Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-36603330-20180828203040/@comment-28802873-20180829121933

She can hold out on her own, she just tends to hold her powers back because she could lose her humanity. Power can determine strength, but not always, and having more powers doesn't ensure always winning. That aside, I don't think you can put Alien X in the same category as the others, he's... something else.

Gwen is the most powerful character in the franchise, she just tends to get defeated because she doesn't have enough control over her powers and does not really want to fight her boyfriend to death, meaning he can catch her by surprise, but he'd hold back too since he loves her. The only thing preventing them from getting the big guns out and showing how powerful they really are is, well, because they don't need to when they can help each other out (and neither really wants to give up their humanity for power, Ben 10k gave up his human form for a while and it had way too many negative consequences on his attitude and behavior)