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In the animated movie Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the villain Owlman travels to Earth Prime. They explain the multiverse as being the result of infinte branches, every time a decision can be made, two universes are created; one where the decision was made and one where it was not.

Earth Prime is the first world before any decisions were made, the originator of all decisions. It is Owlman's plan to blow up this world (or universe?), which would lead to the multiverse crumbling.

My question is, why does it come down to Earth and mankind? In the DCU, there are numerous older races than humans, such as the Guardians of Oa, Kryptonians, etc.

Why would the multiverse be shaped by and rely on decisions humans made on a version of Earth?

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    "As told in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7,... The Multiverse had countless duplicates of planet Earth. Every Earth had a different history from one another but they always developed heroes and inspired heroic ages (which, according to Harbinger, it somehow made them a focal point among all the worlds in every universe). Some of the heroes of Earth knew about other Earths and their own counterparts and fought side by side on many occasions." - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse_(DC_Comics)
    – Valorum
    Dec 27, 2018 at 0:00
  • I guess the comic explanation can apply even though it wasn't stated in the film, and the film actually seems to give slightly different reasoning. For example, earth being a focal point seems to have nothing to do with the existence of heroes.
    – Jake Rankin
    Dec 27, 2018 at 0:19
  • Out of universe, possibly because the movie was created by Earth people who like to make Earth seem as important to the universe as a whole as it seems to them.
    – M. A. Golding
    Dec 27, 2018 at 16:35

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First (and most importantly), I see no reason to assume that there's something special about Earth, per se. The prime universe is what's special. Since Owlman is conducting his search for the prime universe from Earth, Earth-Prime is what he'll find. If he was on Krypton or Oa, he'd find the prime version of that planet.

Second, Owlman is a genius, explaining his plan to Superwoman, who may be smart, but doesn't approach his level of intelligence.

It seems reasonable to assume (especially when explaining things to a narcissistic psychopath) that a truly smart individual would dumb things down enough for her to follow.

Finally, it's not entirely clear what his plan is, specifically. Will the QED destroy the Earth - or the universe? Would blowing up Earth-Prime destroy all Earth's - or literally destroy the entire multiverse? Owlman may want to remove Earth from all the universes, or actually destroy all reality (including himself, presumably).

Owlman refers to man as a cancer he's cutting out; man, not life in general. Killing someone and cremating the body doesn't seem much like "cutting out a cancer"; that tends to imply the patient has some chance to live after the operation. This could, in fact, mean that he's destroying all Earths rather than the entire multiverse. Certainly, the explosion we see just appears to take out one planet, not that entire reality. (That said, we of course don't know what the impact would have been if the explosion did happen in the prime universe; and our earlier caveat about Owlman and his audience can probably cover a certain degree of imprecision in the description).

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  • I'm pretty sure in the film he is using earth prime to destroy the entire multiverse and all of reality
    – Jake Rankin
    Jan 1, 2019 at 22:06
  • @JakeRankin - I agree that it sounds that way. However, when we see the bomb blow up Earth-whatever, the bomb does seem to be expressly affecting the planet it's on. I also admit I would probably have dropped that point - if not for the "cutting out the cancer" statement. That would certainly imply that something will be left after the process.
    – RDFozz
    Jan 2, 2019 at 16:08
  • It's an interesting theory. I do think he was clearly talking about all reality, because of his whole ethos of it being the only action that could matter, and Superwoman seems in on it. I think we don't see reality destroyed and only a planet because it wasn't Earth Prime but some harmless planet that wouldn't harm anything by being blown up.
    – Jake Rankin
    Jan 2, 2019 at 21:38
  • @JakeRankin - It is clear that the planet that's blown up is an Earth - just not Earth-Prime.
    – RDFozz
    Jan 2, 2019 at 22:29
  • Right, I mean it was a harmless iteration of Earth which is why reality wasn't affected.
    – Jake Rankin
    Jan 2, 2019 at 22:43

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