Watchmen season 1, episode 4 delves into the idea of legacy, introduces a fascinating new character, and launches clones into the atmosphere.
After two weeks of keeping the focus tight on Tulsa, Oklahoma, last week’s episode of Watchmen, “She was Killed by Space Junk,” brought in Jean Smart as Agent Laurie Blake, a former vigilante turned FBI agent responsible for taking down vigilantes.
In doing so, it likewise expanded the scope of its storytelling beyond the borders of Tulsa and made its strongest connection yet to the original Watchmen comics.
This week’s episode, “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own,” continues to expand on the world of Watchmen while also somehow managing to simultaneously be the most straightforward episode of the show so far and the strangest episode of the show so far.
In terms of straightforward storytelling, the episode goes into cop procedural mode as it delves deeper into the mystery of Judd Crawford’s death, then into family mystery time as we learn more about the connection between Angela Abar and Will Reeves.
In terms of strangeness, we watch Adrian pull baby clones from a lake, turn them into adults into his clone making machine, and then launch those clones into the upper atmosphere using a trebuchet.
Like I said, the episode firmly has its feet in two different places, yet is so good that the episode as a whole manages to still tell a smooth story.
This week’s Watchmen likewise introduces us to another badass woman — Hong Chau’s Lady Trieu. In addition to introducing us to another mystery of a character and the literal — and perhaps spiritual — success to Adrian Veidt’s Ozymandias, her inclusion in Watchmen brings the grand total of badass women over 40 on this show to three, which is absolutely an achievement I’m going to celebrate given that most TV shows and movies seem to forget that women exist after they turn 35.
Speaking of Lady Trieu, let’s start there.
‘Watchmen’ season 1, episode 4 review
Watchmen showrunner Damon Lindelof has gone to great pains to describe the show as not being a direct sequel to the comics, but instead a remix of the themes and storyline.
It’s a good way to describe the show, which — as I said in my first review — isn’t really all that interested in superheroes or their deconstruction as much as the original story was, and is instead forging ahead with its own story. However, while Watchmen isn’t interested in being a direct sequel to the comics, it is interested in being its spiritual successor in terms of storyline and characters.
Both stories use a murder as the inciting incident to uncover some larger conspiracy at play, both stories employ the use of masked heroes — one vigilantes, the other government sponsored — as their central figures, and while Looking Glass is a far cry to the black and white vigilantism of Rorschach, he has enough noir detective and deep trauma within him to be considered a spiritual successor to Rorschach.
Lady Trieu becomes another example of how this show has remixed themes and characters from the original story. Superficially, of course, it’s easy to draw the lines between Lady Trieu and Ozymandias — both are incredibly wealthy, incredibly intelligent characters who know how to use both to meet their own means. Lady Trieu also bought Veidt Industries at the same time that Adrian disappeared, which makes her the actual, literal successor to him in addition to being his spiritual successor.
But there are also a few deeper connections as well. Both have taken on names beyond their given ones — Adrian Veidt’s superhero name was Ozymandias, the Greek name for Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II; Lady Trieu’s moniker is taken from the real life hero of the same name who fought against Chinese occupation of Vietnam in the third century.
There’s a vivarium in her headquarters similar to the one Adrian housed in his Antartica base, and given what we’ve been shown about her in this episode, it’s more than likely she’s at the heart of whatever vast and insidious conspiracy Will Reeves hinted at in the second episode — just as Adrian was at the heart of the conspiracy in the comics.
As to what that conspiracy is, it seems as though we’re about three days (or episodes?) away from knowing it — at least, according to Lady Trieu and Will Reeves.
I’ve been historically bad at making any good guesses for where this show is headed, but I have to think that whatever the conspiracy is, it’ll have something to do with that gigantic structure Lady Trieu is making — the one that could only be felled by a direct nuclear blast.
We’re told that the first wonder of the modern world merely tells time, but I’m guessing it merely tells time the way Adrian merely made a giant squid.
This episode of Watchmen pushes the storyline along in a variety of ways and manages to connect a few dangling storylines — while, of course, handing us a few more mysteries.
Angela learns that Will is indeed her grandfather and about his past — one which we, who have been treated to many a scene that she hasn’t been privy to, already knew. One thing we didn’t know but perhaps could’ve guessed was his connection to Lady Trieu, who rescued him that night when Angela was about to take him in and who has been letting him stay with her until whatever happens in three days actually happens.
We also get to see more between Regina King’s Angela Abar and Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake, which is something I was hoping for since their limited interactions in the last episode. Both woman know more than they’re letting on to the other, but still need to work together so that they’re not completely left in the dark, which makes for some truly great television watching just on the acting and the dynamics alone.
Finally, we’re also treated to another installment of Adrian Veidt as the Lord of the Manor in what is the spookiest and most fascinatingly revolting chapter yet.
We learn how he gets his clones — by fishing them out of a lake using what looks to be crab pots, if my time in Stardew Valley has taught me anything — and the incredibly painful methods he employs to get them to full-grown status.
And while earlier episodes made it seem like he was just a kooky, old eccentric with odd recreational habits, this episode made it abundantly clear that Adrian is as ruthless, cunning, and driven as he ever was. His use of the clones is not simply the way a sociopath makes use of his time, but part of a wider experiment that will allow him to figure out how to escape his confinement.
I think the question of whether or not Veidt will somehow find a way to escape his confinement has already been answered in the affirmative, and at this point, it’s a waiting game of when and not if.
However, the question remains of who was able to get the drop on someone as smart and powerful as Veidt. Who managed managed to trap Veidt in such a prison and where in this universe is he? Two episodes ago, I would’ve told you it was Dr. Manhattan, but now I’m leaning more towards Lady Trieu.
Or perhaps it’s that little girl who threw the brick in the air.
At the heart of all three storylines this week in Watchmen — Lady Trieu and Will Reeves, Angela Abar and Laurie Blake, Adrian Veidt and his clones — is this idea of legacy. The episode opens with it: Lady Trieu offering legacy to the Clarks in the form of a baby they thought they’d never be able to have; then goes on to weave that idea of legacy into all the distinct storylines.
All the former and current masked vigilantes are shaped by a legacy of trauma. For Laurie, that trauma was almost literally passed down to her from her mother, who was a vigilante. Then, she was shaped by another trauma when she herself was a vigilante — keeping quiet about what Adrian truly did because it, as horrible as it was, did seem to save the world.
As we saw in Watchmen’s second episode, there’s the trauma that we know of in Angela’s near past that drove her to become a mask wearing police detective, but there’s also hints of a childhood trauma that we have yet to learn about.
Her grandfather has been the victim of racial, generational trauma of a kind that surely irrevocably changed him as a man and influenced his trajectory. And it is that trauma — and the path that it shaped — that he hopes to share with Angela through the pills that he left behind.
Adrian Veidt’s legacy is likewise steeped in trauma — only for him, it is the trauma he inflicted on other people. Veidt is a man who never considered the individual person as important as the bigger goal — something that he still hasn’t learned, as we can see by the way he disposes of and uses the clones for his own ends.
In his mind, his legacy is saving the world; but on a very real level, his legacy is death that spun out into an endless cycle of trauma that seems to have outlasted the peace he bought with the blood of three million people.
What we don’t know at this point is what Lady Trieu wants her legacy to be. There’s the Millenium Clock, yes, but tied to that there’s also her connection to Will Reeves, to Veidt and to whatever crash landed on the Clarks’ farm at the beginning of the episode.
Will her legacy be in alleviating trauma, or will it be one that’s soaked in blood?
Stray thoughts and lingering questions
- My favorite line in this episode — and one of my favorite for the season — is Wade’s response to Angela’s question of whether Judd was a racist: “He was a white man in Oklahoma.” That’s a pretty cutting line that likewise makes it obvious to me that finding a Klan robe in Judd’s closet really shouldn’t have been all that surprising to anyone in show or watching.
- A few coincidences that I’m sure aren’t coincidences: Will has the last name of Reeves, as in Bass Reeves, as in the hero of the movie he was watching before Tulsa was burned down; and, Lady Trieu and Angela Abar were both born in the same place, around the same time.
- Lady Trieu’s daughter Bian wakes from a nightmare that seems more like a terrible memory, and her mother thinks it’s a good thing and doesn’t comfort her? Is she a clone, or am I just still freaked out by Adrian’s clone fishing scene?