The DC Multiverse Can Be Destroyed By Just ONE Being

The universe of DC Comics is defined by the crisis events that threaten to destroy it. The Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline reduced a vast multiverse to a single world; a generation later, Infinite Crisis split them again. In the currently-ongoing story Dark Nights: Death Metal, The Batman Who Laughs has come from a dark alternate multiverse to remake ours. But only one being in DC continuity could end everything in the DC Multiverse, even what exists outside of it: the Empty Hand, the ultimate villain of the miniseries The Multiversity. Most readers haven’t heard of it, but all readers are much more familiar with it than they realize.

The Multiversity was a 2014 comic book, written by Grant Morrison and drawn by a massive list of artists, that expanded on the concept behind the first multiverse team-up DC ever produced: that Barry Allen, the Flash of the main continuity, was inspired by the Golden Age Flash that lived on another world through reading comic books that told Flash stories about that world. Each issue of The Multiversity took place on a different Earth in the DC Multiverse, acting as a warning system to other worlds in which the comic books appeared. Even our world was in danger from the villains, the Gentry, who seek to invade worlds, corrupt their stories, and gentrify them; in the plot, this is why the comics were sold to us in the first place.

At the end of Multiversity #2, illustrated by Ivan Reis, the assembled heroes of the DC Multiverse discover the force behind the Gentry: the Empty Hand. Each member of the Gentry is a threat to multiple worlds (and, as the Ultra Comics issue revealed, to the reader themselves) but we see multiples of each member swarming around the Empty Hand, doing its bidding. It reveals that the attack on the multiverse was merely a threat assessment and that the Empty Hand learned it nothing to fear from the heroes of DC Comics. It dismisses them as it focuses on its current project: the Oblivion Machine, which it describes to the heroes as “the final chapter of your neverending story.”

The Empty Hand means this literally; in previous chapters, the Gentry demonstrated powers over comic books themselves, altering the Multiversity series and sending it through the multiverse. The Empty Hand holds the power to devour and reset multiverses endlessly, enabling the churn of continuity resets that define the ever-changing nature of DC superhero comics. If he were to use the Oblivion Machine, that ongoing story would end, resulting in a multiversal crisis that DC couldn’t recover from.

What is the Empty Hand? So far it’s only appeared in The Multiversity, but Dark Nights: Death Metal may bring it in contact with the main Earth, as Perpetua reveals that she is part of a species of universe creator deities called Hands, and the Empty Hand was hinted as being one of the entities the Hands refer to. The two share similar design features, mainly multiple horns.

But the Empty Hand is not just a fictional character in a book; it represents something bigger and more thematic. Grant Morrison revealed its nature in an interview with IGN:

Always I’ve thought, and particularly now in the era of event-driven comics where characters are subjected to these absolutely life-ruining events in every story arc, I wanted to sum up what all these stories are. It’s where the characters get to the end and they appear to have beaten the bad guy, and then an even bigger bad guy shows up and says, “I’ll get you later.” The real big bad guy at the end – he looks like the Ultra Comics character, but he’s also the reader. The empty hand of the reader when he puts the comic down and everything ends. But like the bad guy, he can also come back in full force and say, “You’ll meet me again.”

I like my books to have multiple meanings. There’s multiple ways of reading it. The big bad at the end represents all the big bads in every story. We just beat that villain, now here comes the Anti-Monitor. We just beat the Anti-Monitor, now here comes something that’s bigger than big. That was my thinking – the ultimate bigger than big, the ultimate universe destroyer. It’s the reader, who chooses to either participate or not.

In other words, you the comic book reader are the Empty Hand, the hand turning the page and witnessing more of the story. Every conflict the heroes of DC Comics face was created for you to consume, every villain serves your interests, and as long as a reader like you exists, the stories go on forever. The only way to truly end them is to close the books and put them down, making your hands empty for good. You are more powerful than every villain the Justice League has ever faced. Do with that what you will.

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