Behind the Mask: Theories and Analysis for Watchmen S1E5 – 25YearsLaterSite.com

Welcome back, dear reader, to your one-stop-shop for all the latest and greatest theories and analysis following the airing of HBOs Watchmen S1E5 Little Fear of Lightning. As a reminder, this article will be chock-full of spoilers. Ive scrubbed internet forums, YouTube videos, podcasts, preview clips, and various interviews, so you dont have to. Be forewarned; if its publicly available, well be talking about it here.

If thats not your cup of tea, you might rather check out 25YLs weekly recap and review written by Laura Stewart this week.

Still here? Great! Chop-chop, everyone! Come on! Time is of the essence!

Here we review some of the real-world history that the series is pointing us to. Not much to talk about this week, but in anticipation of next weeks episode, with Angela Abar tripping through her grandfathers memories, heres at least one historical event we have a hint (see the PeteyPedia section) that we would do well to brush up on:

Three new files in the PeteyPedia files this week:

Yet another source of in-world data dumps has been HBO EXTRAS, an app for HBO Digital Latin America that gives additional background information at seemingly random times throughout the episode. Reddit user u/Bbkoul has been capturing images from these popups and posting them. The Episode 5 popups are mostly fluff unfortunately, but theyre mildly entertaining to read.

Speaking of background material from HBO, heres an interesting tidbit. Someone else on Reddit dug up a two year old casting call for Watchmen that gives a little blurb describing most of the main characters on the show. Whats changed is changed now, but this provides some interesting background on early thoughts about the characters and their stories. Worth taking a look.

In the closed captions (at least as captured by the wonderful Springfield! Springfield! site), when the Game Warden suddenly moves to cut Adrians helmet off, it reads (CLONES EXCLAIM). When Adrian declares that their god has abandoned them, the (CLONES EXCLAIM) once again. OK, yes, the closed captions are often wrong. But still.

We did have verifiable clones in this episode, in the form of the cloned animals at the Forever Pet clinic where Cynthia, Wades ex, works. The best meme of the week on Reddit is Heath Ledgers Joker saying, Drop fetuses on a lake and no one bats an eye. Drop a puppy in the incinerator and everybody loses their minds. Its also noteworthy that there seem to be a lot of twins working at that facility. Is human cloning a thing in this Watchmen universe? And if so, are they as cavalier about disposing of them?

In the wacky theories about who could be a clone department, one new and slightly interesting one did pop up on Reddit proposing that Angela actually did die on White Night, and that the Angela weve been seeing is a Nostalgia-fueled clone of her. I would write this off if I hadnt listened to an interview with Regina King (Angela Abar) did for the Previously On podcast from Sky Atlantic. Trying to avoid spoilers (yeah right), the host asks her, Ive just watched the season finale, how am I feeling? She answers, Um, youre feeling like, what?! No!! Is she Keep an eye on Angela, Im telling you.

So, if we believe Senator Keene (does Wade?), he came in after White Night to take over the Seventh Kavalry, and at the same time his buddy Judd took over the police. Since then, theyve each managed their respective teams to maintain the peace. So much for the masks save lives slogan of the Senators upcoming presidential campaign. More like conspiracies save lives, but thats not a very good campaign slogan to run on.

Also, if he is to be believed, he apparently has no idea who killed Judd. That wasnt part of their plan. He actually suspects Angela might have done it, or at least she knows who did (hes right on that last part). So, assuming he truly is in control of the Seventh Kavalry, it really wasnt them who killed the police chief. That tracks with the interrogation campaign the police has been conducting, which has yielded absolutely f**king nothing, as Laurie admonishes.

The Seventh Kavalry is definitely going to do something. Something original. Something that will presumably happen in a couple of days, because thats how long Keene needs Angela off the board while he wraps things up. Of course, Lady Trieu and Will Reeves are also going to do something in three days. Same thing? Well now, thats a good question.

We know Will Reeves was involved in Judds death. Hes the killer, in fact, if he is to be believed. That would seem to put the Keene-Crawford faction against the Trieu-Reeves faction. If we consider that Judd knew he was sacrificing himselfdulling the fear with cocaine, dressing in his full uniform, taking none of his subordinates with himwe have to consider the idea that maybe he flipped sides.

One of Keenes 7K guys stepped out of line and shot a cop, but it could have stopped there. Judd is the one who upped the ante on the police side of things. He authorized the release of guns, a move that he expected pushback from Angela on. Hes the one who pressed the Archie to its limits to blow up the 7K plane before it got away. Maybe whatever Keene is up to was unknown to Judd, or at least not agreed to. Maybe Trieu-Reeves clues him in on it and devises a counter plan, but it requires a sacrifice. Maybe Judd has some blood on his hands over White Night or Vietnam. Enough guilt to motivate his sacrifice for a larger goodto fall on one last grenade to save his people.

Could they all be in league together? We cant rule it out yet, but it seems unlikely. On one side, we have two white guys, controlling the two oppressing powers of white supremacy and government-sanctioned brutality. On the other side, we have the oppressed minorities, dealing with pharmaceuticals that share generational trauma. Do their timelines coincide because one is trying to stop the other then? Maybe, but it seems like they both have positive goals in mind. More likely one side is unknowingly playing patsy to the other, i.e. Trieu is using Keene.

We talked a bit last week about what Trieu could be up to with the Millennium Clock, so lets turn to what the 7K could be up to with the teleportation window. Theyre tuning it for a fairly close-in operation that needs precision. Theyre dropping objects from the ceiling, so its doubtful they are sending people. Besides, last we heard, this technology scrambles and kills organic creatures, and this is a model that was in use back in 1985. Sounds like precision bomb-dropping into a building or set of buildings. While it could be a government building, like maybe trying to complete what McVeigh was stopped from doing in 1995 (by Laurie Blake, mind you), there is one obvious tall structure in Tulsa that would make an excellent target for toppling.

This is our recurring section devoted to the best bits of Watchmen (IMHO), those involving the character formerly known as probably who you think he is. We now have two avenues to explore, present-day Veidt and 1985 Veidt. Lets start with the latter.

In his video message to the newly elected President Redford, Veidt starts with, Assuming my instructions have been followed to the letter. That implies he anticipated that he might not be around to deliver the tape in person. Interesting.

People are a bit freaked out by the idea that Veidt would leave evidence implicating himself in the giant squid hoax. They are saying this would not have been smart for the smartest man in the world to have doneeven going so far as to call it a retcon. I dont see it that way at all. Especially in light of the idea that he anticipated not being present to see phase two of his plan carried out. A phase two that apparently starts with the election of President Robert Redford, after allowing the world sufficient time to heal. He gives the video to Redford in order to win him over as a willing partner in that project.

In the video, Adrian says that hell have to maintain the peace with additional small-scale extra-dimensional events, which most are presuming refers to the squid-fall. If the tape implies he knew he might not be around, he may have set up something to keep the squid-fall going in his absence, even 30+ years later.

Now lets turn to the present day (more or less) Adrian Veidt. First of all, we now know hes on Europa, one of the four larger moons of Jupiter. Lindelof has confirmed this. Im amazed by how many quick turn-around podcasts mistook that looming planet in the background (those who even noticed it) for Mars or even Earththe astronomy geek in me wept a bit at that. The imaging satellite he was aiming for is likely Juno, which launched in 2011 and arrived in orbit in 2016 (in our world, at least). Time enough for Veidt to have been aware of it, assuming he left in 2012. Though counting on there being no issues with its final deployment upon arrival at Jupiter was a bit presumptive.

Its also clear now that he is in some sort of cloaked vivarium on that moon. Hmm, who likes to build vivariums in harsh environments? Oh, I know: Adrian Veidt. So dig this, assuming thats right, what Lindelof has done here is show us that Adrian Veidt was already working on phase two (or three) of his plan: getting humanity off-planet. We were shown this at the end of the Watchmen comic and just didnt know what we were seeing. If this is where they are going, and Id wager it is, thats the most amazing inclusion of the original source material yet.

This ties in with the PeteyPedia article from the New Frontiersman where the editor suggests at the end that the white supremacists get their butts to Mars. Heck, that might have even been something Adrian has planted into the public discourse to seed acceptance of the idea of colonization once it is revealed. Figuring that he cant resolve humanitys internal conflicts, only put them on hold through the use of fear, the goal of this phase would be to give us breathing room to dispel conflict. This would also explain why the Appropriations Committee (of which Senator Keene is a member) would be shown the Adrian Veidt video because they would need to be quietly funnelling funding from anti-squid defence to future colonization projects.

The one hard thing to distil out of this though is Veidts disdain for the maker, that god of the Philips / Crookshanks clones who has abandoned them. Maybe Veidt didnt work on those bits, having help from Dr. Manhattan (who wanted to work on creating life) or Lady Trieu (who works on cloning and fertility technology). Although Veidt does call their god a he, so probably not Lady Trieu. But labeling Dr. Manhattan as a god just seems a tad too obvious, right? The other possibility is (I hate to say it) this Veidt is a clone sent to babysit the prototype colony and his disdain is for the original Veidt, who got plastic surgery and retired to Argentina.

One last thing to discuss is Adrians message: SAVE ME D Everyone wants to know what the rest of that message is. Guesses include:

Theres a theory thats gaining traction, especially with me, that Lady Trieu could, in some manner, be working towards getting revenge for the United States actions in the Vietnam War. Certainly with Lady Trieu, Angela, and Cal all having ties back to Vietnam, our 51st state is going to become more of an influence on the story soon.

Laurie was requested by name to come to Oklahoma to lead the FBI investigation into Judd Crawfords death. Weve seen a future clips scene of Laurie tied to a chair in what is likely the same 7K headquarters in the abandoned department store, with another big red eye logo on the wall behind her. If someone were targeting Laurie, that would be a strike against both the Comedian, as his daughter, and Dr. Manhattan, as his former lover. As Wade puts it in his conversation with the radiologist at the bar, technically, Dr. Manhattan won Vietnam. Laurie could be the bait that would finally motivate Dr. Manhattan to return to Earth to save herstepping into a trap.

That would even say that Judds hanging was set into motion specifically to get Laurie to Oklahoma. Added bonus: Judd fought in Vietnam. A lot of us cant shake the nagging feeling that Judd knew he was going to his death, as I mentioned above. He was making a sacrifice for some larger good.

Instead of a trap to kill Dr. Manhattan, what if the empathy bomb (as many are calling this theory; we talked about it last week) is targeting him specifically, not the world at large? Trying to get him to care about humanity again, to step in and start helping. Maybe this is phase three of Veidts plan.

Speaking of the empathy bomb theory, some more support for this idea came when the guy in Wades support group talked about genetic trauma, locked into his mothers DNA so that he inherits her pain ten years later. Sounds just like what Bian is tapping into with her dream of the Vietnam War. We also got a data dump in the PeteyPedia files on the drug Nostalgia that, if nothing else, tells us that memory transfer is a real thing in this universe. Although like teleportation in the original Watchmen, its a dangerous technology that can go wrong and injure people when misused.

Many have commented on Lauries constant references to how good looking Cal is, humorously suggesting that Cal is Dr. Manhattan and thats why she is inexplicably attracted to him. If we assume though that, like everything else, Laurie already knew about his accident before she rolled into town, then perhaps it was a disfiguring accident and his recovery presents another one of those thermodynamic miracles. Maybe he was a masked vigilante in Vietnam and got injured doing so, which would be a good reason to want to hide it from Agent Blake. Perhaps he even died for a bit, which would explain why hes so confident that theres nothing after death.

In this section, Ill be pointing you to a few of the more interesting interviews with cast and crew:

In this section, I pose some of my own thoughts and any unique theories I might be harboring.

Firstly, a shout out to the Daily DVR podcast, which had me on Sunday night for their Initial Reaction podcast for this weeks episode. It was a blast, and I thank them so much for the opportunity. These guys are one of my go-to podcasts, doing three podcasts a week on each episode. Check them out.

Now on to the theories:

Thats it for this week. If you have any interesting theories or clever Easter eggs that I missed, let me know in the comments below, or catch me on Reddit as u/catnapspirit.

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Behind the Mask: Theories and Analysis for Watchmen S1E5 - 25YearsLaterSite.com