[SPOILERS] Incursion theories

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

So after reading Avengers #41, I went back and read Hickman's Ultimates 1-12, then I went back and reread the other Hickman stories (Secret Warriors, SHIELD v1 and v2, Fantastic Four and FF, and Avengers/ New Avengers again especially Infinite Avengers). There, I found a major clue to when the Collapse Event happened, and I discovered what I think was the cause.

Ok, so I'm going to post my theory of what's happened and what's going to happen, and my annotated notes. So be warned if you don't want to be spoiled!

1. What causes the multiverse to start dying?

New Avengers v3 #2:
REED: I’ve learned that somewhere, on one of these Earths, an event occurred that caused the early death of one of these universes. That untimely, unnatural event then caused a tiny contraction in the multiverse’s timeline. Now, everything would die ever-so-slightly sooner.

At first I thought that the early death of a universe was caused when Ultimate Reed channeled the big bang of an emerging universe to create an ultimate nullifier to defeat the galaktus swarm in Ultimate Extinction #5. However, the timing of this wasn't right. First, Sue Kang tells Ultimate Reed that she needed to assemble the Infinity Gems to stop something that was going to soon happen after Ultimatum.

The second is it also didn't match with the timing of when Franklin Richards notices a change in the universe. Immediately after Future Franklin saves Reed Richards from the Mad Celestials in Forever, the future changes. However, it isn't caused by saving Reed.

In FF v1 #18:
FRANKLIN RICHARDS: There's something... something I just noticed about a week ago... Be still. Tunnel within. You have the ability- sense the edge of it.
BLACK BOLT: Ah! It's like a mountain collapsing on the other side of the world. A tremor here signifying something much, much worse... Gods. There is a focal point. A through line.
FRANKLIN RICHARDS: Yes. Earth. You have to be there.

That the timeline has changed is confirmed by the Supreme Intelligence in FF #19 and FF#21:
FF v1 #21:
KREE TELEPATH: The old way... it has unraveled. There was an unbend, direct line of fate... a reckoning [the conflict between Black Bolt and the Supreme Intelligence]... and now, that is broken. No longer split. No longer diverted. Broken.
SUPREME INTELLIGENCE: I see it. We have a new destiny... we live... until everything dies.

So the event happened right before FF #18. I looked through the books published around July 2012, and noticed... Secret Avengers v1, which now we clearly see seeds all that's happening with the collapse. The Descendants storyline (#22-#25) is tied to the Planet Ultron timeline from Infinite Avengers, but more significantly, in Secret Avengers #28, early death of a universe that I think causes the collapse occurs:

Secret Avengers v1 #28:
CAROL DANVERS: The plan was pure desperation. I would reconnect with a local white hole- the way I used to. Allowing its flat energies to infect and replace my own. Hank [McCoy] surmised that the dangers to the fabric of our reality were nominal. The real risk was the potential of extinguishing the life of a newly-forming universe on the other side.

So while trying to stop the Phoenix Force from reaching Earth, Ms. Marvel causes the early death of a universe and attacks the Phoenix Force with an Ultimate Nullifier effect.

Ms. Marvel, using a plan thought of by Beast, causes the early death of a universe, causing, the timeline to change. Each time the Ultimate Nullifier is used, it causes the early death of a universe and the dying of the multiverse. HOWEVER, Ultimate Reed using the Ultimate Nullifier on Earth 1610 also causes the multiverse to contract and die faster.

SECRET AVENGERS v1 #18:
BEAST: The multiverse is a living structure. Entirely new universes bubble off of it every day. Not all of them have a perfect big bang. Some emerge broken or malformed. Theses are called bad continua. The negative zone famously discovered by Reed Richards, for example is a bad continuum.

2. Why does Black Swan destroy Earths?

New Avengers #2:
REED: If this could easily be stopped… it should have been stopped. Which means there are two more likely possibilities…
T’CHALLA: Right. The problem is systemic- inherent to the structure of the universe- and unable to be corrected, or it’s not, and something is actively working towards the death of everything.

Black Swan serves Rabum Alal. However, she doesn't just destroy Earths when two Earths are naturally about to collide. She recruits heroes, specifically each universe's Manifold. Why?

New Avengers v3 #2:
SWAN: A Manifold is useless outside its native universe.

New Avengers v3 #15
SWAN: You found this world’s Manifold so that he could be used as Rabum Alal intended.

How does Black Swan use Manifold? The answer is that Manifold's ability isn't simple teleportation. A Manifold has the ability to move the anchor point of a universe. So this means that Manifold can potentially use his ability to move a universe closer to another universe, or away from another universe. Black Swan isn't just waiting for incursions to occur; she is accelerating the dying of the multiverse by using Manifold to CAUSE incursions.

3. Who is Rabum Alal?
New Avengers v3 #13:
BLACK PRIESTS: Is that you looking on, Mapmakers? Or do I have the honor of addressing an ebony king? A day is coming- convergence. And on that day, the final word will be spoken. If all that you have believed has led you to a place opposing us… the Black Priests… then you have to ask yourselves… what value does your life have at all? What hope is there?

I'm not sure who Rabum Alal is, but I believe that he is one of many ebony kings that opposes the ivory kings, the beyonders.

So throughout these books, we know there are several entities, besides the beyonders, who may benefit from the collapsing of the multiverse into a single timeline.

One we are introduced to in Infinite Avengers, is Worldcore, that wants to purge Planet Ultron from its history, reimagining a better origin for itself. Worldcore, whose evolution traces from Leonardo da Vinci's Life Model Decoys to Jim Hammond Human Torch to the adaptoids and Ultron, tells Rogers that to perfect itself and change the past, it created a powerful singularity.

Avengers v5 #33:
WORLDCORE: In order to achieve perfection, we created protocols to reimagine our creation. A plan to correct future errors before they occurred.

Avengers v5 #33:
WORLDCORE: But traveling to the past requires a super-massive singularity strong enough to bend space-time- skim the event horizon at a high enough speed and you warp the temporal field, arriving in the past instead of the now. So we fed the over-mined, collapsed supergiants of this local star system until they combined to become a gaping temporal maw.

This has been referenced before, when Black Swan introduces Rabum Alal:

New Avengers #5:
SWAN: There was everything. Followed by nothing. A swirling, gaping maw that swallowed life-giving suns. And then… we cowered in the night.

So Worldcore's creation of an enormous singularity in the solar system is the birth of Rabum Alal, and its also why Earth is the focal point of the incursions. There is also such a vortex in the middle of the Negative Zone, which is a universe that had a bad big bang.

We have also met MANY other beings that have changed or been brought back to life after encountering a being from a space between universes, including the Shadow Council and Nikola Tesla. The inhabitants of these spaces, including Michelangelo, appear to be beings that contain multiple souls, or who exist across many multiverses or at all times.

Secret Avengers v1 #19:
VOYDANOI: Some call them elder gods or the many-souled ones; creatures who walked the earth before man or animal. So huge were tehse things that they contained multiple souls.They lived and died, so the story goes, before there was a heaven, so there was nowhere for their souls to go. Their souls are locked in their bones.

Others may become this because of a mutation. The most well known example is Jamie Madrox. In X-Factor v2, its revealed that Madrox isn't a normal mutant, but a "throwback", and its speculated that his dupes are created pulling Madroxes from other dimensions. Tryp is also a being like Michelangelo who exists at all times and across dimensions.

In SHIELD v1, Newton discovers from the deviants the Hidden Arts that lead to the the Secret Alchemy, the Infinity Formula that gives immortality. Newton is identified in SHIELD v1 #3 by a deviant to have a special gene that allows him to breed with a deviant, creating an offspring (Leonid). Its possible that Newton has Inhuman genes, or something else. This is brought up again in Secret Avengers v1 #21 as a secret breeding project of the Shadow Council.

Secret Avengers v1 #21:
ROGERS: You... the Shadow Council... conducted breeding experiments.
HOOD: They were volunteers. Men, mostly. The Council were hoping for a hybrid that could more easily communicate with out owners. That wasn't quite what they got back, but the results were... useful.

So we seem to have two or three sorts of entities that may be allied, opposed or connected: first, artificial sentience, animated by magic, that culminates in Worldcore. And second, multi-souled alien beings that live in the space between dimensions that want to create a human/ alien hybrid. We also have servants like Tesla, the Shadow Council and Black Swan, who are rescued by these beings. Rabum Alal seems to be one of these beings birthed by the singularity created by Worldcore.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

4. What is the going to happen with the rogue planet?
Avengers v5 #24:
RHODEY STARK: Don’t you see, they threw it backwards… we can use this- we… I can help them. (3030 AD)
RHODEY STARK: It’ll keep everyone thinking that it’s for the greater good- which it is- but it’ll also hide its other, truer purpose. I made you a new weapon. Just what any little boy named Stark could hope for. And it’s a much better one than anti-matter bombs, or even the Sol’s Hammer that you Illuminati have been busy making.

It's clear now that the multiverse is going to collapse into a single universe with three possible timelines, each depending on what happens to the rogue planet. In one timeline, which is the 2060 timeline that the Time Gem first sends the Avengers to in Infinite Avengers, Stark sacrifices the rogue planet to try to stop an incursion, but fails.

Avengers v5 #34:
IRON LAD: We stand outside time… so we remember. And the last time we did this- you making it all the way here- we let you go back to convince the monster, Tony Stark, to find a better way to combat the incursions. You did… and all their ideas failed. Secondary Earths, altered orbits, sacrificing the in-phase rogue planet- everything still died. So now we’re going to try something else.

When Stark and Rogers return to the present this time, they create a new timeline where Earth is destroyed and the rogue planet phases in and becomes Battleworld, which is also Planet Ultron. When the Planet Ultron Romanov AI gives Natasha the information to defeat Ultron to give to Franklin, it's not for future Franklin that they meet later in 5345, but kid Franklin in the past, who is the key to ending Battleworld/ Planet Ultron and the eventual evolution of Worldcore.

There are 3 timelines that correspond to the 3 2060 timelines that the Human Machine chases Newton and the Star Child to in SHIELD v2 #4: The Broken Loop (The Rebirth of Man), The Feedback Loop (Tomorrow's Tomorrow) and The Closed Loop (The End of the World). The Feedback Loop is the timeline where the rogue planet is sacrificed. The Closed Loop is the timeline where Earth is destroyed and the rogue planet becomes Battleworld/ Planet Ultron. These two are stuck in a time loop explained in the Infinite Avengers story and fighting each other in a war across time. The Broken Loop is the timeline when the heroes find a way to break the time loop and the rogue planet is reborn as a New Earth by the Phoenix Force, or perhaps Earth is destroyed and reborn by the Phoenix Force, which could happen in several ways. When the Ultron bomb explodes and corrupts Worldcore, it temporarily destroys all three timelines, trapping Kang, Ironlad and Immortus in a broken temporal space.

5. Do the O5 X Men have something to do with this?
Yes, kind of. I think what happened to them was that when Beast took the O5 out of their original timeline (in All New X-Men v1 #1 published on 1/2013), he created a new universe, which is the 2nd incursion in New York, after the Wakanda incursion. Beast notices that the Statue of Liberty has been replaced by a statue of Magneto, which is something that is very possible in a world where the O5 X-Men disappear. Because this Earth is destroyed in New Avengers #5 (published on 6/2013), when Xaviar tries to send the O5 back to the past during Battle of the Atom in Uncanny X-Men #13 (published on 12/2013), it fails because Earth has already been destroyed in that universe.

6. What is the fivefold path of The Shield?
The Greater Science: This is a Hegelian idea that progress can be pushed but at a great cost. Anything can be accomplished, such as stopping Galactus, if the price can be paid.
The Hidden Arts: This is alien magic that Newton learned from the Deviants. It leads to the creation of the Infinity Formula.
The Secret Alchemy: This is the Infinity Formula that gives immortality.
the Quiet Math: This is an equation that solves for everything that proves the world will end in 2060.
The Silent Truth: This is absolute knowledge that the world will end, a philosophy similar to Epicureanism.
Members of The Shield have faith that this is not how the world ends because they have knowledge, a vision, of how the world will end. Newton discovers WHEN the world will end, which is 2060.

In a later post I'll explain in more detail exactly what happened in Infinite Avengers.

[Mooper Films]

I like your theory on the rogue planet becoming Battleworld because it would make sense. The final incursion and the death of everything and then everything that survived from the various incursions is put on the rogue planet and there you go, Battleworld. Something from each Earth, from each universe put together because its out of phase with everything else.

[Viteh]

Pretty good theory. The ebony kings are a typo though.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I like your theory on the rogue planet becoming Battleworld because it would make sense. The final incursion and the death of everything and then everything that survived from the various incursions is put on the rogue planet and there you go, Battleworld. Something from each Earth, from each universe put together because its out of phase with everything else.

In Infinite Avengers (Avengers v5 #31) the Rogers AI explains to Steve what Planet Ultron is:
ROGERS AI: Well, I can tell you that you’re not a hero lost in future New York- you’re an animal in a zoo. And this is no longer Earth, Human- it’s Planet Ultron.
A zoo seems to describe Battleworld very well. But its all actually controlled by Ultron spawned AI (the Descendants from Secret Avengers).

[TheObsessor]

I've got to say, this is well thought out (and probably took quite a bit of time). Good job.

[vitruvian]

So after reading Avengers #41, I went back and read Hickman's Ultimates 1-12, then I went back and reread the other Hickman stories (Secret Warriors, SHIELD v1 and v2, Fantastic Four and FF, and Avengers/ New Avengers again especially Infinite Avengers). There, I found a major clue to when the Collapse Event happened, and I discovered what I think was the cause.

Ok, so I'm going to post my theory of what's happened and what's going to happen, and my annotated notes. So be warned if you don't want to be spoiled!

1. What causes the multiverse to start dying?

New Avengers v3 #2:
REED: I’ve learned that somewhere, on one of these Earths, an event occurred that caused the early death of one of these universes. That untimely, unnatural event then caused a tiny contraction in the multiverse’s timeline. Now, everything would die ever-so-slightly sooner.

At first I thought that the early death of a universe was caused when Ultimate Reed channeled the big bang of an emerging universe to create an ultimate nullifier to defeat the galaktus swarm in Ultimate Extinction #5. However, the timing of this wasn't right. First, Sue Kang tells Ultimate Reed that she needed to assemble the Infinity Gems to stop something that was going to soon happen after Ultimatum.

The second is it also didn't match with the timing of when Franklin Richards notices a change in the universe. Immediately after Future Franklin saves Reed Richards from the Mad Celestials in Forever, the future changes. However, it isn't caused by saving Reed.

In FF v1 #18:
FRANKLIN RICHARDS: There's something... something I just noticed about a week ago... Be still. Tunnel within. You have the ability- sense the edge of it.
BLACK BOLT: Ah! It's like a mountain collapsing on the other side of the world. A tremor here signifying something much, much worse... Gods. There is a focal point. A through line.
FRANKLIN RICHARDS: Yes. Earth. You have to be there.

That the timeline has changed is confirmed by the Supreme Intelligence in FF #19 and FF#21:
FF v1 #21:
KREE TELEPATH: The old way... it has unraveled. There was an unbend, direct line of fate... a reckoning [the conflict between Black Bolt and the Supreme Intelligence]... and now, that is broken. No longer split. No longer diverted. Broken.
SUPREME INTELLIGENCE: I see it. We have a new destiny... we live... until everything dies.

So the event happened right before FF #18. I looked through the books published around July 2012, and noticed... Secret Avengers v1, which now we clearly see seeds all that's happening with the collapse. The Descendants storyline (#22-#25) is tied to the Planet Ultron timeline from Infinite Avengers, but more significantly, in Secret Avengers #28, early death of a universe that I think causes the collapse occurs:

Secret Avengers v1 #28:
CAROL DANVERS: The plan was pure desperation. I would reconnect with a local white hole- the way I used to. Allowing its flat energies to infect and replace my own. Hank [McCoy] surmised that the dangers to the fabric of our reality were nominal. The real risk was the potential of extinguishing the life of a newly-forming universe on the other side.

So while trying to stop the Phoenix Force from reaching Earth, Ms. Marvel causes the early death of a universe and attacks the Phoenix Force with an Ultimate Nullifier effect.

Ms. Marvel, using a plan thought of by Beast, causes the early death of a universe, causing, the timeline to change. Each time the Ultimate Nullifier is used, it causes the early death of a universe and the dying of the multiverse. HOWEVER, Ultimate Reed using the Ultimate Nullifier on Earth 1610 also causes the multiverse to contract and die faster.

SECRET AVENGERS v1 #18:
BEAST: The multiverse is a living structure. Entirely new universes bubble off of it every day. Not all of them have a perfect big bang. Some emerge broken or malformed. Theses are called bad continua. The negative zone famously discovered by Reed Richards, for example is a bad continuum.

2. Why does Black Swan destroy Earths?

New Avengers #2:
REED: If this could easily be stopped… it should have been stopped. Which means there are two more likely possibilities…
T’CHALLA: Right. The problem is systemic- inherent to the structure of the universe- and unable to be corrected, or it’s not, and something is actively working towards the death of everything.

Black Swan serves Rabum Alal. However, she doesn't just destroy Earths when two Earths are naturally about to collide. She recruits heroes, specifically each universe's Manifold. Why?

New Avengers v3 #2:
SWAN: A Manifold is useless outside its native universe.

New Avengers v3 #15
SWAN: You found this world’s Manifold so that he could be used as Rabum Alal intended.

How does Black Swan use Manifold? The answer is that Manifold's ability isn't simple teleportation. A Manifold has the ability to move the anchor point of a universe. So this means that Manifold can potentially use his ability to move a universe closer to another universe, or away from another universe. Black Swan isn't just waiting for incursions to occur; she is accelerating the dying of the multiverse by using Manifold to CAUSE incursions.

3. Who is Rabum Alal?
New Avengers v3 #13:
BLACK PRIESTS: Is that you looking on, Mapmakers? Or do I have the honor of addressing an ebony king? A day is coming- convergence. And on that day, the final word will be spoken. If all that you have believed has led you to a place opposing us… the Black Priests… then you have to ask yourselves… what value does your life have at all? What hope is there?

I'm not sure who Rabum Alal is, but I believe that he is one of many ebony kings that opposes the ivory kings, the beyonders.

So throughout these books, we know there are several entities, besides the beyonders, who may benefit from the collapsing of the multiverse into a single timeline.

One we are introduced to in Infinite Avengers, is Worldcore, that wants to purge Planet Ultron from its history, reimagining a better origin for itself. Worldcore, whose evolution traces from Leonardo da Vinci's Life Model Decoys to Jim Hammond Human Torch to the adaptoids and Ultron, tells Rogers that to perfect itself and change the past, it created a powerful singularity.

Avengers v5 #33:
WORLDCORE: In order to achieve perfection, we created protocols to reimagine our creation. A plan to correct future errors before they occurred.

Avengers v5 #33:
WORLDCORE: But traveling to the past requires a super-massive singularity strong enough to bend space-time- skim the event horizon at a high enough speed and you warp the temporal field, arriving in the past instead of the now. So we fed the over-mined, collapsed supergiants of this local star system until they combined to become a gaping temporal maw.

This has been referenced before, when Black Swan introduces Rabum Alal:

New Avengers #5:
SWAN: There was everything. Followed by nothing. A swirling, gaping maw that swallowed life-giving suns. And then… we cowered in the night.

So Worldcore's creation of an enormous singularity in the solar system is the birth of Rabum Alal, and its also why Earth is the focal point of the incursions. There is also such a vortex in the middle of the Negative Zone, which is a universe that had a bad big bang.

We have also met MANY other beings that have changed or been brought back to life after encountering a being from a space between universes, including the Shadow Council and Nikola Tesla. The inhabitants of these spaces, including Michelangelo, appear to be beings that contain multiple souls, or who exist across many multiverses or at all times.

Secret Avengers v1 #19:
VOYDANOI: Some call them elder gods or the many-souled ones; creatures who walked the earth before man or animal. So huge were tehse things that they contained multiple souls.They lived and died, so the story goes, before there was a heaven, so there was nowhere for their souls to go. Their souls are locked in their bones.

Others may become this because of a mutation. The most well known example is Jamie Madrox. In X-Factor v2, its revealed that Madrox isn't a normal mutant, but a "throwback", and its speculated that his dupes are created pulling Madroxes from other dimensions. Tryp is also a being like Michelangelo who exists at all times and across dimensions.

In SHIELD v1, Newton discovers from the deviants the Hidden Arts that lead to the the Secret Alchemy, the Infinity Formula that gives immortality. Newton is identified in SHIELD v1 #3 by a deviant to have a special gene that allows him to breed with a deviant, creating an offspring (Leonid). Its possible that Newton has Inhuman genes, or something else. This is brought up again in Secret Avengers v1 #21 as a secret breeding project of the Shadow Council.

Secret Avengers v1 #21:
ROGERS: You... the Shadow Council... conducted breeding experiments.
HOOD: They were volunteers. Men, mostly. The Council were hoping for a hybrid that could more easily communicate with out owners. That wasn't quite what they got back, but the results were... useful.

So we seem to have two or three sorts of entities that may be allied, opposed or connected: first, artificial sentience, animated by magic, that culminates in Worldcore. And second, multi-souled alien beings that live in the space between dimensions that want to create a human/ alien hybrid. We also have servants like Tesla, the Shadow Council and Black Swan, who are rescued by these beings. Rabum Alal seems to be one of these beings birthed by the singularity created by Worldcore.

A newly forming universe wouldn't have an Earth yet, though.

[SpiderOrange]

[B]4.

5. Do the O5 X Men have something to do with this?
Yes, kind of. I think what happened to them was that when Beast took the O5 out of their original timeline (in All New X-Men v1 #1 published on 1/2013), he created a new universe, which is the 2nd incursion in New York, after the Wakanda incursion. Beast notices that the Statue of Liberty has been replaced by a statue of Magneto, which is something that is very possible in a world where the O5 X-Men disappear. Because this Earth is destroyed in New Avengers #5 (published on 6/2013), when Xaviar tries to send the O5 back to the past during Battle of the Atom in Uncanny X-Men #13 (published on 12/2013), it fails because Earth has already been destroyed in that universe.

This post was awesome! You set everything and explained everything to catch me up to date. Thank you for your time and passion in doing that. Here's a question though...

Time travel stories are really starting to make my head hurt. I am not trolling but admittedly I only hang out in the Spider side of the MU. So can someone explain this to me...

Ok, Forgive my ignorance on the matter. Outside of AvX, I haven't kept up with the X books in years because quite frankly they are a mess to me right now. But I do know about the O5 being sent to the future. So you're saying by doing that, Beast destroyed the Earth timeline that the O5 come from? In other words, from the moment the 05 came forward to our time, their departure from their time created a brand new Earth? But as a result of that Earth being destroyed the 05 can't go back? Even to the exact point in time from which they were taken before the timeline changed? I missed the issue where Xavier tries to send them back but if they are stuck in our time, then nothing of the last 25 or so years occurred for the X-men so doesn't that sorta change present day? Also, has anything been said on what role the Xmen have in SW? I'm wondering since I feel like I've seen solicits where the 05 are battling the X-Men from the Ultimate Universe with Miles and that has to be helping mess everything up since time displaced X-Men are now jumping dimensions.

Age of Ultron happened because Wolverine changed the past, but when he stopped himself from changing the past, that world ceased to exist. So does that world, still in fact exist (Age of Ultron)? It shouldn't... he never killed Hank, or he did kill Hank, but went back to stop himself from going back to kill Hank. So if he stops himself from killing Hank, does Age of Ultron still exist, regardless of the fact that the event that spawned that world / timeline / dimension never took place? It's kind of the same issue I'm having with the X Men books. The events for Age of Apocalypse never happened now, but once a choice or event takes place, that universe is still created and can never be undone? Is that what Hickman is saying? (Again, sorry...I haven't read Avengers, New Avengers or New Ultimates or anything to that effect...) So worlds, once created can never be undone even if the events in the timeline that created them never took place? I hope this post made sense, I am just befuddled right now as to how the MU can be in it's current shape from the start if the 05, who were very instrumental in the original MU timeline literally disappeared from time for decades and were brought here by Beast. The fact that they are stuck here should create a ripple in time effecting every major title at MU. And I'm a little confused as to how that relates to the Ultimate Universe crashing into the MU. If we literally are creating new universes with every choice or decision we make, no wonder all these incursions are happening.

[Random4]

Do you guys think we will see an appearance of the Council of Reeds?

will the Illuminati ask for their help?

[hawkeyefan]

Some very interesting ideas and connections here. Good job on the research.

I don't know if it will have anything to do with Remender's Secret Avengers, though, or with Captain Marvel accessing her binary powers. I feel like so much of Hickman's work is interconnected that there is no need to look outside of it for much.

[jphamlore]

In Infinite Avengers (Avengers v5 #31) the Rogers AI explains to Steve what Planet Ultron is:
ROGERS AI: Well, I can tell you that you’re not a hero lost in future New York- you’re an animal in a zoo. And this is no longer Earth, Human- it’s Planet Ultron.
A zoo seems to describe Battleworld very well. But its all actually controlled by Ultron spawned AI (the Descendants from Secret Avengers).

Your deductions are probably the single greatest act of fan analysis I have ever seen in comics. Bravo, I salute you!

From a purely crass commercial standpoint, how can Rabum Alal not have some link to Ultron given the timing of the release of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. Or at least have Ultron running Battleworld.

Also it would correct a comics injustice that Ultron's character was treated so badly in the original Secret Wars. I think Ultron's treatment trashed that character until Busiek brought Ultron back into prominence, but I have never like the swarm depiction of Ultron. I want a big bad indestructible single entity Ultron, one I hope to see in Secret Wars. And it would be ironic to see Ultron get his revenge on all of Doom, Molecule Man, and Galactus.

[Random4]

Your deductions are probably the single greatest act of fan analysis I have ever seen in comics. Bravo, I salute you!

From a purely crass commercial standpoint, how can Rabum Alal not have some link to Ultron given the timing of the release of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. Or at least have Ultron running Battleworld.

Also it would correct a comics injustice that Ultron's character was treated so badly in the original Secret Wars. I think Ultron's treatment trashed that character until Busiek brought Ultron back into prominence, but I have never like the swarm depiction of Ultron. I want a big bad indestructible single entity Ultron, one I hope to see in Secret Wars. And it would be ironic to see Ultron get his revenge on all of Doom, Molecule Man, and Galactus.

if it's Ultron than Hank has to play a big role

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Ok so it kind of depends the device whether they travel through time in the same universe or in a different universe. In Infinite Avengers for instance, Rogers, Stark and the other Avengers are travelling via the Time Gem. Since the Infinity Gems only work within its universe, its actually moving them through the 616 timeline, not moving them to a different multiverse. Since it seems what will happen is that all the multiverses have collapsed into a single universe, it means that after the final incursion (between 616 and 1610 [Ultimate Universe]) the only time travel devices that will work are ones like the Time Gem or the Worldcore singularity. Devices that travel to a different multiverse will not work because there are no other multiverses to travel to.

In the case of the O5, Beast wanted to bring younger versions of the original X-Men forward in time. So by taking the young X-men to the future, there then exists a universe where the young X-Men were abducted by 616 Beast and never returned. This is just like AoA is a universe where Xaviar died and Magneto formed the X-Men. Now I'm not sure if Bendis is exactly playing by these rules because he did that Back to the Future thing where old Cyclops started to fade when young Cyclops was in danger of dying, but if he had really taken the young Cyclops from the 616 timeline that should have changed the entire timeline.

Another interesting example from Hickman's Fantastic Four run is Nathaniel Richards. Nathaniel killed every other Nathaniel Richards that ever existed in all other multiverses, so he became a multiversal constant. So no matter whan happens in the past or future,it wont affect him. According to Franklin this is why he can survive the revision wave.

The last example to look at is Forever (SPOILER: don't read this if you haven't read Forever yet). Reed Richards should have been killed by Mad Celestials, but Future Franklin and Valeria found a way to save him. This created a revision wave that changed the 616 future. Franklin knew that Nathaniel would survive it because he was the only Nathaniel that now exists, but he and Valeria had to escape the wave or it they would no longer exist once the wave caught up to them.

I'm not exactly sure how AoU worked, since they time traveled using a Doom time elevator. Canonically this should travel within the 616 timeline since Doom knows to engineer time machines with the right particles (this is from X-Factor).

Anyway, you can appreciate why there are some powerful beings that want the multiverse to collapse into a single universe, making time easier to control.

[runguy]

just wondering why you put spoilers in your subject line when in fact these are theories/guesses

[DrTraveler]

Good theories, but I don't think Secret Avengers is the source of the collapse, or anything from AvX. I'm rereading Fantastic Four right now and I suspect strongly that Fantastic Four 605.1 is a far far more important an issue than we realized at the time. It contains the destruction of the Earth of one of the three founders of the council. That, I believe is the start.

I suspect you are right about Manifold's purpose and the Swans. They are making sure the process continues out to the end using Manifold's to keep the process going. I also believe Battleworld comes from the Rogue Planet, probably via Franklin Richards.

I'm not sure what role Planet Ultron plays or if indeed is the Great Destroyer. We will see.