Watchin' the Watchmen

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Here’s my predictions for the final episode, this Saturday:

  • Senator guy will successfully become another Dr. Manhattan. Possibly a fucked-up version, possibly white instead of blue.

  • Senator guy will kill the president, who will be a brief cameo by Redford.

  • We will see senator guy’s wang.

  • The police will heroically battle the Seventh Kalvary and they’ll be defeated.

  • For certain certain certain Regina will become Mrs. Dr. Manhattan because they randomly gave Dr. M a new power wherein he can give anyone all of his power by having them eat like, special waffles he’d made that he’d imbued with his power.

    And since they made it a thing that those powers don’t show unless you’re in immediate danger, Regina will come into immediate danger, probably by Senator Manhattan, and she’ll manifest her powers and kill him.

  • The Millennium Clock is, I feel, going to be a thing that messes with time somehow, probably rewinding time, leading to some further time travel retconning.

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lol, way to set your expectations

Keene becoming Dr. Manhattan seems weird and implausible in a really bad way. I also don’t think people are looking for that kind of payoff, but I could be wrong. If it happens, the dong reveal seems likely. Hell, even if it doesn’t happen, I can see the dong reveal happening.

A Robert Redford cameo would rule.

I think there will be at least a few police fighting alongside Keene.

Angela eating magic waffles might be a thing.

Still thinking about Keene trying to be Evil Dr Manhattan, and I’m just not getting it. You imagine they wouldn’t need Manhattan to recreate the experiment, and forcing Dr. Manhattan to give them powers just seems illogical. They don’t know he can make magic eggs, and even if they did, if he’s capable to create an egg he’s capable of boiling their insides.

The Millenium Clock might be related to time travel, but I think it’s more likely to be related to memory and thoughts. All of Trieu’s things relate to biology and the mind, and I think that’s more likely that metaphysics (is that what Time Travel is related to? haha).

But I hope we explore the side threads because the main threads are pretty much… done? Lady Trieu, Bian, Veidt, Will Reeves, and Looking Glass are all interesting to me. There are a lot of directions to go. I keep wondering if they tie Trieu to the Comedian, and the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a bad idea, but… the Comedian is such a presence and I’d like more. I’ve seen theories on Veidt being some kind of mastermind puppeteer again, but that’d be dumb, so I’m hoping it’s anything but.

Will Reeves’ and Looking Glass’ futures are both super uncertain. I hope LG isn’t just dead, but you wonder how long he can live when he’s up against a dozen K7 and his superpower is like… reading focus groups. One of the last times we see current Will Reeves he says that Angela will hate him for what he’s done. I really wonder if this has to do with the reasons he killed Judd…

Oh, I guess one of the main threads I’m interested in seeing is like… when Angela is mindfucked when she doesn’t know if she caused Judd’s death or not. I’m curious how far they can push it.

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Also, rewatching Episode 4 is real fun considering what we all know now.

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My thoughts on the Millennium Clock still hang on the importance of Legacy as defined by Trieu’s very first scene. I suspect the importance of the cloned daughter-but-grandmother is solely to bear witness to a revenge act similar to what happened in Vietnam, possibly brought on by a white-donged Manhattan V2.

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I think the same thing about the clock. Maybe it’s a thing to distribute the memory drugs? IDK.

Veidt just mentioned to his dead slaves that he doesn’t need the horse shoe yet. I find it really interesting considering the last episode ended w/ him and the horse shoe. I can’t figure this one out yet.

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This is what I’m thinking. I’m expecting them to just do what Dr. Manhattan did to Vietnam, to the white house.

It would be wild if Senator Racism was able to re-form his body after the comic specifically went out of its way to explain how the russians weren’t able to re-create Manhattan with any of their tests, since their subjects lacked the clock-maker’s mind, but I absolutely expect that to happen, cause I’m pretty certain Lindelof didn’t notice that part of the story.

The Millennium clock having some biological aspect makes sense. Maybe it would massively distribute the memory drug to everyone on the planet, giving them some kind of specific knowledge, like the whole secret behind squidfall, and the secret about HJ, and all that?

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It’s a bit odd to me that the show didn’t go with Snyder’s ending, where Dr. Manhattan is blamed for the attacks, since that would easily explain the existence of all this anti-Dr. Manhattan technology laying around.

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Any ideas about Angela’s therapy involving an elephant besides the obvious ‘elephants never forget’ connection? Maybe something to do with the fact that her memories are being harvested for clues on Dr Manhattan’s whereabouts?

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I doubt the elephant thing is any more than Trieu’s thing for elephants. Just thought of this- what is up w the Dr Manhattan confessional booths? It’s gotta be related to the millennial clock but I just don’t have any theories

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I have not watched this show so maybe there’s some particular weirding in-context, but

if God were real and walked among us and seemed invincible

many someones would almost certainly begin trying to figure out how to control/kill God against the possibility that God becomes Wrathful, etc.

…yeah I guess I just ran straight into another Zack Snyder movie, huh?

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watchmen is a deconstruction, this show is very constructed

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Perhaps we’re all lucky that the Snyder Cut is buried in a salt mine to perplex future generations.

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Yeah, at the very least the Russians would be working nonstop to figure out how to kill Dr. Manhattan. I have to imagine the US government also would when he stopped being fully controllable.

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I don’t know where I could possibly start.

So it turns out I was wrong about all of my predictions - what actually happened was that none of the major, grandiose, world-altering plans by any of the three major groups ever got off the ground. Everyone just stood around snarking at each other until they either died or were foiled by, of all people, THE ORIGINAL WATCHMEN

I love how the finale of this The Watchmen sequel is “everything is returned to the status quo, and thank god. Let’s return to life as it was in episode 1.”

I guess to get started:

So the Millennium Tower was just a really really extremely fancy landing pad for the ORB, which was an unexplained thing that could fly and teleport people and later be punctured and destroyed by hail? Kind of weird considering the first thing the ORB needed to do, once launched, was go all the way down the tower to ground level.

How come Lady Trieu absolutely 1000% needed to build the tower exactly where she did, with acres and acres and acres of land to spare and surround it, rather than build it on land somewhere else? Seems like the ORB could just be driven in on a car or something, if she wanted to.

What was up with that whole thing where she went through the trouble of cloning a baby for the farming couple? Actually, hell, she had teleportation, right? She could’ve built this miles and miles away! She was going to teleport everyone and everything, Dr. Manhattan himself included, to a location where she could move in the ORB. I initially thought the pylons had something to do with all this, but then, all they were there to do was blow up the people she teleported in, so, I guess those weren’t really necessary.

Hey how come Veidt, after an entire season of being demonized, immediately goes into Good Guy Mode and solves the entire problem single-handedly, defeating his own daughter after having been thoroughly proven wrong by her? What was all that about? Did they forget they’d made him a sociopath this entire show?

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At least they laser murdered the racists? And fauxrschach lived.

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The ORB logistics are questionable but it would seem the construction site was deliberately staged to lure Cyclops into stealing her technology and to ensure their execution in retribution for the Tulsa Massacre. Pretty convoluted stuff, but then Veidt is no less so himself in his schemes in general.

As for saving the day I imagine his conversation with the newsstand owner played a significant part in that, what with his ‘achievements’ reduced to a rumour of living in obscurity among animals…because THAT’S NOT ALEXANDER etc

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So did y’all… like… it?

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I’ve only ever had a cursory relationship with all-things Watchmen having read the majority of the graphic novel and seen the film a couple of times, so would consider myself a liker of it generally but in no way possessive about it.

After watching the pilot I felt it was full of itself coming from enjoying the trashtacular The Boyz, which was Watchmen-by-way-of-Deadpool for all its irreverence, however by the time it announced itself as a sequel my investment was secured. As a continuation of the original work it probably has less to say than what’s already come before it but it didn’t prevent it from being massively entertaining and affecting throughout.

Regina King was a standout and at no point did I notice Jeremy Irons’ weird breathing like I do with most of his films, and Tim Blake Nelson has reminded me to go watch Buster Scruggs again.

If the last scene didn’t have the flashback (the bad kind that violates Show Don’t Tell) it would’ve been perfect, and the story definitely only had room for one season without being stretched like almost every damned series.

No regrets.

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I feel pretty similar to Hobo, but I was expecting more out of the conclusion of the season.

Millennium Tower just felt pretty flat to me. Trieu having a teleporting hovership thing just seemed like a weird new thing to introduce. The lies about the tower needing to be in OK just seem weird in hindsight. Also, her connection to Will Reeves seemed plausible because he was into mind control as well, but it looks like that wasn’t used, either. I also think it’s pretty bogus that the Dr. Manhattan/Will Reeves/Trieu double cross thing wasn’t introduced or played up as much as it needed to for being such a lynchpin.

I actually liked the baby cloning bit, and I think it really developed her character in ways that were interesting… but unfortunately were never used. I feel like Lady Trieu was built to be a smart and open and upfront and helping, but in the end none of that mattered. She was just “the badguy that needed to be dealt with”. She did end up killing the racist pigs, but she was killed because she wanted to use DM’s powers for good? And the justification is that “anyone looking for power isn’t trustworthy” — maybe, but again, I think this point is undercooked.

Veidt’s ending felt pretty bogus, too. I guess I understand that he’s just biding his time on Europa, but like that just seems like such a waste of our time. And the emotional payoff of him finally taking claim to Trieu being his daughter is killed by his murder by ice squid less than an hour after the fact.

Laurie was a great character all season, but in this episode she just kinda hung out until the end where they cartoon bonked a man who could literally catch bullets. Her meeting with Dr. Manhattan seemed pretty boring, too. It didn’t reveal anything about her relationship and how it changed or anything.

Most of this negativity has just been brewing after watching it. At the time I was really into it! I will probably watch it again to see if this is justified. Maybe there were just too many things I wanted to see in the conclusion. Maybe it should’ve been 2 episodes? I liked how Looking Glass came back, but I felt like there wasn’t much conclusion there. No Petey, either. IDK. I guess I’m going to rewatch E9 tonight…

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On the rewatch:

On their first meeting in Karnak, Trieu gets Veidt to trust her by calling his murderous rampage genius to “save the world”. When she is a step away from unleashing her own plan to murder 1 man to “save the world” he murders her. Is this supposed to be a lesson in kowtowing to white men? His “I could achieve anything starting from nothing” makes me really think he’s supposed to be exactly that. Also, this is the point where he says he’d never call her daughter.

How does Veidt know he’s going to be saved when he’s saved? This whole charade thing feels like a “it was all a dream” except worse. Are there even any Black Frieghter analogues? I feel like that was the whole point, but I can’t make any connections besides Veidt just being a shit person and no consequences happening to his soul in any way. As far as him knowing when he’s getting his ride out of there, I’m really hoping this is unrelated to Dr. Manhattan scheming, but I think that’s it. Dr. Manhattan kind of ruins fiction, doesn’t he?

Keene Jr’s speech is fucked up. It is kinda great how convincingly he is a racist piece of shit, but yeah, very gross. The parallels to right wing shit, oof.

I don’t know anything about love storys, but the Angela and Jon/Cal story is touching.

Veidt explaining why Trieu is evil rings really hollow, and considering it’s Veidt, it seems as though this is intentional. It’s like how rich white people don’t trust rich black people. I normally wouldn’t make that stretch, but the show started w/ the razing of Black Wall Street, and the themes of this show are very much about that, so it makes sense to dive into that.

How does Angela know to go to the Dreamland Theater?

The fucking cartoon wrench at the end jesus christ. Is this 3 Stooges shit supposed to be like the TV version of the cartoon smiley face?

I like how they dealt w/ the magic egg thing. I wish it wasn’t built up so much, and I wish they didn’t spend so much time with it. There’s just so many other things I care about more than keeping Dr. Manhattan alive especially considering how boring of a character he is.

Edit: Sorry for the rambling. I was really into this show before E9, so I’m just… looking for ways to not be as disappointed I guess

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