The DC Universe Just Got Its Own Version of Force Ghosts
The last entry of Future State: Teen Titans features a powerful artifact, riders of the apocalypse and a major shift in the cosmology of its heroes.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Future State: Teen Titans #2
Not only is it one of the bleaker Future State entries, the Teen Titans’ storyline has also been particularly hard to grasp. The timeline is further into the future than others, and frequently jumps to dour flashbacks unraveling the circumstances which led to their apocalypse bit by bit. Many famous heroes have been killed and the world irrevocably altered in the wake of an unknown event involving the H-Dial (or Hero Dial), a powerful artifact originally designed to temporarily imbue the user with unique and incredible powers. The tangled intrigue born of this as yet uncharted narrative territory is fraught with betrayal, loss, and survivor’s guilt, which makes the latest revelation all the more unexpected.
In a stunning discovery that expands DC Comics cosmology, the last Teen Titans left standing must reach out to souls of heroes past for help. And no, this isn’t one of Raven’s arcane conjurations, but a phenomenon ostensibly as old as the universe. It turns out that when superheroes die they aren’t gone for good, but can return in a form that will be eerily recognizable to fans of a very separate franchise: George Lucas’ game-changing space opera, Star Wars.
Future State: Teen Titans #2, by writer Tim Sheridan and artist Rafa Sandoval, details the final fight between the Titans and the Riders of the Apocalypse, led by a revenant Wally West. Overwhelmed and overpowered by their adversaries, the team is forced to use the very device which triggered the end of the world in the first place. Red X dials “Titans” or 8-4-8-2-6-7 on the modified H Dial, which conjures up the spirits of deceased Teen Titans to fight once more. Why does this happen? Nightwing explains that superheroes in the DC heroverse don’t experience death the way other do. Instead, their essence remains suspended somewhere and eventually returns to the material plane when called upon.
As one of the Titan’s newest recruits, Bunker reflects: “They’re never truly gone”, which is where things start to get strange. This line is almost verbatim what Luke says to Leia in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, that “No one’s ever really gone”. In the immediate context of the scene, Luke’s line is directly referencing Kylo Ren’s turn to the dark side. However, in the broader context of the film, which sees Skywalker ultimately join with the force himself and return as a Force Ghost in the next instalment, the line holds a much larger significance. And this isn’t the only odd point of comparison. The returned heroes appear in translucent luminous blue form that is awfully similar to the long established “Force Ghosts” in the Star Wars cannon; the biggest difference between the two being that the heroverse ghosts aren’t constrained to sitting on the sidelines and whispering sage advice.
It isn’t every day the worlds of DC Comics and Star Wars collide, even if it is in such an indirect way. After all, the Star Wars comic book rights are firmly in Marvel’s domain since Disney acquired Lucasfilms in 2012. Whether this development is a not so subtle homage or a playful jab at the competition, it’s a little too on the nose to pass as complete coincidence.