An explosive moment from DC’s Future State may have BRUTALLY taken out a powerful cosmic force within the Dark Multiverse. Now what?
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the story “Future State: Black Adam: The End of the Beginning” from Future State: Suicide Squad #2 by Jeremy Adams, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert & Jeromy Cox, on sale now.
The DC Multiverse is full of powerful gods, both good and bad. Even beyond them are cosmic forces that are next to impossible to destroy. But one caretaker of the multiverse just found himself dealt an unexpected and bloody turn of events.
During his trip to the past in Future State, Black Adam ends up seemingly killing Tempus Fuginaut — blasting through him and splitting him in two. But if Tempus is dead — what does that mean for the Dark Multiverse?
Tempus Fuginaut is a powerful cosmic force within the modern DC Universe. Tasked with keeping intrusions from the Dark Multiverse from spreading into the core multiverse, Tempus has had a handful of run-ins with heroes and villains across time and space. He trained the dimension-hopping hero Sideways, and convinced Wally West to help save the multiverse in Flash Forward — even saving Wally’s children Jai and Iris in the process. Tempus was at the heart of the Tales From The Dark Multiverse series, serving as a DC version of the Watcher and monitoring these twisted worlds. The last survivor of one reality, a Duke Thomas who’d become the Final Knight, even got the chance to attack and beat up the cosmic viewer for doing nothing for those worlds but watching as they crumble.
This suggested that, despite his prominence and power, Tempus was certainly not indestructible and could be defeated or even possibly killed by a strong enough force. And that force might have just blasted through the DC timeline. In the distant future of the 853rd Century, the coming of the Unkindness — an evil version of the Teen Titans’ Raven — has led to the complete annihilation and corruption of the universe. The only survivor of the chaos is the nigh-immortal Black Adam, who is still alive in the distant era. Infused with the last magics of his timeline, Black Adam is blasted through existence, careening out of control through elemental forces of the multiverse such as the Speed Force and the Time Stream itself.
Along the way, Black Adam ends up colliding with Tempus Fuginaut — and going right through him. The impact is enough to seemingly split Tempus in two, leaving the shocked cosmic figure to drop his staff and fall back in shock. It’s unknown what happens to Tempus after that, as Black Adam ends up crashing into the Rock of Eternity and sending it spiraling out of the center of the multiverse, only to land in the present-day core DC Universe. There’s a question still as to the fate of Tempus. He is a cosmic figure, and his work has been supposedly helping contain the corrupted powerhouses that live within the Dark Multiverse from reaching the rest of reality.
But this blow seems far more lasting and serious than the beating the Final Knight laid on him. If Tempus does survive this, then it proves how powerful he really is. But there’s a good chance that blow killed him — leaving someone like the Final Knight to continue his work monitoring the Dark Multiverse but with a far more destructive and pro-active bent. With the post-Death Metal DC Universe still needing to be defined, it’ll be interesting to see how the seeming loss of Tempus impacts the multiverse, and if it changes the future going forward.
