New Avengers 33 *spoilers*

[JKtheMac]

Attachment 21490

I think this is pretty clear that the case is: kill one MM --> his universe goes too. Eventually incursions start when enough universes die

The point is that knocking off a single universe doesn't really do anything much to affect the beyonders' experiment. But if you knock off enough to get the chain reaction of incursions starting, then you're messing things up for them

I think you have your logic wrong. I don't read what you read in that panel at all.

MM is talking in his weird stream of consciousness way about him being a fuse. A fuse which, when it detonates will take his universe and the multiverse because he is all of them. He is not saying that if you kill him prematurely the universe will die. What it will do is constrict the timeline somehow or in some other subtle way effect the way the multiverse hangs together. It causes stress in the multiverse. That stress causes the incursion after millions of similar events in millions of universes.

The reference to Blue and Red shifts is twofold. There is an implication in using those terms that the universes will start moving within the multiverse relative to each other. If it is moving away from our universe it will be red shifted from our perspective and blue if moving towards.

We have also seen some incursions being particular colors so that seems to imply things about whether Molecule Man is alive on those incursions.

[Shai-Hulud]

The Beyonders are incapable of time travel and it is their one weakness.

I just remembered something, about time travel & the original so-called 'child' Beyonder. (If anyone has mentioned this, apologies).

In the original Secret Wars, the Beyonder pulled Doom out from a previous point in his life, prior to his body being crushed in the Tyros/Terrax/Surfer battle.

So what's the deal with being linear? Are they incapable of traveling through time themselves, or are they just able to see and interact with past periods, without being able to travel themselves? Or did the original Beyonder happen to see a showing of Interstellar, offered by some future time traveler, and was able to figure it all out from the movie?

Hmm well originally beyonder was capable (ovbiously) of any time travel he wished (we all know the child unit beyonder is a cherry picked retcon, or we should by now), we can only speculate until there is more info from the panels themselves, im actually curious myself.

The weakness of the Beyonders is a point of interest.

Doom says in regard to the Beyonders two things:

1) "If I was able to travel back in time with Mister Reece to construct a plan to defeat them—and even if it appeared that plan would be successful—couldn't they simply do the same thing? They could not."

2) "It's their one weakness. They are linear. The all-powerful Beyonders are constrained—restricted—to their own sequential timeline."

What's meant by linear?

Doom, Reed and Kang all experience time as linear beings, but they can time travel. An example of non-linear beings are the Bajoran Prophets from DS9, who needed Sisko to explain linearity to them with a baseball metaphor. Also, the Q Continuum; in the closing episode of TNG, Q nudges Picard into experiencing time non-linearly.

If the Beyonders are linear, as I understand it, it means they experience time moment by moment, like we do, not all at once, like the Bajoran Prophets do.

Doom says the Beyonders can't travel back in time to stop his plan. Why not? I'm not sure he says why explicitly. He might mean either:

a) they can't travel in time at all, or

b) as linear beings they are "restricted to their own sequential timeline" in the sense that they dare not cross their own timeline in an essential way. Presumably, because to do so would create a paradox, and as linear beings they are not immune to harm from paradox.

Firstly, we've seen Baby Beyonder manipulate time, as xcoijoi and NeutralShade point out above. Second, given both the Beyonders' vast capabilities and the ease with which time travel is generally accomplished in the Marvel Universe, it seems implausible to conclude that they can't time travel at all.

My tentative understanding is therefore that Doom is saying: as linear beings the, Beyonders are vulnerable to paradox and therefore they themselves won't use time travel as a weapon if it involves them crossing their own timeline, in this case, the origin of the Molecule Man.

...we can only speculate until there is more info from the panels themselves....

Yes, agreed. At present it all seems a bit vague and convoluted. But it boils down to either:

i) the Beyonders simply can't time travel at all (inconsistent with Baby Beyonder and general MU ease of time travel), or

ii) the Beyonders are simply afraid to touch their own past (kind of reasonable, since even the Time Lords, for example, have a rule against traveling to Gallifrey's past).

Comic book metaphysics!

[jackolover]

Marcbret1987 post 117. Point 3.

This appears to be like a Petri dish experiment. The Beyonders introduced a self destruct component ( Molecule Man) into a DNA. The DNA so changed, had an adverse reaction (Doom stared the Incursions), and started a pre-emptive decay. The Beyonders introduced an inhibitor to restore the self destruct mechanism, (Mapmakers), but the DNA reacted by spitting at the Beyonders, (Dooms weapon fired on Beyonders), and now the Beyonders are lying on the floor like infected Lab Technicians.

[jackolover]

The beyonders maybe knew that our MM killed the first MM which started the early death of everything. They could have been seeking him and the destroyer out too. Doom did use their beacon to find Reese in the 616.

I was wondering if the surprise death of those universes were a result of the beyonders detonating the remaiming MM knowing that they were set to die as a result of Doom.

What beacon? I thought Reece just appeared in Dooms castle one day, no explanation.

[JKtheMac]

On 'Blue Shifts', we have two key references:

New Avengers #6 'Blue Hell'

Swan: "Blue. Blue and not red. Blue is much worse. Blue means Sidera Maris. Blue is for making maps. Cataloging for futu--" <interrupted>

New Avengers #33 "In Latveria, the Flowers Die in Summer"

Doom: "Mapmakers and their Sidera Maris charted worlds where molecule men had died. Marking the movements of my Swans, seeding Sacrifice Worlds, and preserving future incursion worlds."

So the virus that the Beyonders sent down was seeking answers to why the Molecule Man was dying. (They also set up a trap for anyone seeking knowledge about the incursions.) The sacrifice worlds are the post incursion point worlds that have been charted. Once the incursion has started they destroy that world and start to harvest the new one. Quite what they seek to preserve is unclear but from their actions it dosent seem to be about Battleworld.

It is possible they seek to preserve Molecule Man in the new world. They seem very concerned with how many enhanced humans are on the world. At first this seemed to be about self preservation but maybe it is related to preserving Molecule Man from possible threats like Swans and other enhanced humans capable of killing him. Although that would also mean their actions were not as first suspected a chain reaction of blue worlds.

[jackolover]

To me the life and death of the multiverse existed on a single timeline. The birth of the multiverse was when the beyonders made it. It's death was meant to be when all the MM detonated. When Reese killed that first MM that meant the multiverse wouldn't be dying when it was designed to. It would die ever so sooner. With each subsequent death of a MM the death would be accelerated. Eventually this resulted in the incursions where the death of everything could be greatly accelerated. Now the exact mechanism hasn't been explained but it's possible that without a MM a given universes would be open to events that resulted in its early death. As more universes were made the chance of that happening increased and eventually out of chance (considering what happens in some of these universes) one is destroyed early. To me it could be the universe the Nazi Reed came fromin Hickmans FF. There was a scene in a point one issue he lost control of his infinity gauntlet and in his words everything died. Or it could have been any number or comic book universe ending scenarios. Once one of these universes without MM died then the sequence Reed described starts where universes begin to crash together.

I think the FF Point one, Doom created a Universe with his Infinity Gauntlet all his own from nothing in that universe. when his creations turned on him, he had to be rescued by Reed Richards, and they escaped that Universe. It just demonstrated that even if Doom designs a Universe himself, he stuffs it up anyway.

What I don't understand is the magic knife that kills Reece. Is this knife just a magical construct that is supposed to represent killing a Molecule Man? Because you can't kill one. Sentry tried and Reece just comes back alive.

616 Reed's reputation as a heroic scientist in my opinion has been trashed beyond repair in this arc. What good is Reed at all? He knew nothing months ago and has done nothing to inform himself what is actually going on in the Multiverse. He even had to be told to use the Bridge as a Mirror by Black Swan. But how often have we seen Reed actually learning something from the Bridge? Doom has done everything to give the Multiverse even a sliver of a chance of surviving. Why should anyone in the future call on Reed's help when the chips are down, just go directly up to Doom.

This is such a destruction of Reed's character, and by extension the Fantastic Four who used to be the go-to team for handling situations such as Time Runs Out, that I still am wondering if the plan is to reboot this team back to before the children and before Reed and Sue's marriage, to turn 616 Fantastic Four into something resembling what Ultimate Fantastic Four used to be.

I'm not too sure Reeds tainted here. If anything Doom has been tainted for bringing on the early death of the Multiverse. We could have enjoyed another 50 years of the MU if Doom hadn't interfered and started Incursions. By others calculations, the Multiverse still had 12 years Marvel time to run before the Molecule Men self destructed, and as only 13 years Marvel time has only passed, we got a premature death of the Multiverse with Doom. If the Illuminati did nothing, like Steve Rogers wanted, and Doom never got involved as Rabum Alal, the Incursions would never have started. But, The Illuminati only got involved because Black Panther saw an Incursion, so it was fait accompli anyway. How does this tarnish Reed Richards?

It was also confirmed that the swans story was a lie and so was Rabum Alals origin. The destruction of universes and incursions started when dooms body count was high enough.

How was that stated? The birth of Rabum Alal caused the Early death of a Universe? I suppose Doom being born did cause the Early death of a Universe, just in a very round about sort of way.

After reading it and thinking about it for a bit I think this is how all the 'factions' in Hickman's run have panned out.

beyonders - from 'beyond' normal time/space, they are attempting a 'great experiment' to see what happens if all of normal space is destroyed at the same time.

molecule man - created by the beyonders and exists in all multiverses as the same person with the same consciousness and power. will detonate after 25 years with enough power to destroy the universe he occupies which means all things everywhere die at once. his death does not cause the death of the earth but the universe will still die possibly because his unified conscious dying constricts the universe closer to its neighbors

great destroyer - is doom from 616 but with an additional 10 years added. in order to stop the beyonders 'great experiment' he has been traveling from world to world killing molecule man. he created the black swans and has secretly been collecting pieces of earths destroyed in incursions.

incursions - seven years of doom killing the molcule man resulted in universes being constricted close enough that they begin colliding with each other with earth as the focal point. if both earths remain after the eight hour window then both universes are destroyed. if one earth is destroyed the surviving earth constricts closer to the remaining universes and the destroyed earth universe survives but will eventually die like every other universe missing a molecule man.

black swans - religious cult created by doom under the guise of the great destroyer to assist in killing molecule men

rogue black swans - saw doom's "secret" and have rebelled against him by finding earths and destroying them during incursions. it is likely they saw doom creating battleworld and are destroying the earths to deny him from taking a piece of that world when the earths collide.

map makers - created by the beyonders by a virus that hijacks any artificial intelligence that attempts to travel through the multiverse. their job is to find any earths that molecule man has been killed on and to set a beacon that the beyonders can use to try to track down doom.

black priests - doctor strange leads them in performing surgical strikes against incursion planets in hopes of attempting to stabilize the multiverse. doing so inadvertently helps the beyonders like the rogue black swans.

builders - one of the oldest civilizations that lives in the superflow, between normal space and the 'beyond space', the incursions are destroying the superflow so they are attempting to destroy the earths in as many universes as possible in order to stabilize the multiverse which also inadvertently helping the beyonders.

avengers - the avengers machine (an expanded, more powerful roster of the Avengers) was created by tony in an attempt to keep everyone not in the illuminati distracted from the bigger problem of the entire multiverse dying by dealing with global and universal crisis.

illuminati - created as a way to figure out how to stop the incursions permanently and to save the earth by any means necissary while doing so

cabal - created by namor when the illuminati failed to achieve goal #2. by helping black swan achieve her goals of destroying earths they are also inadvertently helping the beyonders.

What "Secret"? Doom peered down a crevice and talked about Temporal things, so what was down the crevice was the building that attacked the Beyonders. I think Doom thought if he destroyed the Beyonders, " something" would survive, but he destroyed the majority of the Multiverse instead. The renegade Black Swans saw the Building and didn't like what it was going to do, and just did their own thing, but a schism from Doom.

Ok this makes sense. So my next question is how does THAT undo the Beyonders plans? To be continued?

The crazy Owen Reece destroys the Universe 12 years before time, and for whatever reason the Beyonders wanted the 25 years delay, that has been shot-circuited. Maybe Beyonders were destroying the Multiverse to make this new Battleworld. That would be the most logical, seeing as that is the typical experiment of the previous two Beyonder Secret Wars. Now that Reece short circuited the Beyonders time table, maybe there is a fault with the Battleworld only being half finished?

[JKtheMac]

The weakness of the Beyonders is a point of interest.

I get the impression Doom was wrong. He makes an assumption that if they would be able to stop him by messing with time then they would have. He acts on this by sending a weapon apparently composed of multiple time platforms into the Beyonders. I think he expects them to just die but instead thousands of universes collapse.

I think this is supposed to mirror Doom's actions in Secret Wars #10 where he goes up against The Beyonder. It proves hubristic and he ends up a wreck as portayed on the origional Secret Wars cover and here in a clear tribute cover.

[jackolover]

Assuming Doom is a reliable narrator, I think we have to assume that killing Molecule Man leads to the death of that prospective universe. It just may not be instantaneous (which is why we don't see the universe destroyed when Doom kills the first Molecule Man. Otherwise, Doom's story doesn't quite add up. He says that Swan's actions (which is preserving universes by stopping incursions) are actually in line with the goal of the Beyonders (ie, saving the universes so that the multiverse can be destroyed simultaneously). Doom's whole goal is to destroy the multiverse faster and staggered, the Incursions help because if they aren't stopped they destroy two universes at once in, presumably, an exponential pattern. This is why Strange questions him at the end of the issue. His goal ultimately leads to the same end as the Beyonders (everything dead). But it seems like Doom has some sort of gambit to preserve some of it (presumably Battleworld) if he can take out the Beyonders and thwart their experiment. Once again, this all assumes that Doom is telling the truth and not merely a version of the truth as tainted by his ego.

One things for sure. Killing one Molecule Man, though bringing on early death of one universe, doesn't trigger Incursions for a long long time. Doom Demonstrated you need thousands of destroyed Universes to start the first Incursion. You need a cascade of dying Universes to jump start a lot of Incursions that eventually speed up the early death of the Multiverse. Just killing one Molecule Man still delays the cascade. We don't know how delayed it gets, though. Maybe isolated Universes died already because their Reece died prematurely.

[Drakeon]

How was that stated? The birth of Rabum Alal caused the Early death of a Universe? I suppose Doom being born did cause the Early death of a Universe, just in a very round about sort of way.

The birth of Rabum Alal is not literally Dooms birth. It was the death of Owen Reece. The point at which Doom became The Destroyer in the holy legend the Swans revere.

[seminal2015]

How was that stated? The birth of Rabum Alal caused the Early death of a Universe? I suppose Doom being born did cause the Early death of a Universe, just in a very round about sort of way.

It's a metaphor, turning story into legend. The whole religious aspect.

When Doom kills that first MM, Rabum Alal is "born", as this is both when they first come up with the idea of The Great Destroyer, and the whole point of The Great Destroyer is to kill MMs, and so when he kills the first one, it is his "birth"

[JKtheMac]

One things for sure. Killing one Molecule Man, though bringing on early death of one universe, doesn't trigger Incursions for a long long time. Doom Demonstrated you need thousands of destroyed Universes to start the first Incursion. You need a cascade of dying Universes to jump start a lot of Incursions that eventually speed up the early death of the Multiverse. Just killing one Molecule Man still delays the cascade. We don't know how delayed it gets, though. Maybe isolated Universes died already because their Reece died prematurely.

You have just contadicted yourself in a way but you are correct mainly. There is no way that killing a Molecule Man results in the death of the Universe in anything other than some subtle contraction because otherwise there would be nothing left all these years later for the Map makers to chart. It took many years for the Beyonder's to even notice the effect. When they investigated they found the blue worlds with no Molecule Man seemed to be causing the incursions and they started to chart the affect. From Doom's perspective they were charting where the Swans had been because the Swans have probably been resposible for the vast majority of MM murders as the religion took hold and grew. This is how the number of murders went from a few thousand to millions in a short span of years.

[seminal2015]

Someone pointed it out earlier, some of the confusion seems to be coming from when people say the "early" death of the universe, and this differing from the "instantaneous" death of the universe

It reads to me that if Universe A was meant to be die out in 2015 when MM would explode, and you kill him early (in say, 2004), the universe would be sometime between 2004 and > 2015. It could be 2005, 2009, etc. But it would be "earlier" than it was originally intended to.

This differs from an incursion-induced early death, which is instantaneous (or at least when the Earths smash into each other at the end of the incursion period). In this example, if Universe B was meant to die in 2015, but had another universe smash into it in 2001, then if you don't destroy the other Earths in the incursion, the universe is destroyed right there and then.

To me, the death of the first MM caused that MM's universe to die a bit early, which decreased the total number of universes left in the system, and as many have said to this point, as you continue to remove those universes, the remaining ones start smashing into each other, and you end up with the incursions.

Having said all that, I still don't totally understand a lot of what's going on (and even how to ask about it, or if it can be answered at this point). - - So why are the MM/SM jumping from one universe to the next after they land on the earths WITHOUT MMs?
- Why must Doom remain in secret about all of this?
- Why does destroying the other Earth in an incursion save the the rest of that Earth's universe? It seemed like a separate situation than just "the MM is on that Earth" or something.
- Just as a reminder, how and why did the Builders play into this, in terms of their wanting to destroy Earth 616 in Infinity?

And most importantly: Between the various factions (Black Priests, Builders, Illuminati, Cabal, "good" - as in faithful to Doom - Swans, "bad" Swans), whose actions end up furthering the Beyonders plans, and whose end up helping Doom, knowingly or not? A table or something might be nice

[Biclopcicle]

I think you have your logic wrong. I don't read what you read in that panel at all.

MM is talking in his weird stream of consciousness way about him being a fuse. A fuse which, when it detonates will take his universe and the multiverse because he is all of them. He is not saying that if you kill him prematurely the universe will die. What it will do is constrict the timeline somehow or in some other subtle way effect the way the multiverse hangs together. It causes stress in the multiverse. That stress causes the incursion after millions of similar events in millions of universes.

The reference to Blue and Red shifts is twofold. There is an implication in using those terms that the universes will start moving within the multiverse relative to each other. If it is moving away from our universe it will be red shifted from our perspective and blue if moving towards.

We have also seen some incursions being particular colors so that seems to imply things about whether Molecule Man is alive on those incursions.

The most parsimonious explanation based on what molecule man said is that, when he dies, his respective universe will also die. That is literally what he says. That is also what Doom understands, because then he says, "But that isn't what occurred. You died and nothing happened. " and then Reece says "sure it did." In no way does this mean many reeces have to die in order to destroy a universe. To believe that is interpolating information into the text that isn't there.

The incursions mark the major effects which start to occur after a critical mass of universes go extinct. This is supported by Reed's exposition in the beginning of NA where the early death of a universe created multiversal contracture. The only difference here is it took over a thousand universes to die before noticeable contraction

[Biclopcicle]

Someone pointed it out earlier, some of the confusion seems to be coming from when people say the "early" death of the universe, and this differing from the "instantaneous" death of the universe

It reads to me that if Universe A was meant to be die out in 2015 when MM would explode, and you kill him early (in say, 2004), the universe would be sometime between 2004 and > 2015. It could be 2005, 2009, etc. But it would be "earlier" than it was originally intended to.

This differs from an incursion-induced early death, which is instantaneous (or at least when the Earths smash into each other at the end of the incursion period). In this example, if Universe B was meant to die in 2015, but had another universe smash into it in 2001, then if you don't destroy the other Earths in the incursion, the universe is destroyed right there and then.

To me, the death of the first MM caused that MM's universe to die a bit early, which decreased the total number of universes left in the system, and as many have said to this point, as you continue to remove those universes, the remaining ones start smashing into each other, and you end up with the incursions.

Having said all that, I still don't totally understand a lot of what's going on (and even how to ask about it, or if it can be answered at this point). - - So why are the MM/SM jumping from one universe to the next after they land on the earths WITHOUT MMs?
- Why must Doom remain in secret about all of this?
- Why does destroying the other Earth in an incursion save the the rest of that Earth's universe? It seemed like a separate situation than just "the MM is on that Earth" or something.
- Just as a reminder, how and why did the Builders play into this, in terms of their wanting to destroy Earth 616 in Infinity?

And most importantly: Between the various factions (Black Priests, Builders, Illuminati, Cabal, "good" - as in faithful to Doom - Swans, "bad" Swans), whose actions end up furthering the Beyonders plans, and whose end up helping Doom, knowingly or not? A table or something might be nice

They're hunting doom and the black swans...they chill in the library of worlds, so they can't be directly observed. So the mapmakers do detective work, mapping worlds that MM has been killed

[Shai-Hulud]

I get the impression Doom was wrong. He makes an assumption that if they would be able to stop him by messing with time then they would have. He acts on this by sending a weapon apparently composed of multiple time platforms into the Beyonders. I think he expects them to just die but instead thousands of universes collapse.

I think this is supposed to mirror Doom's actions in Secret Wars #10 where he goes up against The Beyonder. It proves hubristic and he ends up a wreck as portayed on the origional Secret Wars cover and here in a clear tribute cover.

Yes, that's another possibility: Doom is just wrong.

Certainly, it seems bizarre to suppose beings as powerful as the Beyonders can't time travel given the ease and frequency with which time travel is accomplished in the Marvel Universe.

On the other hand, Reed Richards once theorized in FF#288 that Baby Beyonder might be vulnerable to the power of a time paradox, to which Baby Beyonder responded that he didn't know and didn't want to risk it.

So Hickman is also mirroring that issue from Secret Wars II.