Whether it's hating "Flashpoint" or loving "Crisis on Infinite Earths," most DC Comics fans have very strong opinions about reboots. But DC's newest "Dark Crisis" event has made the dreadful "comic book reboot" its main villains' deadliest weapon and it could doom the DC Universe if they succeed.
Following the aptly named "Death of the Justice League," the surviving members of the League and the newest generation of heroes will team up to defeat the villains who killed their predecessors in "Dark Crisis." Among this group of villains, one name will stand out to veteran comic book readers because of his essential place in DC's first reboot. Crisis on Infinite Earth's Pariah has returned and he's ready to use his inter-dimensional powers to reboot the DC multiverse in his image.
First appearing in Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez), Pariah accidentally set the events of the series in motion. One of his experiments led to freeing the Anti-Monitor from his prison, who then went on to destroy Pariah's universe. Pariah only survived because the benevolent Monitor gave him the ability to travel between dimensions, which forced him to witness the Anti-Monitor's Earth destroying crusade. By the end of the event, he used his powers to help the Justice League defeat the Anti-Monitor and restore their Earth. But his own Earth remained destroyed, so he was cursed to travel dimensions for eternity.
Now, a crazed and revived Pariah has returned to the main DC multiverse with one clear goal: destroy Earth-0. Wielding the ancient destructive powers of the Great Darkness, Pariah plans to recreate his home Earth and establish a new multiverse within the wider DC omniverse. Essentially, Pariah and his team of villains are attempting to build a new multiverse from the ashes of the old one, thereby weaponizing the comic book reboot. They've slowly been building towards their plot to reboot the universe in the background since Dark Nights: Metal.
They started by combining every different version of Darkseid into Omega Darkseid and defeating the Quintessence, the five omnipotent beings who bear witness to everything in every universe. Once they were out of the way, Pariah transported Flash into another multiverse so he couldn't use the Speed Force to travel to a time before they set their plan into motion. Previews from "Death of the Justice League" show that the Great Darkness proved to be their demise. The only thing standing between Pariah and his team's goal is the remaining heroes post-DotJL. If they manage to reboot the universe in their image, it could mean that DC's heroes will finally suffer their ultimate defeat.
It's no coincidence that Pariah is the villain at the center of Dark Crisis. With his power to travel through dimensions, it makes him the perfect character to weaponize multiverse-wide reboots. Since he's seen a nigh-infinite amount of Earth's, he can predict the way that DC heroes could react to his attempts to reboot their multiverse. If Pariah succeeds with his weaponized reboot, it would erase most of DC's heroes from the very fabric of existence, almost assuring that he could never be defeated.
Given that DC Comics more or less has one reboot per generation of readers, it makes complete sense that they would finally choose to use one to its full villainous potential by bringing back the villain that was at the center of its first reboot.