- "Dominator. These guys are so last year."
- —Kara Danvers on a Dominator.[src]
The Dominators are a race of extra-terrestrial beings. They are conquerors intent on maintaining the status quo in the universe by any means, with the unpredictable meta-humans being their prime targets on Earth.
History
Earth One
In 1951 of Earth One, the Dominators landed on Earth, abducting humans to gather information about them. After President Ike Eisenhower waited for too long without action, the extraterrestrials attacked, killing hundreds of soldiers. Unbeknownst to them, Steel, Heat Wave, and Vixen arrived and subdued a straggler. Suddenly, the National Security Agency appeared and took them into custody (including the Dominator).[1]
As the Legends begin to interrogate the captive Dominator, Agent Smith appears and has the Dominator pinned down onto a lab table while experimenting on them. This results in the National Security Agency forming a truce to keep the equilibrium of Earth balanced.
In October 1988 in Ivy Town, an anachronistic baby Dominator was found by eight-year old Ray Palmer, who took it in as a pet and nicknaming it "Gumball". The queen of the Dominators, furious, landed on Earth, and instinctively attacked the Legends and Sandy Palmer in the process of searching. Gumball, along with young Ray and Zari Tomaz, was captured by NSA agents and had them locked up in a nearby lab, revealed to be operated by Agent Smith. They later escape and the Legends return Gumball to the queen.[2]
Sixty-five years later after the incident in 1951, however, with the appearance of meta-humans, especially Barry Allen, the Dominators returned to Earth, prefaced with a warning to Earthly authorities that they meant no harm, though in fact planning war. Four ships crash landed, one of them in Central City, spilling forth with Dominators. This faction kidnapped the President and set up a mind control device in an old salt mine, but this device was eventually destroyed by Supergirl, with the help of The Flash.[1] However, they soon abducted Sara Lance, John Diggle, Thea Queen, Ray Palmer and Oliver Queen, placing them into an induced dream world. They eventually escaped, fighting against the Dominators, before escaping in a pod. As they headed down towards Earth, the mothership followed them. At this time, the Dominators were about finished with their superweapon that they intended to use to wipe out all metahumans on Earth. They threatened to drop it unless Barry Allen surrendered himself in 24 hours, which he refused.[3]
They lowered the mothership down on Central City and begin to drop the meta bomb, while a platoon of Dominators fought the heroes on top of the S.T.A.R. Labs hangar. Barry placed the high-frequency transmitting devices made by Martin on the Dominators, and Felicity detonated them, effectively taking them out.
The bomb began descending, with Sara in the Waverider attempting to use the ship's tractor beam to hold it up. Firestorm arrives and uses his powers to transmute the bomb into water, successfully saving the planet. The mothership then flies off into deep space. The Dominators' status is unknown after that and it is clearly unknown if they will strike again.
Earth Thirty-Eight
A Dominator on Earth Thirty-Eight.
Sometime before Kara Danvers was born, the Dominators traveled to Krypton and performed experiments on a number of people, as well as killing a lot more.[1]
Over a year after Kara became Supergirl, one of the Dominators allied themselves with Roulette, who went into the slave trade on Slaver's Moon after Supergirl dismantled her fighting club, wanting to buy all her human prisoners. Later, while helping the prisoners escape, Mon-El almost gets shot by one of the guards, but the Dominator stops the guard and bows to Mon-El.[4] Sometime after Kara and Mon-El's escape, Lar Gand and Rhea arrived on Slaver's Moon and one of the Dominators informed them of their son's exploits and told them that they had gone to Earth.[5]
In late 2017, a Dominator caused trouble in National City, but was stopped by Supergirl.[6]
Powers and abilities
Powers
- Mental abilities: The Dominators' physiology allows them to use abilities that stem from the mind.
- Illusions: The Dominator queen took on the appearance of Ray's mother to trick Nate Heywood.[2]
- Mind control: The Dominators are able to control one's mind. This ability manifests as early as infancy.[2]
- Telepathy: The Dominators are able to communicate telepathically with others, seemingly also being able to use their own language, despite languages such as English not being their native language.[1]
- Temporal awareness: The Dominators are able to sense any alterations in the timeline, and the time traveler who altered it. It is unclear whether this ability is of their physiology or advanced technology that can detect time alterations.[7]
- Organic Webbing/Cocoon creation: The Dominator queen was able to produce organic web, trapping her targets inside of upside-down cocoons. It is unknown if only the queen is able to perform this ability.[2]
- Super strength: The Dominators were strong, shown when a Dominator hit Oliver, sending him flying off the roof of a building.[7] They are also resilient to bullets, and other attacks by the combined Teams Legends, Arrow, and Flash. Such resilience may be why they do not wear clothing. Infant Dominators have the strength of an adult but none of their discretion.
Abilities
- Bilingualism: The Dominators can understand the English language, along with their mother tongue.
- Expert hand-to-hand combatant: The Dominators are proficient in unarmed combat, being able to keep up with expert martial artists like Oliver Queen and John Diggle.[7]
- High-level intellect: The Dominators are a highly intellectual species, being able to assess the risk of meta-humans to the normal course of the universe and the timeline.[7] Kara stated that they experimented on Kryptonians, implying that they have the natural instinct of curiosity. They are able to carry out their plans, as shown by their organization in planning the invasion and in creating traps like the mind control device causing everyone to go hostile.[1]
- Eidetic memory: When Gumball used his mind control ability on the NSA agents, he exactly remembered the song Good Morning from the film Singin' in the Rain, and made them sing and dance exactly like in the film that he and young Ray watched.
- Impersonation: Using the knowledge from stolen memories, the Dominator queen was able to masquerade as Ray's mother convincingly enough to fool Nate Heywood.[2]
Weaknesses
- Martin Stein's pain devices: During the Dominator invasion, Dr. Martin Stein mass-produced a small device that when placed on a Dominator, induces a large of amount of pain. The devices are controlled by a switch that will simultaneously activate once turned on.[7]
- Power-dampening cuffs: Similar to meta-humans, Dominators in their infancy can have their powers suppressed by the device. It was also able to administer indescribable pain to an infant Dominator.[2]
- Sedation: "Gumball" was vulnerable to the chemical injected to him when he was captured, and was easily sedated.[2]
Equipment
- Firearm: The Dominator ship had a firearm hung on the wall, ready to be used by anyone. When triggered, it shoots two parallel beams of light towards the target. This was used by Oliver Queen to escape the ship stating that some principles of design are universal.[3]
Known Dominators
Living Dominators
Appearances
Supergirl
Season 2
- "Medusa" (indirectly mentioned)
- "Supergirl Lives"
- "Star-Crossed" (mentioned)
Season 3
The Flash
Season 3
- "Invasion!"
- "The Present" (mentioned)
- "Infantino Street" (mentioned)
Season 4
- "Luck Be a Lady" (mentioned)
Arrow
Season 5
Season 6
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DC's Legends of Tomorrow
Season 2
Season 3
|
The Chronicles of Cisco
- Template:COC
Trivia
- The Dominators see meta-humans as a threat to their kind.
- The Dominators think Barry Allen is a threat due to his creation of Flashpoint. However, it is unknown how they know about Flashpoint. .
The Dominators appear to act based on fear and bigotry.
- As Nate put it "He's out of his giant mind".
- Their concern comes from thinking about the possibility of people like Agent Smith (who sadistically tortured a Dominator) gaining superpowers.
- It remains unknown if the Dominators have doppelgangers, or if there is only a single species with the power to traverse the multiverse.
Behind the scenes
- In the DC comics, the Dominators were also the main antagonists in the Invasion! event. However, to attack Earth they first formed an alien alliance first consisting of them, the shape-shifting Durlans, the fanatically fascist Thanagarians, the supply-producing Gil'Dishpan, the ruthless and deadly Daxamites, the strategic weaponsmiths Warlords of Okaara, the hunkering, slovenly Citadelians, the sadistic and scientific Psions, and finally, the Khund, the "most brutal, most innately savage race of war-mongers in the universe".
- Also, their defeat at the hands of the heroes of Earth came before the dropping of the meta-bomb, which the Dominators had no knowledge of. Though the Dominators had agreed to surrender, and they left, one of the Dominators, eager to prove his low caste level (the small size of the red mark on his forehead) didn't mean he wasn't intelligent, acted alone and invented and released the meta-bomb, which successfully neutralized all of Earth's metahumans. The non-metahuman heroes managed to travel through outer space to obtain an antidote and spread it with help from the extraterrestrial superhero team known as the Omega Men.