When we create a Multiverse, Diana, our hope is that life within will follow a path, that it will ascend from simple selfishness to seek greater truths. 
- —The Handssrc
The Hands, also referred to as the "Hands of the Source" or the "Super Celestials" or the "Celestial Beings", are enigmatic beings from beyond the Source Wall, sent by The Source throughout the Overvoid to configure and birth Multiverses within the Greater Omniverse, using Connective Energy.
History
Not much is known about the origins of The Hands, but it is very likely that they were created by The Source of All Things. In the beginning, before any Multiverse became reality, there was only The Source, and from The Source, great energies were born. The Hands were sent through the Overvoid by The Source to take these energies and shape them into Multiverses within what would be known as the "Greater Omniverse". These beings birth a reality and then die, giving themselves to the baby Multiverse with the hope that life within would ascend from simple selfishness to seek greater truths. The Source chose a series of cosmic guardians from among The Hands, the "Judges of the Source," including the Cosmic Raptor, who would monitor each Multiverse so that if its balance of Good and Evil shifted from Justice to Death (or vice versa), they would enact a Cosmic Judgment and destroy the Multiverse for good. As rulers of the Greater Omniverse, they have many heralds who follow their orders and those of The Source, each with different functions, such as the Chronicler.
Among The Hands, the seed among them, Perpetua, refused to die and created her Multiverse using Crisis Energy. Her goal was to create a Multiverse with no memory, one that would live forever in a self-renewing loop of its own importance. A Multiverse that would prey on others, absorb them and forget them, vampiric and eternally devoted to her. She thus traveled through the different dimensions of her Multiverse in search of beings rich in potential if correctly exploited and her research took her to Earth, the center of the Multiverse, where she experimented on the inhabitants of the planet with those of the neighboring world, creating an army of immortal Apex Predators to fight eternally in her name.
The fall of Perpetua and her Great Army
After her children, the Brothers Three learned of her plans to twist the Multiverse, they alerted The Hands whose response was to sent the Cosmic Raptor to imprison Perpetua, her Great Army, and the Totality of the power she had selfishly hoarded in the Source Wall. Perpetua's Multiverse was then restarted, but this time with Connective Energy.
The Second Metal War
After Perpetua was freed from the Source Wall by Lex Luthor, she transformed him into an Apex Predator like her former army's members. She used him and his legion to twist the Multiverse's balance of justice and doom and defeat the Justice League of Earth 0; in the end, Perpetua restored her Apex Predators' army to defend herself and its creatures from the Hands' vengeance.
After being advised that her enemies were saved from total annihilation, Perpetua allied herself with the Batman who Laughs, an evil Batman from the Dark Multiverse who proposed her to supercharge her with the eternal Crisis Energies from his realm so she chose him as her new right hand.
While Perpetua was moving through the Multiverse, the Batman who Laughs became an almighty God after his mind was transplanted into the Batmanhattan, a Dark Multiverse being who possessed the Connective Energy of the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan. The fresh-born Darkest Knight planned to use his newfound strength against the Mother of the Multiverse and, after that, to kill the Hands and conquer every other multiverse.
The Darkest Knight redirected the Crisis Energy from Perpetua to himself and gained more power which he then used to battle her. As the Multiverse was expected to die, the Hands sent there one of their heralds; the Chronicler, a being who was tasked to describe the history of dying multiverses and their final death.[2]
After finally killing Perpetua, the Darkest Knight confronted a Forge of Worlds-empowered Wonder Woman and took her to the Creation of the Multiverse; then, they reached the End of Time where the Darkest Knight revealed her the truth about the Hands: the almighty rulers of the Omniverse had already decided to destroy the Multiverse as its inhabitants had gone too far, causing one Crisis after the other too many times to be spared from annihilation. The One who Laughs proposed her to ally with him as he was going to kill the Hands, before they could annihilate the Multiverse, and conquer the Omniverse.
Diana refused and ultimately killed the Darkest Knight, thereby accepting the final fate of the Multiverse; however, the Hands were so surprised by her selfless choice to save Them that They spared the Multiverse and its inhabitants while, at the same time, restoring all its iterations and also allowed Diana to ascend to an Higher Plane of existence.[3]
Powers
- Nigh-Omnipotence/Divine Empowerment: The Super Celestials, “Hands”, were granted unlimited power by The Source to configure and birth Multiverses.[4] After giving birth to a reality, they are believed to return to The Source. Perpetua, the rogue among them, feared that if they discovered her treachery, they would come and erase her and her Multiverse for good, and stated that her judgment on reality, while harsh, is nothing compared to the reckoning they would bring.[5] For reference, when they first came for the Multiverse, when Perpetua created it, Perpetua was sealed within the Source Wall and the Multiverse was restarted.[6] The only known beings capable of surpassing them The Presence and The Source.
- Energy Construct Creation: As the Super Celestials are granted by The Source the Connective Energy — the Speed Force, the Emotional Spectrum, the Forces of Justice, all forces in essence connective that unite through memory and history, they use these energies to shape their reality into a format intended to evolve and ascend within the Greater Omniverse.[7]
- Reality Alteration: The Super Celestials can change reality on a wide multiversal scale and enact a Cosmic Judgment on each Multiverse whose balance between Good and Evil shifted from Justice to Doom and vice-versa.[7] When they came to judge the Multiverse after the Darkest Knight's defeat, they erased the Multiverse and restarted it into a new configuration where an infinite web of Multiverses developed, becoming its own type of Omniverse, rich with possibilities.[3]
- Resurrection: The Super Celestials can restore a destroyed Multiverse, as demonstrated when they recreated the Multiverse and restored everything and everyone in that reality as a reward for being saved from the Darkest Knight.[3]
- Metamorphosis: The Hands have the ability to manifest themselves to other beings through physical appearances, as seen when one Hand took the form of Wonder Woman of Earth-Two in order to interact with Diana.[3]
- Size Alteration: These super celestials beings are bigger than the Multiverses.
- Dimensional Travel: The Hands are capable of traveling across the Multiverses beyond the Overvoid, into the Greater Omniverse. The Hands can also move freely through the Timestream, as they once reached the End of Time to witness Diana's last stand against the Darkest Knight.[3]
- Immortality: They have actually lived approximately trillions of years in the Omniverse, and will continue to do so even into the future.
Notes
- Although not officially confirmed, the "Hands" and the "Judges of the Source" are the same entities, as they have been used interchangeably throughout the story:
- Justice League (Volume 4) #22 refers to the Judges of the Source as those Mar Novu, Alpheus, and Mobius alerted and whose judgment was coming upon the Multiverse. Dark Nights: Death Metal Multiverse's End #1 and Dark Nights: Death Metal #7 attributed this to the Hands, which was repeated in Infinite Frontier #0.
- It is most likely that the Hands are divided into groups in that, the Judges of the Source would be the higher rank chosen by The Source to oversee any Multiverse within the Greater Omniverse, while beings like Perpetua tasked with creating Multiverses would be the lower rank of the species.
- Justice League (Volume 4) #22 refers to the Judges of the Source as those Mar Novu, Alpheus, and Mobius alerted and whose judgment was coming upon the Multiverse. Dark Nights: Death Metal Multiverse's End #1 and Dark Nights: Death Metal #7 attributed this to the Hands, which was repeated in Infinite Frontier #0.
See Also
- 1 Appearances of The Hands
- 1 Images that include The Hands
- Team Gallery: The Hands