Even though the Waverider has been recently relegated as the name for the Legends of Tomorrow’s ship, the character was so much more in the comics.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Generations Forged #1 by Dan Jurgens, Robert Venditti, Andy Schmidt, Bryan Hitch, Bernard Chang, Colleen Doran, Marco Santucci, Mike Perkins, Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Joe Prado, Andrew Currie, Kevin Nowlan, Hi-Fi, and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
With a special mission spanning across all of time, DC was bound to bring in some classic time travelers to handle the threat of Dominus. So naturally, characters like Booster Gold, old Booster Gold, Rip Hunter, and even the Reverse Flash made their appearances. But another time traveler, one long suspected to be dead, made his return to the DC Universe. Waverider, a superhero from the future, whose name was used for the Legends of Tomorrow’s ship, returned after his implied death many years ago. But his intervention came too late, wiping him away from the original timestream. He would return though, once the ragtag team of time displaced heroes stopped Dominus, and Waverider saw fit to return them to their proper times.
Born Matthew Ryder, Waverider debuted in Armageddon 2001 #1 by Archie Goodwin, Dan Jurgens, and Albert De Guzman. In the year 2030, Earth was ruled over by a tyrant known as Monarch. Despite the bleak situation, Matthew could still remember the days when heroes would step in to save lives and prevent monsters like Monarch from hurting people. As a scientist, Matthew used his intellect to deduce that Monarch was at one point a superhero before he became so corrupt.
With no powers of his own and no more leads to follow regarding Monarch’s identity, Matthew built a time machine to travel to the past and discover who Monarch truly was so he could prevent his future from ever happening. All of the previous subjects who used the time machine died, but in his desperation, Matthew went through and survived. More over, he was changed from the experience. Matthew could now time travel at will, but he also had a far more impressive ability. Having merged with the timestream, he could now see anyone’s most likely future. Once he arrived in the year 1991, he began using his gift to hunt down the future Monarch.
His search brought him into contact with multiple heroes, but when his powers connected with Captain Atom, they resulted in a massive release of temporal energies, allowing Monarch to come through and ensure that his future came to pass. In the ensuing battle, Monarch killed Dove, enraging her partner Hawk, who then beat Monarch to death. To everyone’s collective horror, Monarch was then revealed to be a future Hank Hall.
With his terrible future prevented due to the revelation of Monarch’s identity, Waverider began to help out across the time stream. He eventually came across the new version of himself that would exist in a much better timeline. This Matthew Ryder had no powers, but both still wished to protect the timestream. They ended up joining the Linear Men, with the powerless Matthew becoming the group’s leader, although the original Waverider chafed under the group’s policy of non-intervention.
Things would take a turn for the worse however, during Zero Hour. Monarch had returned, now evolved into a new identity called Extant, and killed Waverider. With no one else capable of traveling across time to save the universe, the powerless Matthew took up the mantle and led a team of heroes to stop Extant and Parallax from rewriting time according to their wishes. But even this new Waverider would meet his end when Mister Mind took over Skeets and forced the robot to kill him.
This seemed to be the end of his story (save for a few alternate versions that popped up here and there) until his return following Dominus’ attempts to change the structure of time. Waverider was wiped out in the initial wave, but returned after the team defeated Dominus and restored the timeline. While he did not end up playing a key role in stopping Dominus, he nevertheless returned all the displaced heroes to their proper places in the timestream, but not before giving the 1939 Batman an explanation of the great things that are to come from his life in the Linearverse. He may have not had a huge role, but his return leaves his future open for many more adventures.
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