Marvel, Everything Everywhere, and Rick and Morty are nihilist multiverses

In science fiction, villains often represent the protagonists with the greatest agency. Their genius is used to create a world they want or to overthrow it. But those schemes don’t have much value in a multiverse setting, where they can only exert influence on one of an infinite number of possible worlds. Multiverse-focused villains are constantly confronted with their limits and fall prey to nihilism.

Long before Marvel Studios announced its Multiverse Saga, DC dug into comics’ rich multiversal history with the 2010 animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. The film can be described as a Star Trek Mirror-Universe Story. In it, Justice League members face evil versions of themselves, and are able to meet the good guys of their worst villains. But the real star is Batman’s wicked doppelganger, Owlman. After discovering that there is a multiverse, he quickly realizes that all he can do is destroy reality.

In space, no one can hear you scream — but that doesn’t stop an evil-doer from trying. Polygon is celebrating sci-fi villainy this week because somebody has (or else).

It’s a dramatic escalation of the threat of an evil Justice League. Most stories believe that the greatest danger to a DC world with morality flipped would be an undetected evil Superman. Two Earths Crisis instead finds a bigger threat in imagining Batman’s singular will and intellect bent toward destruction. Once Owlman embraces nihilism, he’s remarkably consistent, even greeting his defeat and death with a detached “It doesn’t matter.” Two Earths CrisisOne of only a few DC animated movies to have a straight sequel. Justice League: DoomBatman creates ways for his colleagues to be taken down in the case of rogue-dimensional travelers. Batman also states that he expects Justice League members to help him stop if falling to darkness.

Multiverse stories often feature characters who confront their worst impulses. Loki’s version of Kang (Jonathan Majors) sums up that theme. Kang’s interactions with other multiversal versions of himself started out akin to the multiversal Council of Wells on The FlashIt was created as an avenue for scientists and engineers to collaborate on technology and share their ideas. It quickly became a war for conquest. Kang’s version as seen in LokiHe Who Remains is an exile who won the war by transforming reality into one, endlessly pruned, universe. He readily admits to the futility even of his most heroic efforts.

Kang in Loki A particularly Zen-oriented archvillain. Although he attempts to seduce Loki by granting him power, Kang also shows how insignificant everything really is. Like Owlman, Kang doesn’t mourn his own death. This is because he realizes that allowing the multiverse bloom again would unleash horrible new versions himself on the world. We’ll see how future iterations of Kang — next seen in Quantumania: Ant-Man & the Wasp — warp his trajectory.

Image: Marvel Studios

You can have everything at once, Jobu Tupaki, aka Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu), comes to the exact same conclusion as Owlman. But it takes her slightly longer to reach the endgame. Subjected to experiments that splintered her consciousness across the multiverse, Jobu begins by seeking vengeance on every version of her mother, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), before eventually coming up with the efficiency of collapsing the world into the “everything bagel.” The construct Jobu creates is literally a black hole of despair, with everyone who looks upon it embracing her all-consuming nihilism. She can even make Evelyn self-destructive as a means to escape her problems at home.

Daniel Kwan (writer-director) and Daniel Scheinert, director of the film, offer an elegant repudiation for nihilism. They argue that there is infinite potential for love and hope in the multiverse, not only for despair and pain, but also for joy and happiness. Evelyn’s husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) has always used compassion to navigate an often hostile world, and he serves as a lifeline to his wife and daughter, inspiring Evelyn to effectively use kindness kung fu and reach into the multiverse to find exactly what will make each of her opponents happy.

Evelyn has the ability to mend her marriage to her daughter, declaring her love for her and her devotion that transcends reality. Joy brings Jobu back from the brink and Joy accepts herself.

Image: A24

The multiverse is continuing to present one of the most complex and nuanced investigations of nihilism. Rick and Morty. It was a far more zany show in 2014 Back to the Future parody to one of the sharpest adult animated series on TV with its sixth episode, “Rick Potion #9,” in which super-scientist Rick and his grandson Morty destroy an entire version of Earth, and Rick blithely opens a portal to a different reality where they can replace recently deceased versions of themselves.

Rick uses nihilist language to justify his cruelty and inhumanity. Over the course of the series, he’s been revealed to be similar to Kang, ripping apart the universe through his own self-destructive behavior. He encourages his daughter, Beth, to embrace the same ethos, pointing out, “When you know nothing matters, the universe is yours.”

Over the course of six seasons, Rick’s status as antihero or outright villain has vacillated based on how much he appears to actually believe in that nihilism. He has literally replaced his own family multiple times, yet he can’t help but develop some love for the versions he currently lives with, something he’ll only begrudgingly admit.

Image Credit: Adult Swim

In this scene, nihilism is in full swing Rick and Morty At a meta-level, it is tied to the question whether the show actually means anything. Rick’s multiverse offers endless ways to cheat death and escape from their troubles, even though it sometimes requires them to flee Nazi shrimp. But with portal travel shut down at the end of season 5, Rick has been pushed into deeper character growth, and the writers have dug more into the world’s lore than ever before.

When the technology was repaired, Rick’s maniacal glee at a return to “classic Rick and Morty” is coupled with the casual cruelty to Morty that also defined those earlier episodes. The show’s writers seem to argue that Rick can only become a better person if he’s forced to live with his actions, rather than just rushing carefree into the next universe and the next silly adventure.

Nihilism is usually a reaction to feeling helpless in the face of an uncaring world, and the nihilism of understanding the entire multiverse compounds that helplessness by presenting a reality so vast that any individual can’t possibly impact it. Fantasies about endless universes and endless possibilities can provide fascinating villains on a scale no other type of story can match — villains whose will is so great that they can exert it across entire universes. You need a very special type of hero and an extraordinary kind of optimism to overcome aggression and despair on this scale. What’s more heroic than someone who can face the darkest doubts the entire multiverse has to offer, and still come away with a sense of hope and purpose?