Warning: spoilers ahead for Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #5!
The DC Universe is replete with powerful objects, but few more so than the Mobius Chair, the device which finally told Batman the Joker's greatest secret - "There are three." Once property of the enigmatic Metron, the Mobius Chair not only allows the user to travel anywhere in time and space, but also provides the answer to any question asked of it. In one famous instance, it answered Batman's request to know Joker's true identity in a truly unexpected way. How the Mobius Chair actually works has remained elusive, but in Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #5, readers get insight into the mysterious device, and how it answers seemingly impossible questions.
The Mobius Chair is primarily associated with Metron, of the Fourth World, but it has been revealed others have wielded its power, including the Anti-Monitor (who actually built the chair) and Batman. In 2016’s Justice League #50, the Dark Knight sat on the Chair and gained its accumulated knowledge. Batman used the chair to discern the identity of his most famous foe, the Joker. Numerous theories have circulated for years on the Clown Prince of Crime’s origin and true name, and Batman used the Chair to find the truth; it revealed to him there were in actuality three Jokers, a finding that would play out in Batman: Three Jokers a few years later. For a long time, fans have wondered how the Mobius Chair is able to collate this kind of information, and now they get an explanation in Mister Miracle: Source of Freedom #5, written by Brandon Easton, with art by Fico Ossio, colors by Rico Renzi and letters by Rob Leigh.
Shilo Norman's reality has been tampered with; he is fighting a villain, N’vir Free, who claims he has stolen her father’s legacy as Mister Miracle, even though he has never heard the name "Scott Free" in his life. Oberon takes Shilo to the Mobius Chair, hoping it will answer his questions. Mister Miracle asks Oberon how the Chair works, and Oberon explains that the Omniverse is like a donut. While it appears to be a solid, indistinguishable whole from outside, cracking it at any point reveals a 'layer' of ridges and crevices - all present within the whole, but only distinguishable when exposed. Oberon points out that any being existing on this unique terrain would consider it the whole of the world, but wherever the donut is broken, a new layer complete with its own topography is exposed. What the Mobius Chair does is allow a human intellect to perceive all these different layers at once, both providing new information and allowing previously impossible connections to be made between different planes of reality.
When Batman sat in the chair, the answer to a question that had been plaguing him for years was revealed - just not in the way he expected. Batman is one of the most intelligent people in the DC Universe, but he never contemplated there was more than one Joker, yet the Mobius Chair, which allows the user to see the whole picture, showed him the truth. In 2019, DC followed up on this development in the Batman: Three Jokers miniseries; however, by the time the story saw print, developments in the DC Universe, both on the page and in editorial, rendered the story non-canon. Interestingly enough, this changes nothing about how the Mobius Chair works: Batman's layer of the donut has simply changed since then, rendering the information he was given no longer true.
The Mobius Chair is a wildly powerful cosmic artifact that tends to only appear in truly multiverse-shaking stories, remaining elusive and mysterious. Now, DC has pulled back the curtain on the fantastic device and showed how it is able to answer seemingly impossible questions, like the Joker's greatest secret.