F.I.L.T.E.R. is terrible.
Sure, comic book government agencies who regulate metahuman stuff tend to not be portrayed very sympathetically. They decieve heroes, make special ops teams out of incarcerated supervillains, and are generally more than a little sinister. But even by those standards, it's a little harsh that F.I.L.T.E.R.'s track record to our knowledge is:
- Apprehending Tempest when the latter came to Earth, and not heeding warnings about Voss.
- Putting criminals in super-creepy suspended temporal states.
- Failing to stop Kismet.
- Endangering all of space-time.
That is just awful. Further, The Block is deliberately stated to be outside ALL dimensions, while F.I.L.T.E.R. can open portals to it "just about anywhere". So, they have dimension-hopping tech, they care about the state of other dimensions enough to not store villains there, and no limits on their range are discussed - are there alternate-universe versions of F.I.L.T.E.R. working together? It would explain why The Block's fall endangers more than one dimension.
Even if I'm wrong about that, though, they do have controlled access to other dimensions - something that no other group or entity in SotM has yet been confirmed to have (La Capitan and Chrono-Ranger have time travel, but no discussion of multiple timelines, Iron Legacy appears to have hitched a ride on the existing Time Cataclysm, and Visionary just about killed herself with a single dimension hop). This makes them, by my reckoning, the only force so far with reach that truly extends to The Multiverse. And with that reach and their awful track record, they are a threat.
So, technically speaking, one could argue that F.I.L.T.E.R. is the only antagonist we've seen who justifies their enemies being gaurdians of that Multiverse. Watchdogs, if you will. Champions. Hurm. How else would one say that?
Ironic
"Is it a bird?"
"Is it a plane?"
"No... it's ironic!"
