DC Comics’ vast array of other worlds provide plenty of room for writers to play, introducing infinite variations of beloved characters. And it’s the Flash’s unique ability to run his way straight into alternate realities that often allow readers a glimpse of these new worlds, and may be his greatest untapped superpower.
With Wally West’s recent tangle with an alternate reality’s version of the Legion of Doom in The Flash #771 by Jeremy Adams and Kevin Maguire, eagle-eyed and meticulous comic book readers may have noticed something that the Flash did not. The alternate Legion has built their evil base on the dark side of the moon—something that the quippy Flash notes as being rather cliché. What the Flash seemingly forgets, however, is that’s where the Totality—a think tank filled with both heroes and villains that includes Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luther—has parked their own lair in his reality.
The coincidence of two separate villainous crime clubs chilling out on the moon in two completely separate realities naturally begs the question of whether or not other information can be gleaned from DC’s multiverse. If there are strong similarities between worlds, in theory, the Flash could zip to another Earth to gather intelligence about a familiar foe or new enemy. If a missing person can be found in a location on one Earth, it could be assumed that a search in the same location on another Earth could turn up results. This seemingly small detail opens up a plethora of new avenues to explore, and new questions to answer. Is the location of one lair on the Moon in two realities a coincidence, or a hint at a potential ripple effect across the multiverse? And, if the Flash can do it, could his enemies use the same trick to their own advantage?
A similar usage of the potential of the multiverse is seen in Marvel’s 2021 miniseries Spider-Men by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli. In that story, the helmet-wearing villain Mysterio uses a trip to the Ultimate Universe to his advantage. After discovering that the Ultimate Universe’s Spider-Man is dead and has been unmasked, he uses his knowledge of Peter Parker’s identity to his advantage in the fight against New York’s wall crawler in the main 616 Marvel Universe. The villain’s universe-hopping goes to show that if the heroes don’t put the intel to good use, the bad guys certainly will.
While it seems that the Flash doesn’t quite clock the similarities between one universe and the other, it would certainly be interesting to see him start to use the multiverse for intelligence-gathering in the future. Readers can only hope he will realize the amazing opportunity that his superspeed has provided him before the baddie-of-the-week does.