WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Infinity Wars: Sleepwalker #1 by Chris Sims, Chad Bowers and Todd Nauck.
Gamora's Marvel Universe-altering snap might not seem nearly as bad as what her dad, Thanos, was able to pull off back in the day, but the inaugural issue of Infinity Wars: Sleepwalker reveals that might not be the case. Though, it is a reasonable assumption. Gamora's Infinity Stone-powered snap, after all, merely folded the universe in half. This is terrible for its inhabitants, but not so bad for us. After all, we got some pretty cool Infinity Warps out of the deal. So, maybe Gamora's universal reboot isn't that bad?
Wrong.
As it turns out, the blood cost of Gamora's snap wasn't nearly as high as Thanos' (the Infinity Warps, after all, are still alive, just smooshed together), but it looks like there will be significant psychic ramifications if the damage isn't undone. And soon. Sadly, the individuals poised to do something about Gamora's warping the fabric of reality aren't feeling particularly threatened at the moment.
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Those individuals are the Sleepwalkers, a race of beings who exist in the Mindscape and whose sole purpose is to police the nightmares of their dimension, keeping them from seeping into the dreams of the universe's sentient life. Chief among the Sleepwalkers is Sleepwalker himself, one such member of the dream police who was fused with the human Rick Sheridan by one of his nemeses, Cob Web. Together, Sleepwalker and Rick police the waking world, with Sleepwalker taking over Rick's body when he's asleep. When Gamora's snap goes down, though, Sleepwalker is shunted out of our earthly plane and back into the Mindscape, the result of Rick being warped into Gamora's new reality inside the Soul Stone.
Naturally, Sleepwalker is ready to take the fight to Gamora, but his superiors in the Mindscape Council don't see the need. From their perspective, Gamora's snap is nowhere near as devastating as Thanos, which killed half of all life in the universe. Gamora didn't kill anyone, technically (though not for lack of trying). The Mindscape Council reasons that she simply folded the universe over on itself, warping its inhabitants in the process. There was no pain or suffering. The act was done with finesse. This is in stark contrast to Thanos' universal genocide, which caused a wave of suffering, grief and nightmares that is still the stuff of legend in the Mindscape.
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There's a dang good reason for that, too. If you want to see the definition of existential terror, just check out Infinity Gauntlet #1, the issue in which Thanos delivers his genocidal snap in an attempt to impress Death. In the issue, we see Spider-Man's spider sense going off like crazy just before he witnesses half the people on the street below him merely vanish (one of which is a baby). The same kind of dread comes over Captain America when Hawkeye and Sersi disappear in front of him -- it's Cap, so the feeling of helplessness basically the worst thing imaginable for him. Even Doctor Strange gets a taste of what the Infinity Stones can do when Wong disappears. It's the stuff of nightmares, as anyone who has read the comic or seen Infinity Wars knows.
Gamora's snap looks like nothing by comparison. There's no wailing, no existential dread or disappearing babies. Those who get warped don't remember their past lives, for the most part. Sure, they're wildly ineffective as Infinity Warps, but that's no going to cause any nightmares. Right? That's what the council thinks. They order Sleepwalker to take a chill pill, but Sleepwalker is thoroughly without chill. That's not just because he wants to get back to Rick, but because, as a veteran in the war against nightmares, he knows how things are actually going to go down. Gamora's snap isn't just as bad as her father's. Oh no, it's much worse.
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The reason for that is because there actually isn't any finesse to what Gamora did. She mashed together two of everything in the universe. The psychic toll is going to be profound, Sleepwalker reasons, and the nightmares produced by the act aren't going to be felt for some time, but when they do it will be unlike anything the Marvel Universe has ever felt before. Escaping the Mindscape isn't just a matter of saving Rick, it's a matter of saving the universe itself from infinite nightmares.
In doing so, Sleepwalker defies orders from the council, effectively exiling himself to the wilds of the Mindscape, where nightmares dwell. Luckily, he's able to make his way into Gamora's demented new reality and find himself a champion, but the question remains -- will it be enough to stop the nightmares Sleepwalker foresaw, or has Gamora just irrevocably stacked the Mindscape Council's inbox with a hellish workload for years to come?