SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Al Ewing, Travel Foreman, Felipe Andrade, Marco Lorenzana and Scott Hanna's Ultimates² #100, on sale now.


Al Ewing’s run on the Ultimates wrapped up this week with a jam-packed final issue with art by Travel Foreman, Filipe Andrade and Marco Lorenzana that bills itself as starring “everything that is and ever was” and isn’t too far off in that assessment.

RELATED: Marvel’s All-New Ultimate Thor... Is Not Who You Expected

Ultimates² #100 is a tribute to the most cosmic of Marvel’s concepts but ultimately is an incredibly human story about the fate of the entire multiverse -- and it all starts with the return of some familiar looking characters from a recently destroyed universe.

Ultimates vs Ultimates

At the end of the last issue of Ultimates², The Maker — the evil Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe — resurrected the original Ultimates to protect him from the current team using the same name. The Ultimate incarnations of Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Giant Man and The Wasp were last seen in Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate End miniseries, and while they didn’t make it through the cracks like The Maker, Miles Morales and Jimmy Hudson, The Maker’s new powers allowed him to reconstruct his former enemies and sic them on America Chavez’s team of multiversal paramedics.

Blue-Marvel-Ultimates-Hulk

Unfortunately for the classic Ultimates, they found their successors to be a lot tougher than they could have expected, exemplified by Blue Marvel knocking The Hulk out with one punch. Unfortunately for The Maker, the classic Ultimates quickly begin to have flashes of their lives before this moment, with Giant Man and Wasp remembering their deaths in Ultimatum, and Captain America remembering details about who Reed Richards was in their native universe.

The teams came together to solve the larger problem, and though The Maker unmade Ultimate Cap due to his insubordination, Spectrum is able to handle Richards — or at least this aspect of him. All that's left, then, is the impending end of all things as Eternity was slowly being consumed by The First Firmament. As every universe in the multiverse slowly drifted into one single reality, the two teams were able to shift everything close enough back to where everything should be for Eternity to break free and remember who it is.

The Ultimate Ultimates

This is where things get super cosmic, on a scale even the Ultimates haven't approached yet. Galactus and the Eternity Watch are able to break free of their void of a prison and confront Logos — the merged Lord Order and Master Chaos with the power of The Living Tribunal — for its crimes against reality. Although trapped on Earth due to the events of Secret Empire, Black Panther is able to join the fight by taking control of The Tiger God and ascending to the plane. What’s really interesting, though, is that Black Panther doesn’t use the power of The Tiger God to defeat Logos; it's merely used to meet it in battle. In the Superflow, combat is metaphor, and T’Challa uses his own power, will and resolve to tear Logos asunder into its original constituent pieces.

Black-Panther-Tiger-God-Ultimates

The Never Queen — queen of probability and sister of Galactus — resurrects The Celestials as The Fifth Host, and the reborn cosmic gods are able to destroy their dark counterparts and even the odds in Eternity’s favor. While the resurrection of The Celestials is generally a good thing for the Multiverse, it may prove to be dangerous for Earth. In every incarnation, or host, they return to the planets they seeded to test if the dominant life-form is worthy of continuing or wiping out and starting again. With the dawn of The Fifth Host, Earth may once again have to prove itself to The Celestials as it has four times previous.

As all of reality is threatened to be wiped out by The First Firmament, Eternity is able to call across the gulf of death and assemble The Ultimate Ultimates, previous incarnations of the universe. At the very start of The Ultimates, Al Ewing established that the post-Secret Wars reality was the eighth incarnation of reality and later it was established that The First Firmament was the first, but until now we haven’t seen most of the intervening universes, except for Eternity’s sister Infinity who is said to be the representative of the seventh, pre-Secret Wars universe and one half of the two-in-one with Eternity himself.

The-Ultimate-Ultimates

Assembled to do the work of The One Above All, The Ultimate Ultimates bind The First Firmament in the chains it used to bind Eternity himself. When Eternity asks how its possible they could all still yet live, Infinity reminds him of the fateful words Reed Richards uttered to end Secret Wars and restore reality to normal.

“Everything lives.”

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='The%20Fate%20of%20the%20Multiverse']



The Fate of the Multiverse

In the aftermath, things across the universe settle down for the most part. The Living Tribunal prepares punishment for Lord Order and Master Chaos’ reckless scheming, Ego-Prime sheds his body to become a Living Planet once more and perhaps most interestingly, the original Ultimates are still going. Although they lack a Captain America, we see Iron Man, The Wasp, Giant Man and The Hulk leave this reality for the infinite unknown of The Multiverse, where they plan on hunting The Maker in all of his separate incarnations.

Ultimates-Classic

Surprisingly, Ultimates ends with Galactus remaining as The Lifebringer. Al Ewing even notes in his sign-off at the end that the original plan was for Galactus to return to his purple devourer of worlds role at the end of the series, but he found The Lifebringer too interesting to put back in the box. That decision represents the best of Ultimates, because it adds something new to the Marvel Universe, made out of something recognizable. Whether it was nods to the New Universe, Omega The Unknown or classic Jim Starlin cosmic weirdness, Al Ewing and his collaborators showed the strength of working in a shared superhero universe and the storytelling potential that comes with leaning into the decades and decades of history.

Just like those stories, Ultimates left something new for creators both now and in the future to tap into, mold and create new stories with. Galactus even flat-out states toward the end that “the dance between change and illusion will go on” but that’s not a bad thing. Ultimates brought a human heart to the highest of high-concept Marvel weirdness and although it’s over, that just means — as Ewing says in his sign-off — it’s time for something new.