As you’ve probably heard by now, DC’s recent Rebirth one-shot brings Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan into the DC universe. In this issue, Wally West reveals that the in-universe cause of Flashpoint wasn’t that Barry Allen was trying to fix the timelines. Instead, it was due to an unknown being interfering and removing about a decade from each character, resulting in the new world of The New 52. That being, of course, turns out to be Doctor Manhattan. Which, of course, raises a lot of questions.
How strong is his power, and how will he use it?
If Doctor Manhattan’s power is as strong as it is in Watchmen, he’s easily one of the most powerful beings in the DCU, arguably rivaling even Superman. With this kind of super powerful being around, there are all kinds of implications for other characters and storylines. What’s to keep him from just continuing to interfere and seeing to it that things work out the way he wants them to? To avoid this kind of plot trap, either Doctor Manhattan’s powers will have to be reduced, or he’ll need to have some sort of reason or ethical code that prevents him from just manipulating things to be the way he wants them. This is something that will need to be addressed because we’ve already seen that, at this point, he’s apparently ok with using his powers to tamper with the lives of others.
What does this mean for The New 52?
In the one-shot, Wally West is the only one who remembers what things were like before Doctor Manhattan’s meddling. He says that basically, DC’s heroes have lost their heart, because they don’t remember the relationships and bonds that used to connect them. Presumably, the more meta narrative here is that after The New 52, too much was lost from the DCU, and now DC wants to bring some of that back, and reverse some of the perceived damage the The New 52 did to the DCU. And indeed, characters not previously seen in The New 52 – including Wally, Aqualad, Ryan Choi, and Doctor Fate -- were returned to the continuity. And others, like Ted Kord and Ray Palmer, resumed their old characterizations. So now that Wally is trying to tell the world what happened, presumably more aspects of the DCU will be returned to the way they used to be, making Doctor Manhattan a device to undo some of the changes from The New 52.
Why did he come back?
When we last saw Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen, he was telling Adrian Veidt that he was planning on “leaving this galaxy for one less complicated.” So what made him decide to return to Earth? And what made him want to remove 10 years from the histories of the DCU characters? We know that Doctor Manhattan’s relationship with time is not strictly linear like everyone else’s and this will have to play into it in some way. In Doctor Manhattan #1 and in Before Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan #2, we see him experimenting with timelines, examining how changing variables can have alter the way events play out. It’s possible he’s doing this on a larger scale in Rebirth.
Will we see other Watchmen characters?
Now that Doctor Manhattan is part of the DCU, it begs the question of whether we’ll see other Watchmen characters join the fray. We’d love to see Rorschach interacting with Bruce Wayne (yes, Rorschach is dead, but stranger things have happened). The last page of the one shot references Doctor Manhattan’s famous line, “Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.” So we’re already seeing at least a mention of Veidt – will we get to see more of him? And what about Laurie Juspeczyk, Dan Dreiberg or the others? If we do see them, how will they be integrated into the storylines of the other DCU characters? It would be pretty exciting to see.
What will the overall impact be?
In general, we’re looking forward to seeing more of the integration of Doctor Manhattan (and maybe other Watchmen characters) into the DCU. It seems like a perfect way to explore the idea of restoring some of the heart to the DCU, some of what many feel was lost after The New 52. After all Doctor Manhattan’s struggle – and the book itself – was largely about the question of whether it makes sense to have hope in a world where there is, sometimes, a fair amount of darkness. And DC’s answer to that question seems to be yes. So using Doctor Manhattan as a vehicle to apply some of the questions asked in Watchmen to the larger DCU could be pretty fascinating. On the other hand, Watchmen is a beloved book with a lot of nuanced social commentary, and we wouldn’t want that to be diminished or nullified in any way. So it’s safe to say we’re cautiously optimistic.