Hypertime

Hypertime is an interconnected flow of realities, where time diverged at a certain point from the main universe. It is the collection of all the Alternate Timelines and Possible Futures from the many iterations of the Multiverse and represents the Time half of the Divine Continuum.^[29]

History

Hypertime, the overarching and interconnected web of timelines and realities, presumably existed for almost as long as creation itself. Events in the Central Timeline often create temporal ripples, creating divergent paths of history that exist on their own separate timelines. These timelines occasionally intersect, resulting in changes to history that are usually not even noticed by the inhabitants of a timeline. These changes range from minor (a momentary difference in a person's clothing or costume) to major (a complete rewriting of a person's history). If a being from one Hypertimeline spends too long in another, it can cause ghost-like "echoes" of other worlds to bleed through, as witnessed by Rose D'Angelo and Batman.^[4] It is also possible to enter the space between Hypertimelines, where all possible worlds are visible through an endless series of dimensional "windows."

Hypertime was first discovered by Rip Hunter of the Linear Men. Fearing that his fellow Linear Men would destroy it in an attempt to preserve the "one true" timeline, Hunter kept his discovery a secret.

In The Kingdom, the villain named Gog was believed to be traveling through time from a point after the Kingdom Come future era to destroy Superman, but was found to be actually traveling through Hypertime as his multiple destructions of Superman through time were discovered to have no effect on the main timestream or Kingdom Come reality.

However, when the villain Gog began traveling through Hypertime killing various versions of Superman, his actions brought together the heroes of two Hypertimelines—those of the Central Timeline (the DC Universe) and a world known as The Kingdom. At the conclusion of this conflict, Hypertime was revealed to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman of the Central Timeline.

Following this revelation, various other heroes had brushes with Hypertime, such as Superboy, the Challengers of the Unknown and The Flash, who was for a time replaced by a Hypertime duplicate called Walter West.

After the event known as the Infinite Crisis, a 52-Earth Multiverse parallel to the Central Timeline was brought into existence. Contact with all other timelines and worlds was cut off by the event and few inhabitants of the DC Universe even remember Hypertime. Mister Mind, while using the robotic Skeets as a host, referred to Waverider as "the seer of Hypertime," which indicates that Hypertime may still exist beyond the fringes of the Multiverse. It is possible that it accounts for the existence of other Multiverses, such as those parallel to the Marvel Universe and the WildStorm Universe. It may also encompass the mysterious "Megaverse" mentioned by Booster Gold.

It was later revealed that Alexander Luthor's creation of the 52 Multiverse was merely creating new Hypertime branches,^[5] which along with the revelation of the New 52 post-Flashpoint Earths being simply the 'local' Multiverse, the rebirth of all formerly destroyed worlds by the events of Convergence, the existence of the "Multi-Multiverse", and the Prime Earth's Flash knowledge of it shows that Hypertime still exists.

In-Universe History

Origin

The Hypertime was created by the World Forger^[6] and is a web of timestreams outside the Multiverse.^[7] It is consisted of an infinite number of realities that continually diverged and converged where they overlapped and circled back to connect to each other. Thus, everything and anything that could be imaged existed.^[8] It was described as the cosmic flow of timelines and histories that govern reality.^[6]

Zero Hour

The Kingdom

The Convergence

Metal Wars

During the fight with the Dark Knights, Cyborg managed to free his Justice League team mates and shunted them into Hypertime to evade Barbatos.^[7]

During the Justice/Doom War, Hypertime was dying due to the destruction of the Source Wall.^[6] However, it was stabilized by Perpetua who had Hypertime within her grasp, allowing the Legion of Doom to affect the past and future timelines without affecting the present.^[9] Brainiac bottled hundreds of alternative futures from Hypertime, with the intent to assimilate and destroy them.^[10]

At the end of the Justice/Doom War, the Hypertime was left broken according to Rip Hunter.^[11] However, after The Hands restored all the Creation, Hypertime was brought back to existence.^[12]

Known Hypertimelines

 Main article: Hypertimelines

Points Of Interest

• Timestream
  • Dawn of Time
  • End of Time
    • The Death Sun^[12]
    • Kingdom of Terminus^[13]
  • Heart of Chronos^[14][15]
  • Realm of Time^[16]
• Timepoint/"Planet Flash"/"Ickto"
  • Linear Bureau's Station
  • Palace of Eternity
• Vanishing Point
• Alephs^[17]
• Dark Sectors
• Branefold Interior^[18]
• The Nameless^[19]
• Zone of Colliding Moments^[20][21]
• Kingdom of Now^[21][14] (Destroyed)
• Blood Moon^[22] (Formerly)
• Extracted Time^[23] (Formerly, erased)
• Paradox's Realm^[24] (Formerly, erased)
• The Confluence^[25]
• The Wardrobe^[26][27][28]

Residents

• Time Masters
• Linear Men
• Time
• Dominus (Pre-Flashpoint) (Formerly, erased)
• Fuginauts^[18]
• Paradox (Post-Flashpoint) (Formerly, erased)

Notes

• Although the concept of Hypertime was only introduced by Mark Waid in The Kingdom #2, Hypertime has been technically featured since the Golden Age and actually made its first proper (albeit unnamed) appearance in Swamp Thing (Volume 2) #62 by Rick Veitch during the Modern Age.
• Out-of-universe, the creation of the Hypertime was an early attempt to restore the DC Multiverse that did not take hold with other creators, presenting it as a multitude of alternate realities that somehow diverge from the main continuities in one way or another and sometimes briefly reconnect with them.
• It was revealed in the Black Zero saga that at least one of the timelines seen during the Zero Hour event was part of Hypertime.^[30]
• The events of The Kingdom #2 revealed that the following parallel Earths are part of Hypertime:^[31] Earth-Forty, Earth-96, Earth-97, Earth-124.1, Earth-162, Earth-178, Earth-216 (the main Super-Sons reality), Earth-395, Earth-898, Earth-1098, Earth-1938 and Earth-3839.
• The Flash and Atom of Earth-898 traveled to realities similar to the pre-crisis realities of Earth-Three and Earth-S hinting there may be hypertime versions of those realities.
• According to The Multiversity Guidebook, Hypertime influenced the creation of the 52 worlds of the Pre-Flashpoint Multiverse and its evolution into the Post-Flashpoint Multiverse.

Trivia

• Despite the cosmic upheaval caused by the Rebirth, Prime Earth Barry Allen revealed he was still aware of Hypertime.^[32][33]
• Something conceptually similar to Hypertime has been used by a handful of people to explain the Real World phenomenon known as Mandela Effect.^[34]
  • In-universe, the Mandela Effect has been revealed to be a consequence of the many reality changes through Hypertime.^[29]

See Also

• Appearances of Hypertime
  
• Catalogued images related to Hypertime

Links and References

• Hypertime at Wikipedia.org
• Time and Hypertime at Hyperborea