Things are getting a little dicy for Nightwing in the latest issue of the hero's solo series. Though it's just the second part of the Dark Nights: Metal tie-in “The Gotham Resistance” that started in Teen Titans the previous week and continues on in Suicide Squad this week, the truth is, Dick Grayson’s been deeply embroiled in the story of Metal for months now.

We just didn’t know it until now.

Paging Dr.Hurt

There’s a cut on Dick’s forehead and it won’t stop bleeding. This is concerning, not because of the wound itself, but because of who gave it to him, and how old it is. Dick’s first encounter with Dr. Simon Hurt during Rebirth happened back almost six months ago, starting in issue #16 with a story arc titled -- ominously -- “Nightwing Must Die.”

RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Humphries, Chang Take Over Nightwing

In it, Dick and Damian relive their pre-New 52 team up days by going after the maniacal Professor Pyg -- one of their first masked villains they faced together during their tenure as Batman and Robin -- which lands them in France, where they find themselves caught in a trap with a decidedly metaphysical bent. It turns out Pyg hadn’t been working alone but instead had been creating his “art” (read: victims) under the patronage of Dr. Simon Hurt.

Now. Dr. Hurt is another relic of Dick and Damian’s past but he’s a little less straightforward than your run-of-the-mill masked madman like Pyg. Similar to Hugo Strange, Hurt’s a master psychologist with a deep, unrelenting obsession with Batman. However, unlike Strange, Hurt’s interests skew a bit more towards the occult side of things. In fact, there’s the very real possibility that he might actually be an immortal conduit for the demon Barbatos -- but more on that in just a second.

Hurt first properly came into contact with the Bat-family during the days leading up to Final Crisis and Batman R.I.P., where it was revealed he’s implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Bruce Wayne’s mind to trigger him into a sort of psychedelic fugue state. Later, as Bruce was making his return from the “dead” (actually a sort of time-displaced era-hopping romp) Hurt came into contact with both Dick and Damian, nearly killing Dick before running into The Joker, who “killed” Hurt. Apparently, Joker believed there was only room for one real arch-nemesis for The Bat in Gotham -- but it would seem that his methods for ending Hurt once and for all may not have been as effective as the Clown Prince of Crime would have liked.

Or maybe Hurt actually is all but immortal and tapped into the dark energy of Barbatos, which has been keeping him alive all this time.

Hurt’s obsession with Barbatos lead him to conduct any number of rituals in the caves beneath Wayne Manor and it’s never really made all that clear if he’s truly just out of his mind or if he’s actually onto something genuine -- At least, that is, until now.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Dick%20Grayson%20vs.%20the%20Dark%20Multiverse%20-%20and%20Deathwing']



Enter: Deathwing

But first, let’s rewind -- we need to talk about Deathwing.

If you’re familiar with Professor Pyg, you’ll know his villainous trademark is “perfecting” people into horribly mutilated living mannequins he calls “dollotrons.” It turns out that Hurt wasn’t just partnering up with him out of nostalgia. He was actually looking to get some “dollotrons” of his very own -- specifically, ones modeled after Nightwing and Robin. Pyg delivered, and then some, concocting a whole regiment of twisted “dollotron” Robins and one incredibly demented “dollotron” Nightwing who called himself Deathwing.

At the time, it seemed like your fairly generic supervillain fixation -- Hurt remembered being bested by Nightwing and Robin, Pyg remembered being bested by Nightwing and Robin, one thing leads to another, and so on. But it turns out there was a bit more to the story than that.

RELATED: In Nightwing: The New Order, Dick Grayson Kills the DC Universe

During a fight with the real Nightwing, Deathwing tells Dick that to create him, Pyg and Hurt “showed” him things -- showed him “what’s coming” and that it was further than death and “further than hell.” This, in Deathwing’s eyes, is what makes him the superior hero -- and to prove it, he’s ready to show Dick what was shown to him. Using one of Hurt’s knives, made of black metal, Deathwing slices Dick’s forehead, thus prompting a whole onslaught of visions of what look like alternate versions of himself.

Again, at the time, this didn’t seem all that strange -- Hurt and Pyg are both no stranger to the stranger side of the Bat mythos, so the idea that they’d armed one of their creations with some sort of psychotropic drug or what have you was not entirely off the table. That, coupled with Hurt’s general ambiguity, made it a pretty easy moment to pause on briefly and then move away as the “Nightwing Must Die” story arc drew to a close. (Spoiler alert: neither Nightwing nor Robin ended up dying, both Pyg and Hurt were supposedly defeated, everyone went home.)

However, with Metal in full swing, that encounter has taken on a whole new meaning.

Dick Grayson Vs. the Dark Multiverse

Knowing what we know now, care of the first two issues of Metal it’s pretty easy to see that Hurt’s vendetta, and his motivations for wrangling Pyg to creating the dark Robins and Deathwing, were anything but coincidental supervillainous schticks.

And that strange, black metal dagger that sliced so easily through Dick’s forehead? Probably not just a dagger.

The Dark Multiverse, home of Barbatos, has been described by writer Scott Snyder as a place where nightmares and fears are very real and constantly roiling to the surface -- it’s the place that created the army of evil Batmen that has just recently invaded after Barbatos was summoned. So it’s really not too far of a stretch to connect the dots and realize that Hurt’s obsession with Deathwing -- with creating this alternate, evil version of Nightwing -- wasn’t something he just decided to do one day. And those visions Dick had upon being cut with the dagger were very likely to have been our first real look into the Dark Multiverse itself -- before we even knew such a place existed.

RELATED: Who Is Metal’s Barbatos? A Guide to the Demon That Made Batman

Hurt’s connection to Barbatos then suddenly skyrockets from “possibly ambiguous” to “completely legitimate.”

Additionally, this puts Dick in a very interesting position as Metal continues forward. As he points out in issue #29, not only has he been infected with one metal (electrum) care of his early encounters with the Court of Owls (way back in the early days of the New 52) but he’s also been infected with... well, whatever metal Hurt’s dagger was made out of.

In order for Bruce to become a “gateway” into the Dark Multiverse, he had to become infected with five different metals, so by those numbers Dick’s pretty safe -- he’s not even halfway there. But what if there are other combinations or other purposes a person can be used for when it comes to dealing with this new corner of reality?

It certainly seems like Nightwing is being positioned for a major Metal moment before the event draws to a close.