Firestorm: Can the Arrowverse Hero Ever Recover from Doomsday Clock?

Despite his being a prominent member of the Bronze Age era Justice League and a star of Legends of Tomorrow, Firestorm has never been a huge character within the DC Universe. In spite of his vast power level, which allows him to transmute objects into other elements, he's never really broken into the highest echelon of DC heroes, despite several fan-favorite runs featuring the character.

Outside of the Arrowverse, his most recent use in the comics was in the Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock, by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank and Brad Anderson, but he didn't exactly make it out of the book unscathed. Doomsday Clock revealed a much more twisted origin for Firestorm which may irrevocably change his character forever going forward.

FIRESTORM IN DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Since debuting in Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom's Firestorm, the Nuclear Man #1 in 1978, Firestorm's traditional origin had him as a high school student named Ronnie Raymond, who, along with Nobel Prize-winning scientist Martin Stein, was caught in an explosion at a nuclear power plant. This fused them together via a "Firestorm matrix," turning them into a superhero with nuclear and elemental abilities. Ronnie was in control in the Firestorm persona, due to Stein having been unconscious when the two were fused. This still allows Stein to mentally speak to Ronnie without controlling him, guiding him on how to use his powers and providing witty banter.

This origin was upended completely in Doomsday Clock. There, Firestorm is under scrutiny for supposedly being created by the American government as part of a metahuman nuclear arms race. Ronnie Raymond vehemently denounces the "Superman theory" brought forth in the series, which stated that the overwhelming presence of metahumans in the United States was due to government genetic engineering and now mere happenstance.

It's eventually revealed that Firestorm himself is living proof of this theory, having unwittingly been the victim of none other than Martin Stein. Stein researched Ronnie Raymond specifically and felt that he would be tailor-made for the Firestorm Matrix bonding, due to his less than ideal relationship to his parents and similarities to Stein's own son. Thus, the explosion that subsequently made the two into Firestorm was no accident but an intentional experiment conducted by Martin Stein.

Nuclear Disaster

This changes everything about Firestorm's origin and the nature of his relationship with Martin Stein. Beforehand, Stein didn't even initially realize what happened after he and Ronnie were fused together. He thought that his times inside Ronnie's head as Firestorm were mere instances of blackouts and hallucinations. The two generally had a cordial relationship as well, albeit an ironic one, given Stein's nature as a fussy, academically minded professor and Ronnie's more airheaded jock personality.

This twist turns Stein into something of a villainous mad scientist, content with manipulating the life of a wayward and misfortune-prone child for his own experiments. The chance that he knew his experiment would give him some control over a being with extraordinary powers if successful only makes it all the more amoral. It also makes him a part of the plan, in one way or another, to give America supreme status over the rest of the world in terms of controlled metahuman power.

This was, to be fair, all part of the revelations of the new continuity that Dr. Manhattan had unleashed on the DC Universe. This world was now darker and bleaker, due to its not having the hopeful start given to it by figures such as the Justice Society of America. Thus, the entire history of DC's superheroes and even hopeful characters like Superman were significantly grimmer.

With many of these changes being undone by the story's conclusion and Dark Nights: Death Metal's restoration of all of DC history, it's possible that a more traditional Firestorm origin may have been put back into place. Firestorm hasn't factored into any stories since then, and the Superman Theory itself has not been mentioned in a meaningful way since these series ended either, although several characters who returned during DOomsday Clock have continued to appear. For now, it's unclear if Ronnie Raymond's life will be the result of manipulation from a morally unscrupulous Martin Stein, and if so, how that will make the Nuclear Man into a more conflicted character going forward.

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