Vox - Watchmen on HBO: news, episode recaps, analysis, and comic book Easter eggs https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2019-12-15T22:09:00-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/206892572019-12-15T22:09:00-05:002019-12-15T22:09:00-05:005 questions about Watchmen’s season one finale
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<img alt="Angela Abar sees the Seventh Kavalry seem to be ready to destroy her husband." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cKEgpbElOmqj3F_D3QZG9lCknKo=/0x0:2667x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65911242/049299b44f45d292748a365d8d3a1ed01f5042a247a537c32bbfd3a1035b5233337761a8fe9164a60fd7c25737df82ec.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Angela probably has some of these questions, too. | HBO</figcaption>
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<p>And it’s not just five variations on “What happens next?!”</p> <p id="8Mpj6B">As far as I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am concerned, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9209842/">“See How They Fly,”</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references"><em>Watchmen</em>’s</a> first (and perhaps only?) season finale, was a near-perfect way to end a near-perfect season of television.</p>
<p id="c2uVd2">Like the season it caps, “See How They Fly” begins with a heady dip into both the past and present, filling viewers in on the backstory of Lady Trieu and Adrian Veidt’s eventual escape from Europa. The two are linked — Trieu is Veidt’s daughter, though he had no idea she existed until she showed up at his doorstep in Antarctica. (Sidebar: The way the show’s directors have used lighting to highlight Hong Chau’s eyes in a way that makes it seem almost as if Lady Trieu is wearing a mask herself, is a nifty visual reference to Ozymandias’s look.) </p>
<p id="ypIOVm">Then the episode launches into a long sequence that delves into the consequences of American racism. And it ends with graceful imagery and a story about what parents and children owe to each other.</p>
<p id="fkGUcM">In the middle, it nearly loses its way, but rights itself in time for a rip-roaring climax. I cried, I laughed, I cheered. It was about as good an ending as I dared hope for, especially after episode eight left me fearing the producers had so many balls up in the air that they couldn’t possibly hope to catch all of them.</p>
<p id="X2JJEz">What’s amazing about this finale is that it answers so many questions, but almost perfunctorily. Some moments had been clearly telegraphed earlier in the season — like the egg Angela eats that may or may not contain Doctor Manhattan’s powers — but the character resolutions were so beautiful that I was happy just to revel in them. By the time Will and Angela were having a conversation about pain and Will was insisting that “wounds need air,” I was a mess.</p>
<p id="Y64z4T">And for as many questions as the finale answered, it raised a few new ones for me and some of my colleagues — not about the story of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7049682/?ref_=tt_ov_inf"><em>Watchmen</em></a> but about some of the show’s thematic implications. So I’m joined by associate culture editor Allegra Frank, senior culture correspondent Alex Abad-Santos, and culture writer Constance Grady to break those down and discuss <em>Watchmen</em>’s first season as a whole.</p>
<h3 id="YbPyrR">1. How well did the finale wrap up this season of television?</h3>
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<img alt="Laurie Blake ends up kidnapped." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mxqSKWuLe-Bza6Um5p9TkCoXVP8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19530269/7383712e44f5ba4b5ad3926fe8fc2c94599be56f33ee4df258f6efcd671f282805d1e8a71b24161be9d113371b9f9244.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Laurie saves the day — then arrests Adrian Veidt.</figcaption>
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<p id="AHeJpi"><strong>Emily: </strong>You can probably guess from all of the above that I think “See How They Fly” is terrific. But I want to know what the three of you think. Did you like it? Yes? No?</p>
<p id="Xtfcqn"><strong>Allegra: </strong>I think that yes, I did. It helped that the two episodes before the finale made me feel more invested in <em>Watchmen</em> than I had been previously, thanks to its increased focus on Angela and a fun detour into her and Doctor Manhattan’s love story. The poignancy of their relationship in particular made the conclusion land for me, as it carried increased emotional heft. And more importantly, it was so fun to see my man Adrian Veidt play off characters we hadn’t yet seen him interact with.</p>
<p id="pnhcgh"><strong>Alex: </strong>I liked it. I’ve really enjoyed this entire season, and though I don’t know if I love the finale as much as episode six or eight, I really enjoyed how it unspooled the season’s mysteries. I didn’t see Veidt hiding in (golden) plain sight coming, and how we ended up back at the theater? I yelped out loud. </p>
<p id="gk99Rd"><strong>Constance:</strong> I’m on Alex’s side here. I enjoyed this finale a lot, and I think it’s a beautifully constructed episode of television. But I don’t think it’s as thematically interesting as the more allegorical episodes from earlier in the season, and it spends more time on Doctor Manhattan himself as a character than I particularly care for. (The best thing about Doctor Manhattan is that all his girlfriends are way more interesting than he is, imo.)</p>
<h3 id="EDXc5v">2. Doctor Manhattan: good man or tool of the status quo?</h3>
<p id="jbTlxc"><strong>Alex:</strong> At the end of this episode, Will and Angela talk about what a good man Jon was. It’s in the context of how he didn’t really want to be a god, but also that he tried his best to take care of Angela. But is he really a good man? </p>
<p id="NMBBpK">There’s that famous saying that with great power comes great responsibility, and I don’t think Jon has ever really flexed the “great responsibility” part. By falling for Angela, he put the entire world at risk. Granted, he probably knew Cyclops would muck things up. But he didn’t know if anyone would be able to stop Lady Trieu, since she kills him. If Veidt didn’t stop her, Lady Trieu would have ruled the world. </p>
<p id="3WXTzw">Was risking that outcome worth being with Angela? Aren’t Doctor Manhattan’s actions just as bad as Veidt’s giant squid attack in terms of putting the fate of humanity at risk? If he was truly good, shouldn’t he have avoided having a relationship with Angela, and for that matter, Laurie Blake, too? </p>
<p id="JMGaox">Or, alternately, is it okay if he isn’t all that good?</p>
<p id="ufen9B"><strong>Constance:</strong> There’s not just the problem of falling in love with Angela: There’s also the problem of everything that Doctor Manhattan failed to do. As Will put it, he could have done so much more.</p>
<p id="1tPesq">Doctor Manhattan has the ability to create life! He’s essentially omnipotent and omniscient! And he uses his powers to basically fuck around on one of Jupiter’s moons for a while? We’re told he has the ability to do anything, and yet he allows the world to keep on turning more or less as it always has been, filled with untold suffering and injustice. As Lady Trieu pointed out, there was plenty that someone with Doctor Manhattan’s powers could have done to make the world a better place — cure diseases, end war, feed the hungry — and Jon consistently failed to do any of that.</p>
<p id="vXYmjj">But his apparent inaction raises some pretty compelling questions. Did he decide not to intervene in world matters because, given the way he experiences time, he knew that he wouldn’t intervene? In other words, does being omniscient rob Doctor Manhattan of free will? Or does he choose not to intervene because he is so powerful that anything he does to upset the status quo would lead to potentially apocalyptic consequences, and so the best he can do is nothing at all? Which is to say: In the moral universe of <em>Watchmen</em>, is it impossible to have god-like powers and still be ethically good?</p>
<h3 id="ORcWfr">3. Did Lady Trieu deserve better than to be crushed by her Millennium Clock?</h3>
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<img alt="Lady Trieu prepares for her big final act." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Qyyv0sE3_u4EGnMV_29m3dGBFWE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19530272/8355d20a1a72b163a41c52059b35e27168c6cccdc489274876d395b0ee7ec27824b9f34cc140cfa60860d95a5ebdb286.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Poor Lady Trieu — shouldn’t have gotten that clock dropped on her head.</figcaption>
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<p id="p4ppz9"><strong>Constance:</strong> Real talk, I adore Lady Trieu and her fantastic hat with all my heart, and I think she deserves better than to have been killed by one of her dad’s reruns. I mean — tiny frozen squid? Where’s the grandeur in that? Frankly, Ozymandias could stand to learn a thing or two from the scope of Lady Trieu’s ambition, not to mention her aesthetic sense. (She was right, that suit <em>was</em> a better look for him than his clichéd cloak and armor.)</p>
<p id="JVGWKK">And the thing is, like any good supervillain, Trieu makes some solid points. As we discussed above, Doctor Manhattan truly isn’t doing anything with his enormous powers. Why shouldn’t someone who knows how to think long term and is interested in lessening the world’s pain get to use those powers instead of him? Wouldn’t destroying our nuclear weapons be a way smarter and more efficient way to end the threat of nuclear war than dropping a giant squid from the sky to kill millions of people? Sure, it’s sad that Trieu’s plan killed Jon, but as collateral damage goes, one dead guy is a much smaller price to pay than half of New York City. </p>
<p id="fyzRgj">All things considered, I had a really hard time rooting against Trieu in this episode, and I think a hard time was exactly what <em>Watchmen</em> wanted me to be having. What’s our take on Trieu, Emily? And do you think she’s really dead for good?</p>
<p id="Bp4F1Z"><strong>Emily: </strong>Like you, I had trouble rooting against Lady Trieu — but I’m not sure I was supposed to. The finale, broadly speaking, presents three possible solutions to the problems of humanity. The first, represented by Joe Keene, involves going back more forcefully to a past where oppressive power structures held sway. The second, represented by Trieu, involves forcefully removing those power structures and putting those who have not traditionally held power in charge. </p>
<p id="57qoAg">The third, represented by Angela, involves keeping one eye firmly on the worst abuses of the past while still trying to knit together a better future. Whether you think Angela might walk on water or not effectively suggests whether you think there is a way forward without blowing the whole goddamn place up.</p>
<p id="0TjnQn">And I think “See How They Fly” ultimately argues that Lady Trieu has a point! She’s not wrong<em> </em>that the old ways are broken and can’t be trusted, and her method of manipulating the existing power structures had me in stitches. Plus, you have to admit <em>Watchmen</em> has a bit of a point when it comes to her narcissism. She never met a piece of the natural order she couldn’t subvert in the name of getting what she wants. That’s why I think she’s probably dead — a big-ass clock fell on her head — but if anybody on this show is going to cheat death, it might be her.</p>
<p id="h7Z0Zm">Finally, just speaking as an adopted trans girl with father issues all over the place, the final reveal that Veidt used that long string of dead bodies to spell out “SAVE ME DAUGHTER” was somehow enormously touching to me, even though I would have saved a few corpses to make the necessary comma between “ME” and “DAUGHTER.” </p>
<p id="GJr3rY">All in all, I think the episode finds a smart path between celebrating Trieu with shallow “yas, queen” feminism and showing how much her methods might make everything worse.</p>
<h3 id="l2JrXA">4. Does this finale just repeat the events of the comic? Is that the point?</h3>
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<img alt="Adrian is back in his element." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n8HbDuMBRnqHuyNjqckxy1sPhCc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19530273/e5dc795e3e66e0d4452d4be12bfcbdb082b79c9222469f63396c5fab543849a93ae2d1bc4888697eb07fbe36033a995a.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Adrian Veidt once again drops some squid to bring about world peace.</figcaption>
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<p id="np5rcY"><strong>Allegra: </strong>I got a strong sense of déjà vu from this finale, because the story seemed to follow an elliptical trajectory — that is to say, what played out in “See How They Fly” seemed to mirror the events of the comic.</p>
<p id="ZY5y52">As I’ve been saying all season, I haven’t read the original <em>Watchmen</em> comic. But I have learned a great deal about what happened in it, both from our discussions and from the present-day story of the series. In the comic: Superheroes were on the fringes of society; Adrian Veidt tried to save the world via selfish, monstrous means; an all-powerful being sought and found love in a hopeless place. On the show: Superheroes remain on the fringes of society; Adrian Veidt tried to save the world via selfish, monstrous means; an all-powerful being sought and found love in a hopeless place.</p>
<p id="gSlQ89">Frankly, the main differences to me are: the reasons for Veidt to help wipe out so many people in Tulsa (Senator Keene and the Seventh Kavalry had grand ideations of abusing Doctor Manhattan’s power), and Doctor Manhattan seemingly dying to help protect the world, not totally unlike the way Veidt aimed to protect the world through his scary crustacean attack. In the comics, Doctor Manhattan instead fled Earth after allowing Veidt to launch a giant squid attack to kill a bunch of people and distract the world’s superpowers as a result, which he said was to help prevent them from starting World War III. </p>
<p id="NUMlLA">Am I off base by finding this to be an intentional callback to the comics? Is Damon Lindelof trying to say that, try as we might, nothing ever changes? Not really, anyway?</p>
<p id="8cQqNB"><strong>Alex: </strong>Everything on this show is intentional, especially Veidt destroying Tulsa with frozen squid to avoid a cataclysmic world event — a mirror of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20964873/watchmen-episode-5-squid-looking-glass">the squid attack in 1985.</a> Even though it’s been over 30 years, Veidt is still the same man with the same extreme, amoral utilitarianism he had years ago. Deep down, he still believes there’s an end to everything, and that if he does enough things right, the result will eventually be that Earth becomes a utopia. </p>
<p id="6YJXii">In the graphic novel, Doctor Manhattan points out how wrong he is — saying that “nothing ever ends.” When an omniscient god tells him there is no end, no scenario in which the Earth will ever be a utopia, no outcome that will ever fully be in our control, and Veidt still thinks he could “save” the world? </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4Ovbpsv5DAX9W5zQAZjeF8w1Gso=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19528315/Screen_Shot_2019_12_13_at_4.14.32_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Doctor Manhattan telling Veidt he’s wrong! </figcaption>
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<p id="6nQvA3">That’s the very definition of madness. And not even eight years or so on Europa and his terminal boredom with living in a utopia can dissuade him. </p>
<p id="pukscT">But the thing about Veidt and the comic books is that there’s no “good” choice when it comes to heroes. No matter who they are, no matter what they save, not matter how seemingly good they are, powerful people will always screw up the world one way or another if given the opportunity. </p>
<p id="QO2ioa">One of the incisive things <em>Watchmen</em>’s finale did that echoed Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s graphic novel was killing off Lady Trieu. Like Constance and Emily, I was on the Lady Trieu bandwagon. She vaporized racists and wanted to make this world a better place. But Veidt, who knows her better than anyone, points out that people who want to be gods and goddesses can’t ever have that power, because it will inevitably be corrupted. </p>
<aside id="LnrbwD"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.","url":"https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained"}]}'></div></aside><p id="lJt9IO">That’s essentially the message of the comic, which criticized American and British politics in the 1980s, politics that gave people like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (both of whom Moore loathed) immense power. No matter how good someone seems, people are fallible. </p>
<p id="q8TVhL">Hence, Veidt kills Lady Trieu like Doctor Manhattan kills Rorschach, another very flawed character with good intentions, in the comics. </p>
<p id="urYzEY">Rorschach wanted to do the “right” thing in the comic books and let the world know Veidt was behind the squid attack. Manhattan kills him because he knows Rorschach’s revelation would plunge the world into chaos and World War III. </p>
<aside id="lhYKEJ"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Some Watchmen fans are mad that HBO’s version is political. But Watchmen has always been political.","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/24/20926872/watchmen-hbo-backlash-politics-sjw-race"}]}'></div></aside><p id="3VG0Ud">Similarly, Veidt kills Trieu despite her good intentions because he knows she’s human, and does so for the good of humanity. Killing her doesn’t make Veidt a perfect hero, but rather someone who saved the world from the very awful scenarios that would spin out of Trieu becoming a god. </p>
<p id="MFhyH1">As alluring as Lady Trieu’s utopia might sound, it would never last nor would it ever be truly safe for everyone.<em> Watchmen</em>’s credo, in both the comics and the show, is that it’s impossible for humans to wield power and remain uncorrupted, and that includes Angela.</p>
<h3 id="67y7Fb">5. Should there be another season of <em>Watchmen</em>?</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Lady Trieu tells her mother who she is." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/I5NjZu9_ZzMh9ZZD71elJZnZRnE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19530275/d57042ccbc962053bb4052b6c15b9542d6194bd5fcb5b1094dd4afa8e9858b64f55bf7beac20810f6d36d803af741a30.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Justice for Lady Trieu!!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="YfS8Ys"><strong>Emily: </strong>Yes. Absolutely.</p>
<p id="JlyEu7"><strong>Allegra: </strong>No. Sometimes a story needs to end sooner rather than later, and I think <em>Watchmen</em> did a fine job wrapping itself up here. Doctor Manhattan’s disappearance and rediscovery felt like a huge turning point; so did the reveal of who the Seventh Kavalry was. Now that both are gone, I don’t feel as though there’s much else motivating our current cast of characters. I don’t need to see them rebuild. I don’t need to see Laurie Blake gallivanting around doing more FBI work, as much as I love her. And I don’t need an answer to whether or not Angela has now assumed Doctor Manhattan’s powers. I feel satisfied with this ending, despite it feeling slightly hopeless.</p>
<p id="VWaH5F"><strong>Emily: </strong>I will admit that any new season would have to answer whether Angela has Doctor Manhattan’s powers, which the current season avoids doing via an incredibly beautiful shot of her foot hovering above the water in that swimming pool, just about to make contact before — cut to black. And I’d almost prefer leaving that moment ambiguous.</p>
<p id="wJjDlV">But I am the gal who always wants to see TV shows run longer, rather than shorter. It would be one thing if I felt like there weren’t other corners of <em>Watchmen</em> world to explore, but this season pretty conclusively suggested that not only are there many corners to explore but also, those corners can have limited connection to the original comic and still be plenty worth visiting. (We still haven’t heard about what happened to several characters from that comic!)</p>
<p id="KlH0PN">A good model for <em>Watchmen</em> to follow might be that of Lindelof’s previous series, <a href="http://www.vox.com/the-leftovers"><em>The Leftovers</em></a>, which radically shook up its cast with every season, and also switched locations in each season, going from upstate New York to Texas to Australia(!). But the show always had a few of the same characters and a tight core ensemble. <em>Watchmen</em> now has a really tight core ensemble of Regina King, Jean Smart, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., and Jeremy Irons. Wouldn’t you follow those people anywhere?</p>
<p id="Y4yPEx"><strong>Allegra: </strong>Yeah, I would — including to something new entirely! I would love to see this cast and crew tell an entirely new story together and try on some new roles in a totally different, similarly unique TV show. <em>The Leftovers </em>example is a good one, and I could get on board with that concept. But I’m also not afraid to admit that I suspected I’d be alone in this “let it die” sentiment. </p>
<p id="hXiwhz"><strong>Emily: </strong>Oh, I think a lot of people would rather not see <em>Watchmen</em> continue — including, notably, Lindelof himself, who has said several times that he’s told the <em>Watchmen</em> story he wanted to tell. But he’s also said that if someone else wants to tell a story in this world, they should get that opportunity, and I think he’s right. And given the creative team behind the scenes of his show, I hope HBO finds a way to move forward with a second season, but with one that blows up the world of season one as much as this show blew up the world of the comic.</p>
<p id="JTilES">That’s a tall order — but I, at least, would be there with fevered anticipation.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/15/21019639/watchmen-season-1-finale-recap-see-how-they-fly-questions-trieu-manhattanEmily St. JamesAllegra FrankAlex Abad-SantosConstance Grady2019-12-08T22:03:00-05:002019-12-08T22:03:00-05:00Watchmen becomes an aching, beautiful love story in its next-to-last episode
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<img alt="Doctor Manhattan hangs out in Vietnam and picks up a mask of his own face." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mBdkSUFg6ZJpqN6iou75WU3OZS4=/146x0:2813x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65852418/8fe2f1edc3f8224b5a06cc2130d30c7edfff6519080dd90f29bb0f2d7d07da692ba91fb6dc62026c506bca4e7ded53d9.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Doctor Manhattan returns to Earth in 2009. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“A God Walks Into Abar” is the kind of deeply romantic, mind-bending TV episode Damon Lindelof lives to make.</p> <p id="Rj9Sjr"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8865566/">“A God Walks Into Abar”</a> (get it??) is essentially TV critic catnip. </p>
<p id="u0CiYU">A complicated love story that spans many years, told in a disjointed fashion that requires viewers to pay close attention, with several moments that ask whether we can ever really know someone we love? Yes please! Can we possibly have seconds?</p>
<p id="wpVzKr">Much of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references?__c=1"><em>Watchmen</em></a> has been marked by how far it strays from creator <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0511541/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Damon Lindelof’s</a> typical comfort zone while offering just enough weirdness to remind you that it is, indeed, a Lindelof series. But “God Walks Into Abar” is Lindelof (and co-writer <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2701804/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Jeff Jensen</a>) going full Lindelof. The episode in TV history it most resembles is “<a href="https://tv.avclub.com/lost-the-constant-1798203971">The Constant</a>,” the time-bending episode of <em>Lost</em> that earned Lindelof an Emmy nomination and is regularly held up by many as one of the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/7/30/17627614/best-tv-episodes-of-the-21st-century-explained">best TV episodes ever made</a>.</p>
<p id="S5pikS">That “God Walks Into Abar” stands alongside “The Constant” (at least according to me, Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff) is high praise indeed. That it somehow manages to do so while radically reconfiguring everything we think we know about both this TV adaptation of <em>Watchmen</em> and the original <em>Watchmen</em> comic more generally is an even more amazing trick. </p>
<p id="qMEBsz">The Angela/Cal marriage was one element of the show that always felt a bit rote, like the show wanted to give Angela a home life but didn’t have space to really build it out. “God Walks Into Abar” reveals just how much the previous treatment of their marriage was sleight of hand. Angela, who seemed to be drawn slowly but surely into the world of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7049682/?ref_=tt_ov_inf"><em>Watchmen</em></a> over the course of several episodes, was always way ahead of us. She knew where Doctor Manhattan was the whole time. (Her bitten-off declaration of “That dude lives on Mars” in the first episode takes on new resonances now.)</p>
<p id="5e0Bbt">But, of course, I liked this episode. Of course I loved it. It was grown in a lush lake on Europa to appeal to me and others like me, who love when a TV show mixes a highbrow love story with lowbrow nonsense.</p>
<p id="Aw4Hhv">But what of my colleagues? This week, I’m joined by senior culture correspondent Alex Abad-Santos and associate culture editor Allegra Frank to talk about Doctor Manhattan, disjointed love stories, and how any of this makes sense.</p>
<h3 id="WB0rLq">Time keeps on slippin’ into the future</h3>
<p id="FNafgg"><strong>Emily: </strong>The thing about “God Walks Into Abar” that some viewers might have the hardest time wrapping their heads around is how everything in the episode takes place more or less at once, at least from Doctor Manhattan’s point of view. This is a lot harder to convey in a TV context than in a comic — where the reader can flip back and forth between pages as much as they want — but I think “God Walks Into Abar” gets dang close to capturing the feeling of being able to see all of space and time, simultaneously.</p>
<p id="lWkjU6">Alex, you’re much more familiar with the comic than I am. How do we make sense of this new chapter in Doctor Manhattan’s life? </p>
<p id="TQc3J9"><strong>Alex:</strong> <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/1/20983671/watchmen-episode-7-doctor-manhattan-spoiler">Doctor Manhattan</a> is basically a god, and when we think about gods or God, it’s often an immortal being that’s omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient — an all-powerful figure who’s present everywhere and knows everything. </p>
<p id="zbGmtK">Doctor Manhattan is bit different, in that he’s all-powerful, but his omniscience and omnipresence are limited. He can see everything that’s happening in the future and the past simultaneously, but only through the lens of his own life and experiences. </p>
<p id="myP4qh">In the comic book, there’s a scene where Doctor Manhattan and his girlfriend Janey are having a little tiff in 1959. During that argument, he sees himself in the future, arguing with her in 1963; he also sees her lonely and sobbing in 1966:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A panel from the Watchmen comic where Doctor Manhattan experiences multiple time periods at once." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8cAkICh0iy0okco9ujAJpl75WX4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19434688/Screen_Shot_2019_12_05_at_7.59.07_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Doctor Manhattan can more or less see all of space and time simultaneously, at least through the lens of his own life.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="zescoE">During another moment with Janey, he sees himself many years in the future, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy">Laurie Blake</a>:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A panel from the Watchmen comic where Doctor Manhattan simultaneously sees experiences he had in 1985 and 1966." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TiWxlwhjQoVxRuHumb66mFhFxnI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19434705/Screen_Shot_2019_12_05_at_8.26.10_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Doctor Manhattan experiences multiple time periods at once.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="4SPcS3">The show does a pretty good job of establishing this with Doctor Manhattan narrating everything he’s seeing by explaining it to Angela and calmly answering her many questions. It’s purposely confusing, to make Doctor Manhattan feel distant and not-of-this-world. As hard as it is for Angela (and the audience) to keep up, imagine how hard it must be for Doctor Manhattan himself, constantly juggling all of those timelines at once. </p>
<p id="9XG4Uj">Time isn’t linear for Doctor Manhattan. </p>
<aside id="Csxxmh"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"All the clues in Watchmen about Doctor Manhattan","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/1/20983671/watchmen-episode-7-doctor-manhattan-spoiler"}]}'></div></aside><p id="nWAUr1">If you add in the complex emotions of all these simultaneous encounters and consider Doctor Manhattan’s immortality, you can begin to understand why, in the comic, he grew tired of human life and interactions and exiled himself to a different planet. We see his exhaustion in this episode. But we also see him grow bored of being a God on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and decide to return to Earth. </p>
<p id="gcokZS">I suppose the biggest question coming out of “God Walks Into Abar” is why, if he could see everything happening and is all-powerful, he would let himself be captured by the Seventh Kavalry? After all, he wiped out everyone attacking him pretty quick.</p>
<p id="IQRbpL">I think there’s a combination of factors at play. It’s possible that time was altered when he decided to become Cal and got attacked during the White Night ambush. As he tells Angela in the episode, that period of time is blank for him and he can’t see it. The device Adrian Veidt gives him takes his omniscience out of the equation, allows the White Night ambush to occur, and sets into motion the nefarious plan to capture him. </p>
<p id="CU35f9">Another thing to keep in mind is something he says at the end of the comic. He and Veidt discuss Veidt’s decision to use the fake squid attack to bring the world together, and whether or not he made the right choice:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TCJQ888RUB431zdXqxD3MXQqT9I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19434723/Screen_Shot_2019_12_05_at_8.32.19_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Doctor Manhattan and Adrian Veidt in <em>Watchmen</em>.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="3SIGoP">Doctor Manhattan tells Veidt that there is no end and that “nothing ever ends.” It’s his way of saying that the choices we make are never fixed or isolated, that no matter what we do there’s always an inevitable force that will eventually undo our best-laid plans — in Veidt’s case, that force is humanity’s tendency to not trust each other. When it comes to Cyclops and its contemporary iteration, the Seventh Kavalry, Doctor Manhattan knows they’ll never stop until they capture him. If he fought them off this time, what would happen if next time they came after Angela? And the time after that? It would be relentless. </p>
<p id="j4HMVF">Which brings us to Angela. His return to Earth is because of Angela.</p>
<p id="GCiedu">In the comic, Doctor Manhattan believes it’s a miracle that people can fall in love — and that capacity for love is actually what convinces him that humanity, as distant as he becomes from it, is actually worth saving. Doctor Manhattan and Angela decide to have 10 good years together, and wow, my heart swells and hurts at that idea of a big blue god risking everything to be with the love of his life for 10 years. </p>
<p id="q9vCIF">Allegra, what did you think of the love story? Did this story of a girl and a god melt your cold heart (that only beats for <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/23/20972511/baby-yoda-meme-the-mandalorian-gif-star-wars">Baby Yoda</a>)? Would you swipe right on Doctor Manhattan?</p>
<h3 id="nACAlo">Is <em>Watchmen</em> just a giant love story?</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Angela and Doctor Manhattan meet for the first time." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vqqaX5-Wp_BYqCqDsc8q_hFxl2s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19441291/411ff9c2097ac476793197b6b88a58d2f2f0bf5adb27cdf133753ce2d41c9db361f93838886b1ed232d9a1fb4796e4c8.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Angela is vaguely skeptical that she’s talking to the real Doctor Manhattan.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="p1h4Py"><strong>Allegra: </strong>I am easily wooed by a good love story. And while, as Emily said, the Angela/Cal dynamic hadn’t necessarily been the deepest before the ending revelations of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/1/20982680/watchmen-season-1-episode-7-recap-an-almost-religious-awe-doctor-manhattan-angela-cal">episode seven</a>, “God Walks Into Abar” proved to me that I was right all along for pining so deeply for more time with the couple.</p>
<p id="rYhCgp">I’m a little more of a romantic than my Grinch-like reactions to the show thus far may suggest to you all! For as creepy as I’d find it to be approached by a masked blue man while trying to have some alone time, Angela is so clearly smitten with the audacious Doctor Manhattan. We know the future reveals that she has to be, both because we’ve already seen it as viewers and because Doctor Manhattan says so. But watching him explain everything to her, and watching her slowly come around to the idea, was a tender kind of thrill.</p>
<p id="4SiSrz">The scenes where Doctor Manhattan essentially pitched his love to Angela had the charm of a classic romance where a sassy, independent woman is slowly endeared to a handsome, if more desperate man. The way the show re-contextualized Doctor Manhattan in this storyline helped me invest in the character, whose significance previously felt very much tied to the <em>Watchmen</em> comic. </p>
<p id="soZa92">As I incessantly reiterate, I don’t have a connection to the comic, so the reveals of earlier episodes about Doctor Manhattan’s involvement in various past drama haven’t been all that interesting to me. But to watch this shape-shifting, all-knowing man with a tenuous connection to humanity fall in love? And to witness how his relationship with Angela draws her explicitly into the <em>Watchmen </em>canon while preserving her own unique storyline? Yeah, I’m here for that. </p>
<p id="4drary"><strong>Emily: </strong>Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson <a href="https://twitter.com/jowrotethis/status/1202073971354525696">pointed out</a> earlier this week that Lindelof’s series often set up incredibly complicated puzzle box mysteries and then reveal that at their core, they’re deeply wounded love stories about people who find their other half, only to have to fight against all of time and space to stay together. Lindelof understands that what creates great romance is proximity, but what creates a great <em>love story</em> is separation, whether by vast gulfs of time or by a tachyon cannon.</p>
<div id="zhUdoW">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lindelof at the beginning of every new show: This is a twisty genre puzzle box. <br>Lindelof by the end: Surprise, bitches, <a href="https://t.co/JaqrvxSyvf">pic.twitter.com/JaqrvxSyvf</a></p>— J❄️anna Robinson (@jowrotethis) <a href="https://twitter.com/jowrotethis/status/1202073971354525696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="19H9ez">Really, I should be tired of this by now, shouldn’t I? But every time a Lindelof show hauls out a new pairing to adore — Desmond and Penny on <em>Lost;</em> <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/4/15729312/the-leftovers-finale-recap-the-book-of-nora">Kevin and Nora on <em>The Leftovers</em></a>; Angela and Cal on <em>Watchmen</em> — I can’t help but swoon all over again. There’s something so inherently fragile about love, and if you stop to think about it for a second, the things that bind us to the people we’re closest to (be they friends, lovers, or family) are so random and haphazard that the connections we form are, as <em>Watchmen</em> calls them, the true miracles of existence.</p>
<p id="TH9C9C">What I think is interesting is how the show depicts the way an all-powerful being, who knows everything that happens within his lifetime, might actually fall in love with someone. Because Doctor Manhattan sees Angela at her moment of maximum love for him, he’s able to realize something that the rest of us, imprisoned by chronology as we are, can only guess. I would let the Seventh Kavalry disassemble me with a tachyon cannon if it meant protecting my wife, but I didn’t know that was true when I first met her. Doctor Manhattan does know he’s going to do that when he meets Angela, and he walks into that bar anyway. </p>
<p id="N7iczX"><em>Isn’t it romantic??</em></p>
<p id="eq0SwZ">(Also: Doctor Manhattan is totally going to transfer his powers into Angela, isn’t he? And that’s the real reason he was drawn to her in the first place. I’m calling it now!)</p>
<p id="cMwAxH">I’m also amazed by how many questions about <em>Watchmen</em> “God Walks Into Abar” just casually answers, like the exact location of Veidt, and the origins of the baby swamp. (I honestly thought the baby swamp would never be explained.) The episode makes the rest of the series snap together, while leaving almost all of the major plot threads still dangling — including Looking Glass remaining completely off the table (unless he’s behind one of those Rorschach masks). </p>
<p id="w9ulYq">It’s an impressive achievement as a love story, but I’m almost more impressed by it as a piece of <em>craft</em>. How many drafts did it take to get this thing to fit into every single little puzzle piece, to answer questions I didn’t even realize were questions (like why Angela survived the White Night)? As a fan of love stories, I’m enraptured; as a fan of clearing very high bars for complicated structure in writing, I’m in awe.</p>
<p id="JekBTB">Allegra, you were a little arm’s length with Doctor Manhattan until we found out he was also Cal. Is he your best friend now? And what did you think of this episode’s post-credits scene featuring your number one boy Adrian Veidt? </p>
<h3 id="UucqbA">Doctor Manhattan is all of our best friend</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Angela and Cal hang out on Christmas, right before they’re almost killed." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_U83usgAY9UfWsVSOPhVUcnUt7k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19441294/f01acb67c700274f0b67d909196580acb6fd9cf7b93b0156305f3ad9a11e3f28bac051aacf443c368ee45d63f4fe7d30.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Angela and Cal, back when only one of them knew he was Doctor Manhattan (and it wasn’t him).</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ah4WcW"><strong>Allegra:</strong> I have to be superficial and admit that, yes, I’m cool with Doctor Manhattan now — when he looks like Cal. Uber-buff and all-powerful (and blue) is not totally my type, but Cal is a beautiful human who can make me dig the Doctor when he’s in that packaging. </p>
<p id="qy1NGM">And again, the specificity of Doctor Manhattan being Cal, the love of Angela’s life, helps me appreciate the character’s role in the show. I’m much more inclined to invest myself in that storyline if there is a direct tie to the <em>Watchmen</em>’s version of 2019 America. Thanks to Angela’s connection to this character, Doctor Manhattan earns much more of my empathy than he otherwise would have, had he just been the big blue guy from the comic (which he’s often been positioned as in the past). He’s not quite my BFF yet, but I can appreciate how his all-knowing powers and shape-shifting abilities enhance and bring intrigue to this tragic love story.</p>
<p id="uCSCdl">As for my real BFF, Adrian Veidt? That post-credits scene was pure “I have no idea what’s going on” vibes for me. But I understand that “God Walks Into Abar” is the season’s penultimate episode, so the show had to do something dramatic. I’m still mostly enamored by my boy being all wacky, and so the credits scene marked quite a tonal shift to seeing him utterly vulnerable and in lockdown. The breakout of this development as a credits scene suggests something ... big? But I still can’t quite reconcile the kinds of evil that Veidt performs with intention, as opposed to the sociopathic clone killing he does for fun.</p>
<p id="VAOULK"><strong>Alex: </strong>Can I just say that I respect the silliness and the show’s playfulness of naming Laurie’s episode three sex toy (not Petey) “<a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/these-are-the-exact-dimensions-of-watchmens-doctor-manh-1840157418">Excalibur</a>.” The joke being that Cal Abar is Laurie’s ex, who just so happens to be Doctor Manhattan. Hence, Laurie’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy">Doctor Manhattan sex toy</a> is a phonetic match: Ex-Cal-Abar. Sneaky! </p>
<aside id="9BplaE"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan dildo is as important as it is large","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy"}]}'></div></aside><p id="cfuzcL">I do love the story that Doctor Manhattan is just a hopeless romantic at heart who is willing to risk humanity’s livelihood — and inevitably be captured by Cyclops — to be with Angela. That’s so selfish but also, so human? </p>
<p id="6EmxI1">I suppose the post-credits scene ties into both Doctor Manhattan and Adrian Veidt’s stories in that even a huge megalomaniac like Veidt grows tired of endless adulation, essentially bored with the life of a god. There’s an undercurrent of masochism in the scene when the many Mr. Phillipses and Ms. Crookshankses are smashing tomatoes on him — Veidt is seeking out and searching for something other than the same admiration over and over. </p>
<p id="mrJmD3">The Game Warden, who’s revealed as the first being Doctor Manhattan created, visits Veidt in his jail cell with one of those terrible yellow and purple cakes in hand. He asks Veidt why he’s so unhappy living in the utopia that is Europa.</p>
<p id="j4XizC">“Heaven doesn’t need me,” Veidt says, underscoring his yearning to feel human again. </p>
<p id="NEQ70s">But as the scene ends, he realizes that his weird clones have baked a horseshoe into his cake, which he picks up and begins scraping maniacally on the floor. Is he happy at the subversion he’s instilled into his clones? Is there some kind of device down there? What’s he digging for?</p>
<p id="2nT7fY">I don’t know the answers to these questions. But Veidt’s madness helps explain why Doctor Manhattan becomes weary on Europa. Heaven is boring, even for an omnipotent being like Doctor Manhattan, who has transcended humanity. That kind of existence can make someone yearn for the miracles and tragedies of being human, or in this case, 10 good years with Angela. </p>
<p id="t7TtjX"></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/8/20997766/watchmen-season-1-episode-8-a-god-walks-into-abar-recap-doctor-manhattan-angelaEmily St. JamesAlex Abad-SantosAllegra Frank2019-12-01T22:10:00-05:002019-12-01T22:10:00-05:00All the clues in Watchmen about Doctor Manhattan
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aVGykj0np1_HPSL_nRFYdTusGR4=/333x0:3000x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65806339/91d1841064e31c5c0c7e74baa6452c1f0e04305d7dba1e401dd95e435ce29091cbcd7fa2d9f04a78abff20639605f563.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Regina King in Watchmen | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A nefarious plan to catch a big blue man is revealed.</p> <p id="GZhqMQ"><em>This article contains spoilers for Watchmen’s seventh episode. </em></p>
<p id="xHw2TX">Sometimes HBO<em> </em>reminds us, in the best way possible, that its take on <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained"><em>Watchmen</em></a><em> </em>is a comic book show after all. Episode seven is a prime example of how a well-executed plot twist can change everything that we thought we knew and make us re-watch and re-think everything all over again. </p>
<p id="ESmPxN">After a week to breathe and ruminate on the repercussions of episode six’s big reveal — that Angela’s grandpa Will Reeves was the pioneer hero known as <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976040/watchmen-episode-6-hooded-justice-will-reeves">Hooded Justice</a> — the show hit a lever and plunged us down another narrative trap door.</p>
<p id="BtTBHE">Angela’s husband Cal is actually Jon, as in Jon Osterman, a.k.a. Doctor Manhattan, and Angela knew this entire time. </p>
<p id="wajE0A">As Lady Trieu informs Angela, full blown amnesia, which Cal suffers from, is quite rare. She hints that there’s something more beneath the surface of Angela’s doting and loyal husband. </p>
<p id="1b7x22">And there is! </p>
<p id="LaYGLt">Angela bludgeons Cal to death with a hammer, and digs a tiny device from his bashed-in skull. She needs to “wake up” Jon. Desperate times call for desperate measures. </p>
<p id="b4P59H">The 7th Kavalry, a.k.a. Cyclops, spearheaded by Senator Joe Keene, is launching an attack that they hope will give them the powers of Doctor Manhattan himself. They want to restore balance and power to white men. How exactly they’re going to go about doing this is anyone’s guess, but Angela and Jon are in imminent danger. </p>
<aside id="Xmj3lO"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Some Watchmen fans are mad that HBO’s version is political. But Watchmen has always been political.","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/24/20926872/watchmen-hbo-backlash-politics-sjw-race"}]}'></div></aside><p id="vSXUwn">While Jon’s identity as Cal caught me and likely my fellow viewers by surprise, the show gave us some major hints in previous episodes that the comic’s omnipotent blue being was masquerading as Angela’s amnesiac husband. </p>
<p id="pNtohH">The only question left unanswered, though, is: why?</p>
<h3 id="4bN3yH">Laurie Blake meets her godly ex-boyfriend</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Laurie Blake in Watchmen" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iT08JWj4qyxyNGZNfHOH4Oj5ymg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19410353/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_10.15.09_AM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Laurie Blake grilling Angela in <em>Watchmen</em>, episode four.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="3ytOgj">The writing may have been on the wall as far back as the first half of the season. Back in episode four, Laurie Blake has a conversation with Angela on their way to Lady Trieu’s headquarters as the pair investigate Judd Crawford’s death. Laurie starts talking to Angela pretty casually about her ex, and then says something that makes Angela sit straight up. </p>
<p id="Vr2azb">“My ex used to talk about them [thermodynamic miracles] when he wasn’t distracted by fucking quarks,” Laurie says, talking about the miraculous feat of science that allowed Angela’s car and Will to be taken up into the sky. “Yeah, well, he’s no Cal.”</p>
<p id="fbN2so">“Excuse me?” Angela says, shocked. </p>
<p id="Ki0PNN">“Cal, your husband. I saw him today. We had a nice chat,” Laurie says. “You guys met in Vietnam, right?” </p>
<p id="2n3QiV">In the context of our new revelation about who and where Doctor Manhattan is, the meaning behind this conversation changes. Originally, you could read it as Angela being annoyed by Laurie’s lack of boundaries and prying into her personal life. That interpretation doesn’t change when re-watching this conversation after episode seven, but now that we know Angela is keeping Doctor Manhattan in a human suit, it adds another layer of shock that Laurie in particular interviewed Cal — she was Doctor Manhattan’s old lover, after all.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_g_GpRW92p9bnHXBqaUcxKAQ8-M=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19410485/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_10.54.57_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Laurie and Jon in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="nVLJ8L">In the comic books, Laurie is Doctor Manhattan’s primary love interest. She loves him, but their relationship is strained because he begins to transcend humanity. Granted, anyone transcending their own humanity might be emotionally unavailable, but in Jon’s case, his powers and near-omnipotence make him feel like he’s become an outsider to humanity. He can’t empathize with humans, because he’s become something more powerful, more knowing, and more than human. </p>
<aside id="Jqnyjf"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan dildo is as important as it is large","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy"}]}'></div></aside><p id="QIDGVL">If there’s anyone that can relate to Angela’s experience with Jon, it’s Laurie. And if there’s anyone that can spot Jon, it’s also going to be Laurie — hence Angela’s deep trepidation when Laurie says she met with Cal, whom she doesn’t yet know is her former lover. (Or does she?)</p>
<h3 id="UCTJkh">Cal has no backstory, beyond meeting Angela in Vietnam </h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/h4bPkM0AIb_Fi9RTbl909NDn6NE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19410548/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_11.12.18_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Jon leaving his world in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="RNvFBp">In the original comic, Jon leaves the planet after the giant squid attack. Going off of that, it doesn’t really make sense how he and Angela would meet. But while Jon might be off playing God on another planet (which is where I’m betting he left Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias), there is no rule that he has to actually stay on that planet in the show. He could have conceivably come back to Earth at any time. </p>
<p id="16I88W">The show is comparably specific about where Angela comes from, grounding her background in Vietnam. But it isn’t the same Vietnam of our real world. In <em>Watchmen</em>, the United States won the Vietnam War, and the country became part of the United States as a result. That’s why there’s a massive fandom around Jon/Doctor Manhattan as a liberating hero in Vietnam, which we see at the beginning of episode seven when Angela is a little girl. Given that Lady Trieu and Laurie both say that Angela and Cal met in Vietnam, it points to Jon landing in Vietnam for whatever reason, and Angela encountering him while there. </p>
<aside id="CqkkDd"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.","url":"https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained"}]}'></div></aside><p id="mZEWpn">So why is Jon in Vietnam, possibly after exiling himself to space? The comic book gives us one clue. </p>
<p id="fG21rN">Toward the end of the graphic novel, Laurie finds out that she’s the daughter of Eddie Blake, also known as the supervillain, The Comedian, and the man who tried to rape her mother Sally. Sally and Eddie eventually had a consensual relationship, and Laurie was born. Sally’s forgiveness of Eddie to birth Laurie, believe it or not, is what convinces Jon that humanity is worth saving. He calls the idea of two people who shouldn’t be in love yet find a way, a miracle that takes “the breath away”: </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aCLJ-HmSijafjc9kzu-tHYx6V1Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19410689/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_11.42.52_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Jon explaining to Laurie that love is truly a miracle</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="vhE2BX">To be clear, the way Moore has depicted women, particularly Sally falling in love with a man who tries to rape her, has been <a href="http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=tdr">criticized</a>. But the thing to focus on here is that Jon, even in his strange, distant way, can be a little romantic in that he believes in love and has faith in humanity. He could see Angela in this same light — a thermodynamic miracle that comes once in a lifetime that he needs to be with. Finding his soulmate could be just the thing to bring him back from another planet or another galaxy. </p>
<h3 id="D3LNj2">Angela and Cal’s kids are adopted with a strange arrangement</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9E-F-KdHxBje2De0vuQOZ6vrwk0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19410940/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_12.43.41_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Jon forming himself in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Aq1Hmr">Full disclosure: I am not a biologist with the breadth of knowledge to understand what the logistics of a human woman like Angela having children with an omnipotent being like Jon would entail.</p>
<p id="lPgd0x">Jon does have the ability to change his size<strong>,</strong> and when he was vaporized, he displayed the power to change his physiology. This could mean that he and Angela could have children could conceive the way humans do. Though one would think that those children would end up with Jon’s powers or his blue skin, and if that happened, they’d be hunted down by the 7th Kavalry or anyone hungry for Jon’s powers.</p>
<p id="JRTIQU">It makes sense, then, that she and Jon have adopted children, but they seem to have adopted them through a non-traditional process. </p>
<p id="qok3JI">In <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/3/20942321/watchmen-episode-3-recap-season-1-she-was-killed-by-space-junk">the third episode</a>, a man shows up on Angela’s porch demanding to see the kids, and she writes him a check and sends him away. The specifics of their legal visitation rights are unknown, but I’d imagine it’d be difficult for Angela and Cal/Jon to adopt a child through the traditional processes, because doing so would require a background check into Jon’s life as well as references. And the latter is difficult to do if Jon has no knowledge of who he really is and more or less has no human past as Cal. </p>
<h3 id="gMUxOT">Why is Angela hiding him? </h3>
<p id="w4Udfd">In episode seven, Senator Joe Keene tells Laurie Blake of his plan to capture Jon and steal his powers. Lady Trieu tells Angela more or less the same thing — she needs to save the world from Keene and Cyclops— and Doctor Manhattan is indeed walking the Earth as a human man. </p>
<p id="Wz0mNQ">It would then seem that Angela and Jon’s plan to hide Jon in plain sight under the guise of a human amnesiac named Cal was preventative in anticipation of Keene’s grand plan. The comic book might tell us more:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two panels from the Watchmen comics." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZBfNSdzUM8zBN7xYNNJVB31N9Oo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19411008/Screen_Shot_2019_11_26_at_12.58.51_PM.png">
<cite>DC Comics</cite>
<figcaption>Jon experiences time differently than humans</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="m7AMr4">While Jon is essentially omnipotent, he also possesses a type of omniscience. He can see himself at various points in his life at any time. In the panels above, he is having an argument with his ex-girlfriend Janey Slater in 1959. During that argument, he sees himself in the future arguing with her in 1963, and then her lonely and sobbing in 1966. </p>
<p id="WuALlw">If Jon were to be with Angela in Vietnam, he would then be able to see his future with her when they move to Tulsa and have a family. He would also be able to anticipate the Cyclops attack that Lady Trieu warns of and Joe Keene confirms, and possibly hiding himself as Cal would be the best option. </p>
<p id="x92LLF">The wrinkle in that plan, though, is the “White Night” attack on Angela and her partner that took place before the events of the show. The White Night was when the police force in Tulsa was slaughtered, the act of violence that prompted legislation allowing police officers to keep their faces and identities hidden. </p>
<p id="Tg7355">As Angela explained to Topher’s class in episode one, the attack caught her by surprise<strong>,</strong> and she was shot by 7th Kavalry members. But in the flashback, we see that Angela and Jon/Cal are enjoying themselves on Christmas Eve. Jon’s powers would allow him to see that attack happening, but it’s odd that he didn’t warn Angela. </p>
<p id="TTJNuR">This relies on the assumption that Angela married Cal knowing he was Jon the entire time versus a possible (but not necessarily one I believe) scenario in which Jon has been impersonating Cal the entire time; Angela may not have been fully informed of Jon’s past and his powers. </p>
<p id="kcIX2l">This seems to indicate that, while Jon is Cal, his knowledge of himself and his powers are blocked, thus making the attack on Angela and himself possible — he wouldn’t be able to prevent it.</p>
<p id="yOqPle">But if Jon and Angela were hiding Jon to avoid Keene’s plan, did the White Night attack alter Jon’s future? Judging from Angela’s desperate response of bludgeoning Cal and waking up Jon after her meeting with Lady Trieu, it seems things are not going according to plan. </p>
<p id="7ouUwZ">There’s also the notion that something happened during the White Night attack that alerted Police Chief Judd Crawford to Jon’s real identity. We now know that Judd staged the attack, but he spared Angela and Jon. Judd probably didn’t call off the attack out of the goodness of his heart — and it seems more likely now, as Keene’s plan of capturing Jon comes into focus, that he found out about Jon and Angela’s secret during the White Night attacks. Perhaps we’ll see this all come together a bit more in episode eight, though I wouldn’t be surprised to be thrown another twist. </p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/1/20983671/watchmen-episode-7-doctor-manhattan-spoilerAlex Abad-Santos2019-12-01T22:00:00-05:002019-12-01T22:00:00-05:00Watchmen dives into Angela’s past in an episode packed with explosive reveals
<figure>
<img alt="Angela identifies the man who killed her parents." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/y8VhVQkcN9_EVkM7HMJcZqinHMU=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65806281/6bd37c65ee3be3eabbd09af10860985d22508864bec32c62678bb4c6cbd04252d76ea3f7ac86006c6ec743d19c3416f8.7.jpg" />
<figcaption>HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Has Watchmen not quite been working for you these past few weeks? Maybe it just needed more Regina King.</p> <p id="FuMHfn">“It’s time to come out of the tunnel,” Angela Abar says, pushing an already great episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references?__c=1"><em>Watchmen</em></a> toward the transcendent. </p>
<p id="5gDDkP">She’s talking to her husband, Cal, who is deeply confused by what she’s saying. But the audience by now has hopefully caught on to what’s happening: Cal, somehow, is Doctor Manhattan in disguise, and the Seventh Kavalry is coming to take him away and imbue his powers into Joe Keene. </p>
<p id="KahxOn">It’s a plan so crazy it just might work, and the only way Angela can save the day, it would seem, is to turn her husband back in to Doctor Manhattan — and she seems to succeed, if the blue glow on her face at episode’s end is any indication. (Her method is to hit her husband in the head with a hammer multiple times, so.)</p>
<aside id="W5Sb84"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Watchmen on HBO: news, episode recaps, analysis, and comic book Easter eggs ","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references"}]}'></div></aside><p id="O1EveW"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9111408/">“An Almost Religious Awe”</a> is the most Angela-centric episode of <em>Watchmen</em> yet, which is something to be said on a show that has already devoted three other episodes to her. But it’s also, cunningly, about Doctor Manhattan, who keeps turning up throughout Angela’s childhood in Vietnam. We watch as she goes from happy kid whose parents won’t let her watch the blaxploitation film <em>Sister Night</em>, to an orphan, to somehow even worse than an orphan when the grandmother who shows up to take her in dies almost immediately after meeting her. (The girl who plays young Angela — <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7968936/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><em>This Is Us</em> costar Faithe Herman</a> — is really incredible.) </p>
<p id="gEiRyd">Throughout all of this, we never <em>see</em> Doctor Manhattan himself. But he’s everywhere, from the documentary playing at the video store when the episode begins to a massive painting on a building near the orphanage Angela lives in for a time. He’s God, more or less, and he inspires the religious awe of the episode’s title.</p>
<p id="lyb2Vk">And Angela has apparently been ... married to him all this time? How? What? And why? </p>
<p id="2HG3SO">Those are questions we can’t quite answer yet, but in talking about this episode with Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank, I (Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff) realized that she hasn’t wholeheartedly liked an episode of <em>Watchmen</em> since <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/3/20942321/watchmen-episode-3-recap-season-1-she-was-killed-by-space-junk">the show’s third</a> (the Laurie-centric hour). Then she saw this one and loved it. So I wanted to know what was different about “An Almost Religious Awe” and why some of the show’s other installments haven’t worked as well for her as they have for me.</p>
<p id="6udpgz">We’ll talk about that — as well as the big Cal reveal, Angela’s tragic childhood, and the sheer number of plot threads still dangling with only two episodes left in the season — below.</p>
<h3 id="k28lpx">
<em>Watchmen</em> is a series about Angela Abar, but also ... is it?</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Angela identifies the man who killed her parents." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gRx-WTXBBup9OMbCUnJd0bbAbrI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19421653/6bd37c65ee3be3eabbd09af10860985d22508864bec32c62678bb4c6cbd04252d76ea3f7ac86006c6ec743d19c3416f8.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Faithe Herman is amazing as young Angela.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ifO56C"><strong>Emily: </strong>Allegra! When I found out <em>Watchmen</em> wasn’t working for you, I was so sad, because it very much <em>was</em> working for me. What have you found off about it? And what was different about this episode?</p>
<p id="6r3gjc"><strong>Allegra: </strong>Emily! It pains me, too, to admit that <em>Watchmen</em> has ... not been growing on me. Quite the opposite! The farther we’ve strayed from that killer pilot, the harder I’ve found it to stay engrossed in the show. </p>
<p id="dVDjA9">I think some of our readers, including several friends of mine, picked up on it before I did. Every week, someone would say, “Yeah, you’re not liking the show, are you?” “I thought I was,” I’d reply. “I don’t know! Am I not?” And no, I was not: Having never read the <em>Watchmen</em> comic, I found myself increasingly glassy-eyed as the original <em>Watchmen</em>’s history seeped into the show’s world. </p>
<p id="kRNyK0"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20963402/watchmen-season-1-episode-5-recap-little-fear-of-lightning-squid-attack-looking-glass">Episode five in particular</a> really tied into the comic series by referencing the squid attack that ravaged the New York metro area and solidified Adrian Veidt as a bad guy. These revelations left me largely unmoved; I find the squid attack plot to be absurd, even if all that death is a bit more devastating to see play out in live action than to read about on the page. And I love Adrian Veidt because he’s a kooky old man, not because he’s a kooky old man who readers remember as that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/10/29/20936146/watchmen-jeremy-irons-veidt-ozymandias">genius madman Ozymandias</a>. </p>
<p id="sK0FDZ"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976124/watchmen-season-1-episode-6-recap-this-extraordinary-being-hooded-justice-will">Episode six</a>, meanwhile, was definitely an ambitious work of television that brought a lot of focus to <em>Watchmen</em>’s exploration of how racism impacts and intertwines with contemporary power structures. And I can appreciate the expansion of the backstory for a smaller character from the comic, i.e. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976040/watchmen-episode-6-hooded-justice-will-reeves">Hooded Justice</a>. But I’m hardly invested in that storyline in terms of how it affects the comic’s canon. I came away thinking that what Hooded Justice’s backstory means for the <em>Watchmen</em> comic was meant to be an integral part of the reveal.</p>
<p id="nKH4Cu">I guess what unites these gripes is that, as a viewer who’s not familiar with the source material, the parts of <em>Watchmen</em> I find most exciting — the mystery-solving featuring strong female characters like Angela and Laurie, the exploration of systemic abuses of power and racism, and the absurd and hilarious contrast of Adrian Veidt’s space life — can feel undermined by callbacks to the comic. Episode six offered insightful commentary on the impact that historical racism has on contemporary society and the way systemic racism bred the institutions that racists now manipulate for their own gain. But in order to do that and build a surprise for comics readers, it didn’t confront how Angela now exists in that modern space, keeping the focus instead on Will Reeves’s past. </p>
<p id="vRY60V">But “An Almost Religious Awe” is the exact opposite of episode five, in that sense. Angela and Laurie (and Lady Trieu, another fascinating character whose screen time has been lacking of late) are at the fore, making meaningful gains in their search for the truth behind the racist Seventh Kavalry that’s manipulating<strong> </strong>the checks and balances of Tulsa. These are the aspects of the show that feel most interesting and important to me, in terms of moving the story along. </p>
<p id="RCozPH">Finding out what happened in Angela’s own dark past — as opposed to that of her grandfather, of Tulsa, of her male colleagues — and witnessing how it affects her in the present ... that is the kind of story I crave. And episode seven delivered. </p>
<p id="b9FRH0"><strong>Emily: </strong>It’s interesting you say that, because to me, “An Almost Religious Awe” functions almost as a call-and-response with episode six, where we saw all of the ways that Will’s story is now echoed by his granddaughter’s story, even though the two just met each other recently and they lived decades apart. The episode even blatantly asks: Why would Angela become a cop when there’s so much darkness in her family history around the police? </p>
<p id="zRbq8P">It’s a question the episode doesn’t <em>quite</em> answer to my satisfaction. As a kid, Angela met a “nice” police officer (who also carried out an extrajudicial vigilante killing with her partner!), and that led Angela to think perhaps the badge would protect her. It's also clear that a life in law enforcement is something multiple generations of this family have pursued as a way to make the world a better place, especially if we assume that Will is himself the grandson of Bass Reeves (something <em>Watchmen</em> more or less suggests). </p>
<p id="fO0UWM">Angela, like her father, like Will, like Bass, hopes to impose her will on the world by joining its power structures. But those power structures try to destroy her and grind her down, sometimes in more subtle ways than they tried to destroy and grind down her grandfather, and sometimes in more brutal ways. The device of having her memories all mixed up with Will’s memories from the pilot (where he remembered the Tulsa massacre) and episode six is a masterstroke here, because it underlines all of the ways we are built atop traumas we barely understand, traumas that are passed along to us.</p>
<p id="99QaZ1">That’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to get Doctor Manhattan involved in this story. Canonically, he was born Jon Osterman, a Jewish child who fled the Holocaust, and he became Doctor Manhattan after a Cold War-era weaponry experiment. And now he’s apparently hidden himself away as a black man in America. It’s a potent combination of elements that could well blow up in <em>Watchmen</em>’s face, but that seems to be where this version of <em>Watchmen</em> thrives. It’s a shaken soda can, passed along the line of viewers, in the hope it won’t explode.</p>
<p id="iYpGRP">I’m also interested in how it was episode five that made you become more openly frustrated with the season and the series, because that was the episode that took me from, “I think I love this show?” to, “I definitely love this show.” It’s telling, also, that episode five represents the season’s exact midpoint — four episodes before it and four after — and that it marks the point where the story stops expanding and begins to contract, like a nuclear explosion that collapses in on itself. </p>
<p id="kqkYx5">But your irritation also makes sense. For all the elements this season has put into play, it’s Looking Glass’s story that seems furthest off the map in terms of whatever Angela and Laurie will end up doing. (That said, “An Almost Religious Awe” does reveal how episode five’s cliffhanger resolved — with a bunch of dead Seventh Kavalry members.) Still, it’s crucial to the overall story of the season, which is a metaphorical push to confront what happens when white Americans are forced to look at all of the injustices their whiteness insulates them from. Do they work to decentralize themselves? Or do they dig in and make things worse because they know the consequences won’t affect <em>them</em>? </p>
<p id="zoepSF">Looking Glass is our biggest question mark in that regard — and he’s also been completely missing from the last two episodes! I have faith his absence is going to pay off in a big way, but if it doesn’t, then the fifth episode is somehow both an hour of TV I deeply loved and one that feels completely disconnected from the design of the rest of the season.</p>
<p id="X2CbYg">Meanwhile, there’s another prominent white character driving the action of the story’s narrative: Laurie Blake. And in this episode, she doesn’t appear to be in very good shape, does she?</p>
<h3 id="v6OUb0">“An Almost Religious Awe” is a great reminder of how many amazing women characters this show has</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Laurie interrogates Jane about holes in her story." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_V0hAXGX29gtPtDQfKDWnJaRLvw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19421655/4860614cda5cd0497584c2fccbc1785afde63a6d601e19539676ca40df979863e97211929373f0af7eef23eafb9a0b66.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Laurie has had just about enough of Jane’s shit.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="We6azx"><strong>Allegra: </strong>I love that we feel so opposite about episode five — especially because, as you said, it is an inflection point where <em>Watchmen </em>began to cull from and reference the comic book more explicitly. Episodes five and six also operate on a much smaller scale than the previous, wackier episodes of extraterrestrial visitations to outer space mansions and bizarre aerial crafts picking people up and taking them away. </p>
<p id="tydO3c">Fitting also that the episode with Laurie’s introduction was the last episode I truly, unequivocally liked. Even loved! Her full-fledged return here is quite welcome, especially as the season approaches its endgame. Just as her investigation seems to be on the up-and-up, Laurie is trapped. Literally. Her visit to Judd Crawford’s wife to tell her that the FBI has figured out who killed Judd — and that it was Will — ended in such a shocking way, with Judd’s wife, Jane, hitting the button on a remote and sending Laurie into a void beneath the floor. Apparently, everything is going according to plan so far regarding the Seventh Kavalry’s racist machinations, and they’re not about to let Laurie mess that up.</p>
<p id="f08vKO">I loved this scene as another surprising and exciting development in a storyline I’ve felt really invested in. Perhaps it says something about me that I love <em>Watchmen</em>’s crime drama-adjacent mystery more than its more meditative aspects. But I find Laurie to be a layered, fascinating character, and to watch someone so unflappable potentially fail is thrilling. Especially in light of what we must assume is coming next: the return of Doctor Manhattan.</p>
<p id="o81X6I">Most importantly for me, however, is that Laurie is a middle-aged woman, a retired superhero, who is working alongside another middle-aged woman to solve the murder of a man. (And then an older woman, Judd’s wife, ends up taking Laurie down.) It’s rare to see this kind of dynamic on an action-heavy TV show, and I so immensely appreciate it: a multiracial cohort of women in a genre that traditionally skews male. You mentioned that Laurie is another “white character,” which is objectively true. But the relationship between Laurie and Angela, and between Angela and Lady Trieu (an Asian woman), are absent of the racial lines that divide the men on the show. And to me, that feels even more special. </p>
<p id="0sBnTJ"><strong>Emily: </strong>It’s been <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/hooded-justice-watchmen-hbo.html">widely reported</a> that the <em>Watchmen</em> writers’ room was split evenly between black and white writers, but what’s come up far less often is that it was also split evenly between women and men. </p>
<p id="0TuDNW">That’s displayed beautifully in “An Almost Religious Awe” (the first episode of the season whose credited writers — <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4731437/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Stacy Osei-Kuffour</a> and <em>OA </em>veteran <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6263575/">Claire Kiechel</a> — are both women), which captures the shared solidarity women can often feel when the world just makes us want to say, “What the fuck?” (Note that I say “can.” It’s pointed that the person who imprisons Laurie is another older white woman. Solidarity will never entirely trump racism.)</p>
<p id="FLtUIX">I’m increasingly fascinated by the ways this season is centered on people who’ve suffered first being forced to confront the historical traumas that continue to influence the present, then making others see that suffering, too, so that its pain dissipates, at least a little bit. </p>
<p id="FzS4rU">It’s probably significant that Lady Trieu is of Vietnamese descent. (And when she says her father “will be here” after revealing that the young teen hanging out in her lab is her mom — she has to mean Veidt, right?) It’s probably also significant that the animal Angela finds herself tethered to is an elephant, represented in culture for centuries as having a long memory and impossible resiliency. To be alive in the world of <em>Watchmen</em> — maybe just to be alive in the world — requires a long memory and impossible resiliency. </p>
<p id="JRpqmR">But it also requires finding some new way to move forward, and that seems to be the task the show has set for itself as we enter the final two episodes. Now that we know Cal is Doctor Manhattan, we have to deal with that reveal (preferably immediately, in next week’s episode). But nearly every other dangling plot thread concerns what the state of the world will be in the wake of the events of this series. For as much as I want to see more of <em>Watchmen</em> past this season, I almost hope episode nine provides such a definitive ending that the show <em>can’t</em> go forward. Anything else might taint what it has accomplished here.</p>
<p id="JCCLfS">Allegra, how do you feel about the Cal reveal? And which dangling plot threads have you most anticipating any future revelations? </p>
<p id="SK0xZG"><strong>Allegra:</strong> CAL! Cal. C A L. </p>
<p id="p3J7Ra">It’s kind of funny how devastated I was to discover that the beautiful, doting Cal was not who I thought him to be — in the sense that, until that moment, I really couldn’t have cared less about where Doctor Manhattan was. His existence meant so little to me; from what I know of the original comic, it seemed there wasn’t much more to be said about this glowing blue giant. I was amused to see <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy">Laurie unpack a big blue dildo</a> at the end of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/3/20942321/watchmen-episode-3-recap-season-1-she-was-killed-by-space-junk">her episode</a>, but beyond that? He can stay on Mars, for all I care. </p>
<p id="rP1alS">When it’s revealed that Doctor Manhattan is not in space like he’s thought to be, and that he’s been living in Angela’s house this whole time? As her husband? Well, that rattled me. Those are surprises that are affecting, no matter how much Cal being specifically Doctor Manhattan resonated with me. </p>
<p id="r1wpdm">“An Almost Religious Awe,” however, did an excellent job of offering more context for what Doctor Manhattan’s deal is than any previous hints. It began with news footage to succinctly sum up who he was and what happened to him after the squid attack that ravaged New York. Then the appearance of all of those Doctor Manhattan balloons in Vietnam as Angela roamed through the streets as a child helped show the persistence of that history. And finally, Lady Trieu warning Angela that the killer was somewhere inside the house — that Doctor Manhattan was on Earth — built a modern mystery component around the character. Each of these ramped up the intrigue slowly, subtly, and, most important to me, in ways that made it clear just how connected this character is to the woman I want to protect the most.</p>
<p id="88Dei9">And that woman is Angela, who I must know going forward: What the hell is she going to do about Doctor Manhattan? And will someone promise me that there is still an actual, real, beautiful, hunky Cal somewhere? Please!</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/1/20982680/watchmen-season-1-episode-7-recap-an-almost-religious-awe-doctor-manhattan-angela-calEmily St. JamesAllegra Frank2019-11-26T09:44:21-05:002019-11-26T09:44:21-05:00It sure seems like Watchmen turned Donald Trump’s father into one of its racist villains
<figure>
<img alt="The character of “Fred” with a police officer behind him, in a flashback scene in HBO’s “Watchmen.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6mMQEc8dGNVzStiG4qjwlbwVFAU=/0x0:1362x1022/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65771212/Screen_Shot_2019_11_25_at_2.21.22_PM.0.png" />
<figcaption>“Fred” in <em>Watchmen</em>. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “Fred” in Watchmen’s sixth episode has a lot in common with Fred Trump.</p> <p id="xZQvZU"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976124/watchmen-season-1-episode-6-recap-this-extraordinary-being-hooded-justice-will"><em>Watchmen</em>’s sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,”</a> unleashed a barrage of twists and turns that turned the episode and the world of <em>Watchmen</em> inside out. But amid the hypno-gun hanging of Judd Crawford, the reveal of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976040/watchmen-episode-6-hooded-justice-will-reeves">Hooded Justice’s secret identity</a>, and Angela Abar experiencing her grandfather Will’s memories, there might have been one blistering reference subtly woven into the episode: a possible nod to Fred Trump, the father of sitting president Donald Trump. </p>
<p id="TFA2xx">The possible Trump “reference” happens partway through the episode during a memory of when Will was just starting out as a cop and encounters a man named Fred. Will witnesses him break a window and set a Jewish deli on fire on Jamaica Avenue in Queens. Will approaches him, asks him what his name is, the man replies with “Fred,” and Will promptly arrests him. </p>
<p id="A5B5vT">Later, it turns out that Fred is in cahoots with some of Will’s fellow police officers, who let Will go — because, it’s implied, they’re a part of the racist crime group known as Cyclops. Those same officers go on to terrorize and lynch Will, tying a noose around his neck and hanging him, but they stop short of killing him. They let him down and use this terrifying moment of brutality as a warning to not mess with “white folks’ business.”</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JZNXnUvfEjIrEKv0TM_y7TH2WbI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19406968/Screen_Shot_2019_11_25_at_9.50.36_AM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Fred on HBO’s Watchmen.</figcaption>
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<p id="eKzUAr">Though he’s attacked, Will doesn’t back down from Cyclops’s threats. He’s determined to investigate them and get payback. Tracking the Cyclops members down, Will finds out that they’re meeting at Fred’s market. </p>
<p id="pZQ4FQ">“I’m gonna start with that bastard Fred,” he says in “This Extraordinary Being,” as we see Angela witness his memories of becoming Hooded Justice. “Turns out he owns a market in Queens. They wanted me to stay away from him for a reason.”</p>
<p id="zDL1t0">Will clashes with Fred again at the end of the episode when he tracks down Cyclops members who are using mind control projector devices to get black people to attack one another. Two Cyclops members are seen loading a projector into a car with its windows marked F.T. & Sons, and Will tracks them to the central F.T. & Sons warehouse. </p>
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<img alt="Two Cyclops members load a projector into a car marked “F.T. and Sons”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/X0rCPYBqft-k641Yjs-JQjwz_M8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19406974/Screen_Shot_2019_11_25_at_10.01.19_AM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>F.T. & Sons = Fred Trump & Sons?</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="AGWkuB">Outside the warehouse, Will runs into Fred again, who says he doesn’t recognize Will, and “invites” Will into his warehouse. Fred’s a little nefarious and suspect and the invitation seems more like a ploy to kill Will. </p>
<p id="pmcDJ3">It’s then that Will puts it together that Fred owns the warehouse and is one of Cyclops’s ringleaders. He attacks Fred and kills him. It’s also then that the idea crystallizes that Fred — “F.T.” — could be Fred Trump. </p>
<p id="INFNF9">This may not have been strikingly obvious to everyone. But some viewers, particularly those familiar with the Trumps’ history, began picking up on the similarities shortly after the episode aired. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nice, subtle touch in this week’s episode of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Watchmen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Watchmen</a>, “This Extraordinary Being.”<br><br>“Fred” may possibly be Fred Trump. He’s involved in the Ku Klux Klan, he operates out of Queens, and his business is marked as “F.T. and Sons.” <a href="https://t.co/ifcN5iOatP">pic.twitter.com/ifcN5iOatP</a></p>— Darren Mooney (@Darren_Mooney) <a href="https://twitter.com/Darren_Mooney/status/1198983257590763521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2019</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">WATCHMEN HBO EPISODE 6 SPOILERS MAYBE????<br><br>Okay. I might be connecting way too many dots here, but this mustachioed KKK asshole “Fred”, owner of F.T. & Sons, is definitely supposed to be Fred Trump, right? Right?<br><br>END WATCHMEN HBO EPISODE 6 SPOILERS MAYBE???? <a href="https://t.co/L43Ew9OxoQ">pic.twitter.com/L43Ew9OxoQ</a></p>— Dustin Quillen is no turkey (@DustinQuillen) <a href="https://twitter.com/DustinQuillen/status/1198830869609406465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2019</a>
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<p id="xkmUAD">One of the writers on the show also tweeted a cryptic message hinting at the Fred Trump comparison:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Look up who owned Queens first supermarket... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Watchmen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Watchmen</a></p>— Claire Kiechel (@clairekiechel) <a href="https://twitter.com/clairekiechel/status/1198794457660833799?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2019</a>
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<p id="kkeOKg">In real life, Fred Trump, like <em>Watchmen</em>’s “Fred,” owned a market in Queens on the corner of <a href="https://qns.com/story/2016/12/01/looking-back-donald-trumps-fathers-connection-woodhaven/">Jamaica Avenue and 78th Street</a>. It opened in 1933 — around the time that Will Reeves would’ve been active on the police force — and is described by the <a href="https://qns.com/story/2016/12/01/looking-back-donald-trumps-fathers-connection-woodhaven/">Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society</a> as the “first supermarket of its kind in this part of Queens.”<strong> </strong>Additionally, a reader pointed out to me that Fred’s mother Elizabeth, did real estate business under the banner of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/nyregion/foundation-of-an-empire-modest-queens-homes-built-by-donald-trumps-father.html">E. Trump & Son</a> (the son being Fred), which seems close to Fred’s F.T. & Sons business name . </p>
<p id="oCiaaI">As for “Fred” and his connections to racism, the Ku Klux Klan, and Cyclops, it’s notable that Fred Trump was one of seven men arrested during a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/28/in-1927-donald-trumps-father-was-arrested-after-a-klan-riot-in-queens/">1927 KKK riot</a>. The Washington Post <a href="http://ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/28/in-1927-donald-trumps-father-was-arrested-after-a-klan-riot-in-queens/">notes</a> that Trump was detained by police for refusing to disperse from the parade. And in 1973, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/07/30/1973-meet-donald-trump/?_r=0&module=inline">Justice Department sued Trump Management</a> for discriminating against black people and violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in 39 buildings. </p>
<p id="6uryCR">With parallel elements like Fred Trump’s KKK arrest and his market in Queens (and probably not helped by Donald Trump’s later instances of racism, including his words describing the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18517980/trump-unite-the-right-racism-defense-charlottesville">2017 white supremacist march at Charlottesville</a>), it’s not difficult to see how “Fred” and F.T. & Sons could be analogs for the real Fred Trump and his family. <em>Watchmen</em>, after all, takes place in an alternate history, and many of the political figures in our reality appear in Watchmen’s version, albeit with changes. </p>
<p id="hcVQnm">There’s no official confirmation yet that the show was taking a dig at Fred Trump, the father of the sitting president of the US. But it sure seems like it. </p>
<p id="ILHM2X">Vox has reached out to HBO for comment on “Fred” and his possible connection to Fred Trump and will update when we hear more. </p>
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/25/20981767/watchmen-episode-6-fred-trump-recapAlex Abad-Santos2019-11-24T22:05:00-05:002019-11-24T22:05:00-05:00Hooded Justice was Watchmen’s very first hero. The show just changed his legacy.
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UG0RbldDkCFEwun4IDK_AYd2ej0=/585x0:2105x1140/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65765851/Screen_Shot_2019_11_24_at_12.44.18_PM.0.png" />
<figcaption>Hooded Justice in Watchmen | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A massive reveal in “This Extraordinary Being” has pushed the entire <em>Watchmen</em> universe forward.</p> <p id="HUphku"><em>This article contains spoilers for the sixth episode of HBO’s </em>Watchmen. </p>
<p id="lWEwWy"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references"><em>Watchmen</em></a>’s sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,” is one of the most explosive episodes of television this year, and it’s all wrapped around one nuclear revelation: Will Reeves, a.k.a. Angela’s grandfather, a.k.a. the mysterious man in the wheelchair, is the superhero known as Hooded Justice. </p>
<p id="cjaryr">Thanks to a bottle of magic memory pills, Angela goes through the pain, joy, and sorrow of living through her grandfather’s life experiences. This allows her to not only see him don his costume and become Hooded Justice, but also understand that he was unable to have his heroics recognized as such because of the color of his skin. He was allowed to become Hooded Justice, a superhero, but only if he pretended to be white. </p>
<p id="Orpt8P">This game-changing bombshell changes the trajectory of <em>Watchmen</em> entirely, and it also alters the original, 33-year-old graphic novel. Though he isn’t a main character in <em>Watchmen</em>, Hooded Justice is considered the superhero that started the era of masked and caped crusaders. He’s the reason heroes exist, and his disappearance from the world marked the beginning of the end of costumed vigilantism. Making a black man the focus of that narrative plunges everything we previously knew about the character into deeper, more tragic territory than the initial story offered. </p>
<aside id="iVupXi"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.","url":"https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained"}]}'></div></aside><p id="ZdK5lx"><em>Watchmen</em> was supposed to change the way we think about our heroes, their stories, and their impact on society. With this massive reveal, the television show has valiantly pushed the entire <em>Watchmen</em> universe forward, while still in keeping with the spirit of the original comics themselves. </p>
<h3 id="lTh9Q6">Hooded Justice was the only hero in the comics who remained a mystery</h3>
<p id="l7Y8kC">In the comics, Hooded Justice is a tertiary figure. He appears, in the flesh, in a flashback where he saves Sally Jupiter (Laurie’s mom) from being raped by the Comedian. Later, we find out via Sally’s scrapbook that two characters named “H.J.” and “Nelly” are in a relationship, and that Sally is “covering” for them — presumably as a beard for Hooded Justice and Nelly (who the reader can deduce is probably Nelson Gardner, a.k.a. fellow superhero Captain Metropolis). </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RmEG-_GVRmxNPW_wbFZKYFOYD1k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19399495/Screen_Shot_2019_11_21_at_12.50.54_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Hooded Justice saving Sally Jupiter in Watchmen</figcaption>
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<p id="f6n1Vy">Like this tidbit about Hooded Justice’s sexuality, almost everything else we know about the hero comes from secondhand, sometimes even third-hand, accounts of his feats, his follies, and his identity. And those three points are the bones of his story. </p>
<p id="hM9iBU">Most of the Hooded Justice dossier comes from a supplemental aside in the comic, in the form of fictional excerpts of Hollis Mason’s autobiography <em>Under the Hood</em>. Mason, in the graphic novel, is the hero known as Nite Owl and was part of the premier superhero team known as the Minutemen. These excerpts, ranging from information about the heroes and team composition to Mason’s own musings about vigilanteism, serve as a break in the story and flesh out the world of <em>Watchmen</em>. </p>
<p id="e4lBEW">Mason explains that Hooded Justice was actually the reason he wanted to be a hero. In the second chapter of the first installment of Mason’s book, he writes of a “simple and un-presupposing” story he once read about a masked avenger in Queens, New York, who stopped a gang from robbing and assaulting a couple. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HUbM2_XLnFHGwgHzCVOvnTX9cr0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19399501/Screen_Shot_2019_11_21_at_12.36.49_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Hooded Justice in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="y7R49M">“At this point, the crime had been interrupted by a figure ‘who dropped into the alleyway from above with something on his face’ and proceeded to disarm the three attackers before beating them with such severity that all three required hospital treatment,” Mason wrote, explaining that the hero was dubbed “Hooded Justice” by local papers. “I knew I had to be the second [masked vigilante]. I found my vocation.” </p>
<p id="kyrEND">The other major thing we find out from Mason’s autobiography is that Hooded Justice eventually disappeared. Mason explains that during the McCarthyism era of American politics in the 1950s, masked vigilantes had to appear before the government to be questioned about their allegiances. This is around the time that Hooded Justice disappears, which Mason assumes was because he didn’t want to deal with the government witch hunt. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YbcKg1PKb-OYWivDq2BPzsCL65k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19399507/Screen_Shot_2019_11_21_at_11.47.48_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Hooded Justice and the man people believed to be Hooded Justice </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="PVkAE1">“Vanishing is no big problem when you’re a costumed hero — you just take your costume off,” Mason writes. “It seemed quite likely that Hooded Justice had simply chosen to retire than reveal his identity which the authorities seemed perfectly happy with.” </p>
<h3 id="U2WApd">In the comic, Hooded Justice was sympathetic to Nazis </h3>
<p id="F6SBK8">From the sound of Mason’s observations, Hooded Justice’s story seems so deceptively simple, an open-and-shut case. But most of what Mason writes doesn’t really answer the most pressing question in light of the show: Was Hooded Justice actually intended to be a black hero in the original comic? </p>
<p id="PLAKpV">There is one passage where it seems like that’s a definitive “no.” In the third chapter of <em>Under The Hood</em>, Mason explains the background of each of the heroes who eventually became the Minutemen. One of his anecdotes revolves around the political bearings of the Minutemen, and he hints that Hooded Justice was a fascist with Nazi sympathies.</p>
<p id="3LYNda">“Before Pearl Harbor, I heard Hooded Justice openly expressing approval for activities of Hitler’s Third Reich, and Captain Metropolis has gone on record as making statements about black and Hispanic Americans that have been viewed as both racially prejudiced and inflammatory, charges that it is difficult to argue or deny,” Mason writes. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/03fGdJLn3jJWJ9steWUdyaTOhvA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19399532/Screen_Shot_2019_11_22_at_9.03.02_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Mason’s observations on Hooded Justice</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="8I3QtW">In this context, those noose around Hooded Justice’s neck and KKK-style hood he wears become terrifying symbols of white power. But this horror lines up with the story writer Alan Moore wanted to get across. <em>Watchmen</em> isn’t supposed to be about hero worship, Moore argued, but rather the dangers of it and of abdicating personal responsibility to said heroes. He wanted to show how imperfect they are, how monstrous they can be, and what happens when you mix the power they have and how they change what “justice” looks like. </p>
<p id="Xev0Ay">Hooded Justice’s fellow hero, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/24/20926872/watchmen-hbo-backlash-politics-sjw-race">Rorschach</a>, is a nihilistic, unapologetic, objectivist moralist who is willing to risk armageddon based on what he believes is good. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20964873/watchmen-episode-5-squid-looking-glass">Ozymandias</a> is a genius utilitarian who sees no problem in killing millions of people to achieve harmony. Hooded Justice, as the first hero but also a fascist with a racist, gay lover (who’s also a masked vigilante), seems like the type of flawed, monstrous hero whose story Moore and Gibbons wanted to tell. </p>
<h3 id="Gi13up">HBO changed Hooded Justice into someone more complex by making us question our point of view</h3>
<p id="OqJjrr">Now, jump ahead to episode six of the HBO follow-up.<em> Watchmen</em> showrunner Damon Lindelof and episode co-writer Cord Jefferson’s decision to make Will Hooded Justice makes for a more sorrowful story. The events of this episode completely change the novel while still honoring the spirit of the original text: flawed heroes in a flawed society. </p>
<p id="mlg1zr">In the context of the TV show’s revelation of Hooded Justice’s race, Mason’s observations cut in different ways. Mason’s theory that Hooded Justice retired because he didn’t want his secret identity to be found can now be read as incredibly reductive, or missing the real point of why Hooded Justice would want to go into hiding. </p>
<p id="WLDkp9">Hooded Justice’s disappearance now more easily seems to be the result of Will not wanting people to find out his race, as he knows that society wouldn’t be able to handle the idea of a black superhero. White mobs destroyed Tulsa, which housed a thriving black community. They would certainly go after a black hero even more aggressively. </p>
<p id="5inipz">Hanging up his mask and costume wasn’t as easy for the HBO show’s take on Hooded Justice as Mason makes it sound in the comic. When Will stops being Hooded Justice, he returns to his place in reality as a black man in a society that doesn’t value, doesn’t trust, and inflicts violence upon black people. </p>
<p id="o9N9Ow">Will’s race and its impact on his societal stature also make the viewer question the narratives we write about our heroes. Hooded Justice’s legacy now completely changes with the revelation of his race, depending on who wrote his story and the prejudices they have; the writers who tell the stories of these heroes come are informed by whatever biases they may hold. Considering Hooded Justice’s Nazi sympathies and Captain Metropolis’s racism, it’s hard to believe that Hooded Justice’s legacy would remain perfectly intact if the hero revealed himself to be a black man.</p>
<p id="SWdaqi">But there are some incongruities between the graphic novel and the television show that are a little more difficult to reconcile. The idea of Hooded Justice as a fascist works in the graphic novel when the motive is to show the terrifying nature of superheroes and vigilantes, but the show plays Hooded Justice much differently. </p>
<p id="O7ntYl">You could try arguing that Hooded Justice used that kind of language to throw people off his trail, or that Mason was an unreliable narrator and left out the character’s race. But that seems more complicated than just concluding that the show took liberties in interpreting the character’s backstory. </p>
<p id="8zxTRG">Hooded Justice, on TV, comes across as relatively valiant. He wants to save the world, and do good, but his fellow heroes won’t help him. He actually finds and dismantles the hypno-technology that the KKK is using. And even though we don’t know why he killed Police Chief Judd Crawford, it feels like there’s a good reason behind it given what we know about will. </p>
<p id="CkEkQm">That said, Hooded Justice’s history and his secrets are now part of his granddaughter Angela’s story. </p>
<p id="gZoRyj">Will’s legacy as Hooded Justice has been crystallized, preserved, and will live on long after him. It’s now Angela’s turn to reconcile her grandfather’s experiences with her own identity and her own sense of heroism. But despite the reparations, despite the decades between them, her situation — a black cop donning a mask to become a “hero” — feels so very close to his. His memories serve as a warning to her about human nature and the world they live in. Saving Angela from repeating his own mistakes very well could be Hooded Justice’s last heroic act. </p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976040/watchmen-episode-6-hooded-justice-will-reevesAlex Abad-Santos2019-11-24T22:00:00-05:002019-11-24T22:00:00-05:00Watchmen dives into the past in an episode unlike any other in TV history
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<img alt="A person wearing a hood and a cape and a rope noose as a necktie sits at an interrogation table begin questioned by two conventionally suited men." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V1bVSJ2clHwF7-aJX-KMtXKwUW0=/171x0:2838x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65765836/65d485c0f6fc8c0331278e19a0c6cadc68bb8ca7e05873226cae08147129830fcff9459b60c501664ab92edd0514c0d2.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Cheyenne Jackson in <em>Watchmen</em>. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show uncovers the history of one mysterious superhero in an episode that explores American racism.</p> <p id="RORKHZ">I’ve never seen a TV episode quite like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9111462/?ref_=tt_eps_cu_n">“This Extraordinary Being.”</a> And I’ve seen a lot of TV over the years.</p>
<p id="iEeZ34">It darts and weaves through American history, real and imagined, to create a portrait of a country that never once lives up to its ideals, while cruelly displaying those ideals on the horizon, a beacon of what <em>could</em> be true if not for the forces of racism, hatred, and greed. It’s also a gigantic attempt to fill in one of the single biggest pieces of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references"><em>Watchmen</em></a> lore from the original comic, with its own clever answer to a big question about a secret identity. <em>And</em> it’s an integral part of this season’s narrative, recentering on Angela Abar’s quest to untangle the conspiracy surrounding Judd’s murder after a couple of weeks in which the story has drifted away from her.</p>
<p id="qbjwfq">The episode is, in a word, terrific, and I (Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff) had a glorious time delving into its many secrets and hidden depths. The ways in which it blends the past and present together feel vital and fresh to me in a way these sorts of “flashbacks filling in a big chunk of backstory” episodes rarely do, perhaps because it is so thoroughly tapped into <em>Watchmen</em>’s larger theme of how the past and present are rarely as separate as we’d like them to be.</p>
<aside id="e4FiIt"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Watchmen on HBO: news, episode recaps, analysis, and comic book Easter eggs ","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/22/20925216/watchmen-hbo-episode-recaps-reviews-comic-book-references"}]}'></div></aside><p id="BA0k3A">But mostly, “This Extraordinary Being” is just a really dark and frustrated superhero tale. It made me wonder if <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0511541/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Damon Lindelof</a> read the quote from Alan Moore that’s been making the rounds — in which Moore points to the notoriously racist and KKK-celebrating 1917 film <em>Birth of a Nation</em> as the “first” superhero film — and thought to himself, “Huh, I wonder if that’s the show?” But it’s also an episode where Lindelof steps back a bit and lets his collaborators, co-writer <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6852255/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Cord Jefferson</a> and director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0931724/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">Stephen Williams</a>, tell a story rich with humanity, love, and dread. </p>
<p id="IuyaGk">I loved it! But how did my colleagues feel? To answer that question, I consulted Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank and senior culture correspondent Alex Abad-Santos to discuss all things “This Extraordinary Being.”</p>
<h3 id="HoXLFZ">This episode offers <em>Watchmen</em>’s most forthright storytelling yet about American racism — including a sequence many viewers may find too hard to watch</h3>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Regina King in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="fAswdj"><strong>Emily: </strong>I think I can honestly say that when I heard HBO and Damon Lindelof were developing <em>Watchmen</em> as a TV series, I never once thought, “I bet we will see the attempted lynching of a black man from the black man’s literal point of view.” But that’s what happens in one of this episode’s most emotionally wrenching — and likely most controversial — sequences. Even before <em>Watchmen</em>’s debut, every time a critic (usually a white critic, I should note) said they weren’t sure the show had properly underscored the horrible power of some of its images, I knew exactly which sequence they were talking about. </p>
<p id="uMV73u">But there’s no real way around this idea, because it’s so central to Will’s story, and Will is so central to Angela’s evolving understanding of the world in which she lives. And if you’ve gotta depict a lynching, I think it’s best that you literally place your viewers inside the head of the person being lynched, to remove what dispassion might result from a more removed perspective. This is what it feels like to know your life is about to end. It’s horrifying because it should be. </p>
<p id="Y3cqs6">I have so much more to say about this, but I’d love to hear from both of you about how you think “The Extraordinary Being” reveals the scar tissue of this very recent era in American history. Allegra, I was struck by the episode’s implied belief that nostalgia for the past is almost a position of privilege. What did you think of that? And Alex, how do you feel about how this story dovetails with the original comic’s portrayal of Hooded Justice?</p>
<p id="7dlChW"><strong>Allegra:</strong> I’ve often reckoned with the notion of nostalgia as a wholly positive experience — the word by definition suggests otherwise. To yearn for a past that can never be recaptured is a hauntingly futile pursuit. And that’s the aspect of nostalgia that <em>Watchmen</em> leans into here, specifically because it’s the past of someone who was abused by America’s long history of systemic racism. </p>
<p id="VpdUib">The episode’s interest in deconstructing the reality of nostalgia to reveal it as a position of privilege was probably the only way such a plot device could work. In a moment of defiance, Angela takes Will’s nostalgia pills — which, already, the fact that old memories can be made available in pill form sounds like a privileged expense — and is sent into a horrific, mind-melding trip through her grandfather’s past. Will’s nostalgia “meds” do not provide any comfort, only knowledge of the hardships of mid-20th-century black American life. </p>
<p id="m8sZnM">Will’s life was particularly hard, from the disturbing lynching attempt by his white peers on the police force to how he’s treated by his white superhero colleagues in the Minutemen. There is no pleasant wistfulness to any of these memories. <em>Watchmen</em>’s increasing meditations on race have already explored how racial superiority complexes benefit those who believe in them. This episode, in the moments seen through Will’s eyes, did that most concretely. And it succeeded by really establishing the privilege that white people had over Will, and other black people, socioeconomically — which then, on a larger level, discolored his nostalgia.</p>
<p id="GK1qYw">With that said, I think <em>Watchmen</em> leaned a bit harder than was tolerable for me on just how dark life was for Will, even if it contextualized who he is in the show’s contemporary storyline. The ultimate idea that America may not actually be ready to believe in a black superhero is fundamental to the series, especially in Angela’s story. Did we need for that concept to be born out of an upsetting beatdown and near-lynching of a black police officer in postwar America? I’m not sure. I sometimes have to wonder if <em>Watchmen</em> delights in this sort of extreme violence for extreme violence’s sake, even if there are meaningful ramifications. </p>
<h3 id="WoTcpS">The legacy of Hooded Justice, America’s first black superhero</h3>
<p id="Aio3me"><strong>Alex: </strong>In the original comic, we learn very, very little about Hooded Justice. His most notable appearance is in Sally Jupiter’s flashback. Sally is Laurie Blake’s mother and the original Silk Spectre, and she recalls the time when the Comedian very nearly raped her. He would have if Hooded Justice had not been there to stop him: </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k-MJB1KkzBAGWriEHs_5_jDyr_8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19396968/Screen_Shot_2019_11_21_at_12.50.54_PM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Hooded Justice saving Sally Jupiter</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="qUzBsk">Notice that the Comedian (who goes on to actually have a consensual relationship with Sally and turns out to be Laurie’s father — whew, comics are complicated) implies that Hooded Justice is into rough sex (“this is what you like, huh?”). Later in the book, it’s implied that Hooded Justice gay. And the series has now nodded to this multiple times, with police officers mocking Hooded Justice’s sexuality on <em>American Hero Story</em>, Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis having sex on <em>American Hero Story</em>, and the actual Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis having sex in this episode. </p>
<p id="wduqxg">But I think the most successful element of “The Extraordinary Being” is how it leaned into the circumstances of Hooded Justice’s disappearance. </p>
<p id="AM5sn7">In the comic, his disappearance is chalked up to McCarthyism in the 1950s; it’s assumed that, instead of dealing with the government witch hunt, Hooded Justice simply retires. Rolf Müller, a circus strongman, is suspected to be Hooded Justice, but it’s never confirmed. He’s the only hero whose true identity isn’t revealed by the end of the comic. </p>
<p id="vYq3LU">The television show suggests a more vexing scenario: What if Hooded Justice retired because America couldn’t handle that one of the first superheroes (in the comic, it’s established that he was the first), a symbol of all that is good, was actually a black man? </p>
<p id="v1l2Rq">Will was terrorized even though he was a cop and carried a badge, and from this experience he knows that even though he’s capable of so much good, people still wouldn’t accept him. In order to preserve Hooded Justice’s legacy, then, Will couldn’t ever reveal his true identity. </p>
<p id="HmqJ3k">Angela now<strong> </strong>has to reckon with the knowledge that she wears a badge just like her grandfather did, and the terrifying feeling that maybe society hasn’t progressed since the days of Hooded Justice. </p>
<p id="SVl062"><strong>Emily: </strong>What’s fascinating about this episode’s approach to the idea of nostalgia as a poison and Will’s specific experiences as an antidote (because his experience of the past recalibrates our thoughts about said past) is that it’s <em>also</em> an episode about Angela. Even though we’re getting Will’s backstory, it’s Angela who’s directly experiencing it. Witnessing Will’s past from his own point of view has the same effect on her as it does the audience — discombobulation, followed by a kind of profound sorrow.</p>
<p id="Mtzioc">But this also allows <em>Watchmen</em> to create an episode almost completely untethered from its own reality — notice how the title flips from <em>Watchmen</em> to <em>Minutemen</em> at the start, to signify we’re going back to the dawn of this franchise’s chronology — while nevertheless checking in on the present timeline via Laurie intruding on the flashback at particularly strange moments. That structure serves to increase the hallucinatory quality of the episode. All of this really happened; none of it is really happening.</p>
<p id="BZ5x2J">It also allows the episode to question the function of the flashback as a storytelling device, something that Lindelof, in particular, has a lot of experience with. Flashbacks are often constructed as “the truth,” and the flashback in this episode is definitely that. But it’s also a truth that nobody else knew until Angela found it out, which calls into question everything else we might know about the past. A flashback, by necessity, is usually filtered through one person’s point-of-view (and that’s especially true on Lindelof shows). Switch up the person telling the story, and you’ll see something entirely different. </p>
<p id="m0qGTG">Thus, “The Extraordinary Being” simultaneously does something completely new with the flashback format by blending the perspectives of two different people into the same experience. But it also captures the intense need to <em>make somebody see something</em>. We tell stories because we hope they will bring us closer to the people we talk to, help them see our truths and our deepest selves. But we also have to know that an experience that resonates for me cannot resonate for you in quite the same way. That’s why we have storytelling and art in the first place.</p>
<p id="0wMe8h">There’s also a particular resonance in this episode with the trans experience. Angela is, after all, experiencing this entire story while in the shoes of a man. He’s a man who’s related to her, yes, but it’s also an experience that apparently seems to throw her. At several points, Laurie pops in to say, in essence, that we’re not meant to live some other person’s life, and I couldn’t help but nod and think, no, we’re not. </p>
<p id="YEQG7h">But the only way to the core of the Judd Crawford mystery, for Angela at least, is by digging through the junk that accumulates in any one life. That’s why, I think, the episode focuses so much on trauma and not on happier moments in Will’s life (though we do get to see loving moments between Will and his wife and between him and Captain Metropolis, fleeting though they may be). The memories Angela sees firsthand are a message in a bottle, tossed to a granddaughter he maybe just found out about. “This is what happened to me,” it reads. “Make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”</p>
<p id="GW8283">And I haven’t even touched on the end of the episode, when Will really does kill Judd by aiming that hypno ray at him and directing Judd to hang himself. (I love how this tragic story concludes with a literal hypno ray, perhaps the most <em>Watchmen</em> detail imaginable.) We’re doomed to keep repeating these cycles unless we can break them. But breaking them involves pain and suffering and struggle for those who have power, not just those without. And good luck making that happen, even with a hypno ray.</p>
<p id="5LalY5">Alex, you mentioned before we started our official chat that you were taken with how this episode used the point of view of Will’s wife, to drill even further into this discussion. What stood out to you?</p>
<h3 id="Ms2uGO">It’s time to find out who Angela can actually trust</h3>
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<img alt="Laurie tries to get Angela to drop all this nostalgia nonsense." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mkStq5AyyL7zKPpwRaPZSn4Q8lE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19401384/0939e141310421bac69a7e747ed67b58d27bc2a952c997234c5ecd265d170f2d078c656184620b929f348f1939310f81.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>It doesn’t seem all that likely Laurie is one of them.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="8zYMY8"><strong>Alex: </strong>Will’s wife June occupies very little of the episode, but I think she represents a cogent voice of reason. She’s worried about him joining the police force because of the trauma he experienced in the past. She knows that <em>Trust in the Law</em>, the movie he watched as a child, isn’t reality, because she knows white people will never trust black ones. She knows Will won’t be accepted as a superhero if people know he’s black, and has him paint his face to hide his skin color. </p>
<p id="Uxt3b6">“If you’re going to stay a hero, then the townsfolk are going to need to think that one of their own is under [your hood],” she tells him. </p>
<p id="hn0W31">June is the realist counter to Will’s optimism. We don’t know much about her, but we know she’s seen enough of this world to know that a black superhero or vigilante won’t survive in it. And she’s not wrong. I mean, look at our own reality and how Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, was treated and the racist attacks he faced when he was elected in 2008. </p>
<p id="e0yGnL">It is fascinating that, as Emily mentioned, Angela experiences Will’s memories through her point of view, as a warning of sorts. I wonder, in the context of knowing his memories, how much guilt and anger Angela felt on June’s behalf.</p>
<p id="l49YUE">I can’t even begin to think of the mind-scramble it would be to experience Will cheating on June and his kinky sexual relationship (with masks on) with Captain Metropolis, while dealing with her own relationship with Judd and uniforms and so on. Add to that the layer of hurt and anguish of watching him emotionally abandon her grandmother, causing her to leave him. </p>
<p id="KQImSG">And how do you think the events of <em>Watchmen</em>’s past reconcile with the present, Allegra? How does the past, and what Angela knows, inform her present? What can or can’t she take away from it all? </p>
<p id="h0JPg0"><strong>Allegra:</strong> I think confronting her family history head-on will spur Angela to take action where it’s needed today, in 2019. Angela has been avoiding the truth about Judd since episode two, when she first stumbled upon Judd’s hidden KKK hood, suggesting a connection to the white supremacist Seventh Kavalry. She hasn’t wanted to admit that she loved and cared for someone involved in disempowering her and destroying the city she protects. </p>
<p id="iKh0kA">Her reluctance is understandable. But now, so is Will’s motivation to kill Judd in such a gruesome and loaded way. It came from the years of abuse he suffered at white hands, and his awareness that in Tulsa’s political underbelly, there are strong racist forces at play. He vows to get payback by picking them off. It’s necessary context for a society that has hardly evolved as much as it seems to believe.</p>
<p id="BI0RL3">Now Angela cannot ignore the multiple signs that she has misplaced her trust, that she is in just as much danger today as she was years ago, when she was first hurt in the line of duty as an unmasked police officer. Sister Night doesn’t necessarily have to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and start lynching racists, but now that her consciousness has become tangled with his, it would not surprise me to see her moral code tip in that direction. Her past and her present are now inextricably connected.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/24/20976124/watchmen-season-1-episode-6-recap-this-extraordinary-being-hooded-justice-willEmily St. JamesAllegra FrankAlex Abad-Santos2019-11-17T22:15:00-05:002019-11-17T22:15:00-05:00How Watchmen’s giant squid attack changes everything
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kkKvP10CPoahDtEt8zdSlIQJ2BM=/658x0:2290x1224/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65720328/Screen_Shot_2019_11_15_at_12.01.34_PM.0.png" />
<figcaption>Looking Glass in Watchmen | HBO</figcaption>
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<p>Watchmen’s fifth episode is about gods, monsters, and a psychic squid.</p> <p id="ssrhht">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20963402/watchmen-season-1-episode-5-recap-little-fear-of-lightning-squid-attack-looking-glass">fifth episode of <em>Watchmen</em>, “Little Fear of Lightning,”</a> takes us back to the ’80s — the age of hairspray, leather jackets, Howard Jones’s hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQB-euaDiQ">Things Can Only Get Better</a>,” the Cold War, and, in this universe, a psychic squid attack. </p>
<p id="3AzqMs">The 1980s-era of the <em>Watchmen</em> world is seen through the eyes of Looking Glass, the stalwart police officer with a mirrorball face and the uncanny ability to tell when people are lying. We meet him as a teen trying to promote the good word of Doomsday, how the end is near, and how God has pandas in heaven. To Looking Glass’s chagrin, the apparent apocalypse comes sooner rather than later, and he plays witness to mass death, destruction, and disorder in the form of a genocidal squid storming his local fair. </p>
<p id="N9vo7K">Though the squid attack is indeed bizarre (director Zack Snyder nixed the cephalopod assault from his 2009 cinematic adaptation, for example), it’s part of the most important question in writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’s graphic novel: Who holds accountable the most powerful people, and what decisions will they make when they’re left unchecked?</p>
<p id="fAalkQ">Looking Glass finds out the answers to these questions first-hand. He watches a recording of the space-bound billionaire Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, a.k.a. the villain of the <em>Watchmen</em> graphic novel, who explains that the squid was a fake attack for the better of the nation. Veidt claims responsibility for the scarring event, and Looking Glass learns that Americans are just statistics and disposable figures to the very powerful, including Veidt and the government. And through his revelation, the viewer learns that the ultra-violent squid attack in <em>Watchmen</em>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/7/20949034/watchmens-doctor-manhattan-laurie-blake-sex-toy">like everything in <em>Watchmen</em></a>, means so much more than what it originally seems. </p>
<h3 id="Dj6Fhz">The squid attack is about theology, morality, and choosing between one evil or another</h3>
<p id="WpUpgB">The <em>Watchmen</em> graphic novel encompasses a variety of strange elements, ranging from an omnipotent blue man who prefers to be naked all the time to the power politics at play in the United States and Great Britain in the 1980s (which we’ve come to associate with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher). But the most challenging bit comes at the end of the novel, forcing us to examine our own ideas about morality and humanity — and that would be the squid attack. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WQcorVmOCHCm-FvogWaXpF2UpGc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19376421/Screen_Shot_2019_11_14_at_11.46.44_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Watchmen </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="y0UV6J">In the final chapter of the comic, Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, unleashes a colossal alien squid upon New York City. He sees it as the only way to keep the world’s superpowers from killing each other in a nuclear war. Ozymandias’s plan<strong> </strong>wasn’t without its supporters, either. Moore writes the story in a way that gives Ozymandias intellectual authority, and as such, other heroes (like Doctor Manhattan) go along with him. </p>
<p id="Mh6zV9">The squid, with a brain cloned from a human psychic, releases a shockwave that instantly kills millions. Those who survive the shockwave go mad and are driven to violence by the sensory overload. In the novel, World War III: Nuclear Party Time is inevitable, and Ozymandias’s plan works. Countries around the world, including Russia, see the terror in New York City and offer support to the United States, burying any simmering political hostilities until the horrors are stopped.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZKpLFdvFFsE-LntkDgLM2UCXR50=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19376487/Screen_Shot_2019_11_14_at_11.58.01_AM.png">
<cite>Gibbons/DC</cite>
<figcaption>Ozymandias celebrating his plan in Watchmen</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="yPweoB">With the plan and the people executed — and the story’s heroes unable to undo what Ozymandias has wrought — everyone who had learned about the plan beforehand is faced with a moral dilemma: Tell people about the mass murder Ozymandias committed and inevitably trigger nuclear war, or remain quiet about the fact that the genocide was man-made. Only Rorschach, the most obstinate of the heroes, doesn’t go along with the cover-up. </p>
<p id="Bss3W6">Though Rorschach sticking to his morals is noble — lying to people about millions of deaths is unconscionable — the situation is positioned in such a way that if he spills the truth, it will inevitably wreck the fragile peace Ozymandias achieved. In order to prevent that from happening, Doctor Manhattan obliterates<strong> </strong>Rorschach in the name of the greater good. </p>
<aside id="kG24Mf"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.","url":"https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained"}]}'></div></aside><p id="ifW56N">The result is two unappealing choices for who is right: the unapologetic, objectivist moralist who risks armageddon based on what he believes to be “good,” or the clinical amorality of a genius utilitarian who kills millions of people to achieve harmony. There’s no simple nor tidy answer, especially with the stakes heightened to the point where Rorschach’s noble deed seems detrimental and Ozymandias’s “saving” the world seems moot. And perhaps the greatest lesson here is not that these are the only two choices, but rather that people should be wary of relinquishing personal responsibility to those in power. </p>
<h3 id="Plzurf">HBO’s <em>Watchmen</em> asks how the squid attack preserves the status quo of government power </h3>
<p id="q0twpZ">At the end of the comic, world peace has been restored. But The New Frontiersman newspaper (which has been referenced in the HBO adaptation) obtains Rorschach’s journal, and it’s implied it will publish Rorschach’s thoughts and observations of his investigation into Ozymandias’s scheme. What we don’t see fleshed out in the original graphic novel is the aftermath of how the attack changes the lives of everyday people, the ones who aren’t privy to the knowledge that the attack perpetrated on them was a hoax.</p>
<p id="g3CJrX">HBO’s adaptation examines, through Looking Glass’s story, at least one perspective of that. Unlike the heroes in the graphic novel, Looking Glass witnesses the attack firsthand in Hoboken. It shakes him to his core, and today he lives with a type of PTSD and fears the potential for another attack, hence the emergency alarm system and drills in which he’s invested. For Looking Glass, each day is spent revisiting the attack and dreading that it may happen again — a stark allegory for Americans who vividly remember 9/11 and its immediate aftershocks.</p>
<aside id="QsVHyM"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Watchmen wants us to know one thing: We’re all being used by those with power","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20963402/watchmen-season-1-episode-5-recap-little-fear-of-lightning-squid-attack-looking-glass"}]}'></div></aside><p id="hAiiSJ">But episode five is not the first to reveal the lingering effects of the giant squid attack. </p>
<p id="oW3GRj">In the first episode of the series, Angela’s son Topher’s classroom displays a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/10/20/20921287/watchmen-episode-1-hbo-comic-book-clues-callbacks">poster about squid anatomy</a> alongside one depicting America’s presidents, indicating that squids are still very important in this world, including all across the United States. In <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/20/20919972/watchmen-season-1-premiere-pilot-episode-1-recap-hbo-its-summer-and-were-running-out-of-ice">the same episode</a>, Angela and Topher drive home from school and pull over when they hear an alarm. Out of nowhere, several squid suddenly fall from the sky — or possibly from another dimension. This appears to be another connection to the squid attack of 1985, perhaps a direct result of it. </p>
<p id="VE0FMQ">Topher sees the “squid falls” as little more than a gross nuisance. We haven’t yet seen Looking Glass’s reaction to one of these events, but judging from how serious he is about the alarms and how worried he is about another attack, I doubt that he’s able to just brush those squids off. </p>
<div id="1MRNhO"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8dk2xHwM5OQ?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="2u73ZI">Knowing the backstory of the fake squid attack changes the complexion of the squid falls. We know the squid assault was fake, so presumably the squid falls are fake, too. So what’s their purpose? Who’s orchestrating the squid falls? And what benefit is there to arranging said squid falls?</p>
<p id="ItuFJX">I’m guessing the squid falls are a government act, as it’s difficult to imagine someone being able to pull off that kind of scheme. I could also see it being Lady Trieu, since she has the resources and money to accomplish such a grand feat. </p>
<p id="KXB4d7">Regardless of who is orchestrating the squid falls, they manage to keep the ’80s squid attack on people’s minds. The squid falls send the message that there’s danger looming, that the government and military could be the only things standing between the average citizen and another attack — which is, essentially, Ozymandias’s end goal in the graphic novel. </p>
<p id="l5NFNE">And if the squid attacks are used to get people to trust authority figures in this world, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to believe that the people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, should be wary of any authority figure’s power. </p>
<p id="I5ukx1">What’s a little less clear is how Sen. Joe Keene factors into the big reveal, when Looking Glass learns the attack was a hoax courtesy of Veidt. Keene’s planning something, but at this point, his endgame is still a bunch of moving pieces — a teleportation device, Veidt’s recording, framing Angela. </p>
<p id="w7wZRk">What we do know is that this revelation destroys everything Looking Glass thought he knew about the attack that changed his entire life. Finding out it was a hoax, that his whole life has revolved around this fake attack, is shattering. Just like the end of the graphic novel, Looking Glass is now in Rorschach’s position of keeping a secret that could change the world for the worse. The question becomes what he will — or won’t — do with this knowledge. </p>
<p id="xg4RYs"></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/17/20964873/watchmen-episode-5-squid-looking-glassAlex Abad-Santos