of Rebirth, making Rebirth's Green Lantern a canonical composite of the other two. And while current Hal has plenty of impressive feats, such as nearly breaking into the Speed Force on his own, I'm mainly gonna stick with his original, unmerged self for the sake of any arguments.
"Time, huh? Thanks for the tip."
This is going to be a pretty short bulletpoint simply because there's not much to talk about.
Hal has stated that time travel is harder after Crisis , but he's still shown to be perfectly capable of sending himself or even other people to different time periods . And the higher difficulty seems to be more with time being fucked over by Crisis than him being nerfed in any way, given that it's the only ability he found harder, and he fought on equal grounds with a Parallax possessed Barry Allen , who was also unaffected by Crisis, meaning Hal's power would be the same as his Pre-Crisis self.
This is mostly irrelevant to an actual verdict for this match, since both series work on multiverse theory which would render any timeline alterations meaningless, but the misconception that Hal can't time travel anymore is still wrong so I figured I'd mention it.
Failsafes
Oh boy.
So, there's a few different things to cover here: The failsafe itself, several other contingencies in the Omnitrix brought up with the failsafe, and in-universe ways of bypassing it.
The failsafe was only referenced and appeared during the events of Omniverse's finale, where it switched to Feedback to absorb a big bang that went off in Ben's face when he wasn't transformed. Effectively, the failsafe would let Ben survive anything that came his way by switching to the alien best suited for the situation. There are a few problems with this, the most notable of which being where its limits actually lie.
At the climax of the episode And Then There Were None, a Chronosapien Time Bomb goes off and eradicates every Omnitrix user and their timelines, including Ben Prime's . The Omnitrix's AI didn't even begin to take effect when Ben was being affected, meaning the failsafe wasn't capable of saving him, leaving two possibilities for the scene to come to mind.
1. No alien Ben had was capable of surviving the Chronosapien Time Bomb, which puts Hal ahead of Alien X
2. The failsafe was not capable of activating against the Chronosapien Time Bomb, which clearly shows its limits
For the former possibility, Alien X's peak of power would be below multiversal, which would leave him at a bit above the baseline for Universal+ power given his highest shown feats. This would also be backed up by Atomic-X's death from the time bomb, and Word of God saying that a single Celestialsapien could not survive this. If we accept this, Hal is significantly more powerful than Alien X and would be able to outmatch anything Ben could throw at him.
For the latter possibility, the failsafe has a clear limit to what it can save Ben from regardless of whether his alien could save him from it, which would mean we'd have to measure its utility with the strongest thing it activated for (In this case, a big bang). As Hal's Power Ring is more powerful than a big bang-scale event, and he's significantly faster than the fastest thing the failsafe's reacted to, he should be able to kill Ben the very moment the fight starts regardless of the failsafe.
Either way, this one episode severely limits the failsafe's usage in this debate.
As for the Omnitrix's other instances of a "failsafe", ultimately, it doesn't account for much. The energy pulse the Omnitrix originally gave off from trying to remove it isn't strong enough to do anything to Hal, and even at max charge, the Omnitrix's self destruct couldn't kill him either (Universal at peak VS Universal+ feats/scaling well beyond the baseline at the least).
Finally, it should be mentioned that many, if not all of the contingencies relating to the Omnitrix have been shown to effectively unusable in this fight as of Omniverse. Starting from Ben's tampering with the watch all the way to the end of the series, no variation of the Omnitrix was fused with Ben's DNA, making it significantly easier to remove than it originally was . Given how much easier it is to remove now, and Hal already having a speed edge against the failsafe (Unless you wanted to argue for a NLF for the Omnimatrix, which is faulty as is), there are very few arguments that could be made when it comes to Hal being unable to just remove the Omnitrix, whether it be how DB showed it or other methods.
Ben 1,000,912
With the above points said and done, we're left with one last compilation of all of Ben's aliens that could potentially affect Hal and how they ultimately stack up to him. This isn't going to go over every one of Ben's aliens, since otherwise we'd have plenty of instances of just "lol Hal statstomps", but it will take the most notable arguments and the ones with the most potential to give Ben an edge.
Upgrade: Hal's Power Ring isn't a standard Green Lantern ring anymore, instead being forged from his own will as a construct. This on it's own makes it unlikely Upgrade could hack the ring, but even if he was capable of it, Hal's overwhelming speed makes it impossible for Ben to tag him in this form.
Ghostfreak: Hal has resisted possession and mind manipulation multiple times in the past, making Zs'Skayr's own attempts at it unlikely to work, and GL's intangibility could counter Ghost Freak's (The same applies to other intangible aliens, such as Big Chill).
Echo Echo: Ben's attempts to revert back to human form after cloning himself left each of his clones working at a far lower efficiency than he could normally, which is suicide against an opponent with that large of a stat advantage.
Goop: While his body could theoretically let him take physical blows Ben normally couldn't, even assuming an attack of that caliber wouldn't vaporize him, it would simply send Goop's particles flying across the cosmos with no hope of reforming themselves. On top of this, removing the Omnitrix symbol from his body can outright remove the Omnitrix from Ben , which would instantly give Hal a victory.
Chromastone/Feedback: Given that Hal can enhance his own physical strikes with his Power Ring, he can simply punch out either of them without them getting a chance to redirect anything back at him.
Clockwork: On top of the Power Ring's other time manipulation abilities, it can generate chronal energy in an area with no time in it and let Hal disrupt a time-null zone , likely giving Hal means to counter his time manipulation. Not to mention, Clockwork isn't a physically capable combatant in the slightest, which means Hal could one-shot him before he could do anything.
The Worst: While argued to be indestructible, every Atrocian was wiped out when the Chronosapien Time Bomb erased Ben's universe, meaning their durability's limits are below Hal's power. Even if Hal couldn't hurt him, he can't hurt Hal either, which means Ben would have to switch regardless (Yes, I actually had to account for The Worst over stuff like Way Big, don't ask)
Toepick: Hal has shown to resist Parallax, the literal embodiment of fear, countless times after his revival, meaning Toepick can't do anything to him.
And finally...
Alien X
So, this is it. The most powerful of Ben's aliens, the being with control over all of time and reality, and the real reason this debate truly exists in the first place. With all of this in mind, how well does the Celestialsapien stack up to Green Lantern's might?
...Not that great, honestly.
First, when comparing them in terms of sheer stats, Alien X no-sold the universe's destruction and then casually recreated it , putting his power well beyond universal. While his exact power is unknown, as the multiverse-wiping time bomb is implied in and out of universe to be too much for him, the casual recreation and no-sell of the universe should put him a bit above the baseline for Universal+.
Pre-Crisis Superman, who could generate enough power to restore the multiverse after it was destroyed, was absolutely astounded by the power Green Lantern possessed , and believed another Power Ring user could end up killing him . Hal also fought evenly with Captain Atom , who once destroyed and recreated the universe, within a nanosecond, so casually he didn't even realize he did it . While Hal ultimately lost his fight with Atom, given how effortless the feat in question was, and how they were both even with each other up to the end, scaling to it would still mean Hal fought on par with a being who did Alien X's best feat, except exponentially better and with even less effort.
In terms of speed, the gap is even more glaring, with Hal's constructs being able to move at several duoquadragintillion times the speed of light (Yes, that is a real number). Regardless if you're attempting to calculate the speed of Alien X himself or even the failsafe, nothing comes close to that level of speed. Even if you wanted to argue that Alien X's speed is infinite due to existing in a universe without time, not only does the series itself not support this, as regular humans have done so repeatedly and are still slower than Ben's aliens, but Hal's ring has let him move in voids with no time before. Simply put, the gap between Alien X and Green Lantern is bigger than the gap between a normal human and The Flash's attosecond feat.
Even if we were to ignore the massive power gap, and argue for Alien X's abilities to overtake Green Lantern, even they don't stack up:
-Every active Green Lantern, from Hal to even Ch'p, survived the multiverse resetting Crisis, which is well beyond any reality warping or existence erasure Alien X is capable of
-Hal's previous examples of resisting time manipulation, along with having his own that Alien X has not shown an immunity to, puts Hal in the lead
-Hal has consistently resisted mind control from plenty of other opponents, and Alien X's control would be no different
-While Alien X's duplication does not share the same faults as Echo Echo's, Hal not only has the same ability, but would also be able to utilize it to far greater effect given his superior speed and power
And finally, on top of everything else on it's own, Hal actually has an ability that hard-counters Alien X.
In the episode The Forge of Creation, Ben and co.'s ultimate goal is to stop Aggregor from stealing the powers of a baby Celestialsapien. There is nothing implying that adult Celestialsapiens end up being immune to this, and it's actually implied to be the opposite, as the baby was going to have it's powers stolen from simply because it hadn't developed the multiple consciousnesses that hold back adult Celestialsapiens.
And guess who's capable of stealing superpowers?
In conclusion...
Even with all of the versatility Ben's countless aliens have at his disposal, Hal's superior power, speed, durability, experience, hax, resistances, and even abilities more than make up for anything that Ben could throw at him. And with Hal having the perfect way to take on Alien X, along with the high likelihood of being able to bypass the failsafe, only one conclusion really can be made for this match...
Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Sector 2814, wins
...i'm starting to think this journal is more and more pointless the more i look at it
ah well, no harm in making it, should be no harm in having this up