As the extent of Perpetua’s omnipotent villainy grows, Hal Jordan’s own destructive past as Parallax may have just been retconned away.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal – Multiverse’s End #1 by James Tynion IV, Juan Gedeon, Mike Spicer and Rus Wooton, on sale now.
The latest Dark Nights: Death Metal tie-in special one-shot Multiverse’s End puts the Green Lantern Corps center stage after the cosmic superheroes had been imprisoned for the first half of the crossover event. Tasked with targeting Perpetua’s towers on planets loyal to her cause across the DC Multiverse that help harness the power from the worlds she destroys, Earth’s Lanterns team up with heroes who lost their worlds to strike back. And as the villainous Owlman from Earth-3 recounts Perpetua’s hidden history throughout the cataclysmic changes to the DC Universe to a captive John Stewart, he reveals that John’s old friend Hal Jordan may have been influenced by the omnipotent villain during his own villainous turn as Parallax.
While revered as the greatest Green Lantern of them all, Hal was once one of the most feared and powerful supervillains of the DCU. Apparently driven mad by the destruction of his hometown Coast City by Cyborg Superman, Hal rebelled against the Corps after the Guardians of the Universe after they denied him the ability to restore it with his Power Ring. Killing many of his fellow Lanterns, Hal absorbed the accumulated energy from the Central Power Battery on Oa and became the omnipotent villain Parallax. Hal would be the main antagonist in the 1994 crossover event Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, attempting to rewrite reality in his image and killing much of the Justice Society of America who had risen up to oppose him.
Hal would attempt to atone for his actions by sacrificing his life to reignite the sun in the 1998 crossover event The Final Night before bonding to the Spirit of Vengeance and becoming an iteration of the Spectre for a time. 2003’s Green Lantern: Rebirth revealed that Hal had been possessed by the sentient fear entity Parallax which took full control of his body while he was vulnerable from grief in the immediate aftermath of Coast City’s destruction, with the story clearing Hal’s name as he returned to life for good as the Parallax entity was purged from his body.
Owlman reveals to John Stewart that while she was imprisoned inside the Source Wall, Perpetua sent out subliminal signals to figures in the DCU to make it more susceptible to facilitate her eventual escape. Among the targets Perpetua influenced was Parallax, whom Owlman insinuates was driven to initiate the events of Zero Hour. The Crisis had quietly begun to create fissures in the Source Wall and Perpetua inspired Parallax to launch his own Crisis and continue to subtly weaken the wall. While the Source Wall wouldn’t be shattered until the original Dark Nights: Metal, Parallax was one in a line of figures that would help cause its destruction.
While Perpetua may not have played a role in Hal Jordan being bonded to the Parallax entity and his villainous actions during “Emerald Twilight,” Death Metal implies that Zero Hour was one in a series of Crises orchestrated from behind-the-scenes by the omnipotent villain while she remained trapped inside the Source Wall. And though Hal’s full culpability was already in doubt after the reveal of the Parallax entity’s existence and attachment to Hal, Owlman’s story suggests that, even while bonded to Parallax, Hal could have been in even less control of his actions during his time as a possessed supervillain.
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