Bless this episode for gifting us with the image of a scared, naked young man screaming "what happened?" into the New Jersey sky so you can all finally picture what I look like after each episode of Watchmen. But no, what's truly crazy is that this was Watchmen's "answers" episode. Director Steph Green and the script from Damon Lindelof and Carly Wray paints the clearest picture yet of just what the hell type of nefarious goings-on are afoot in Tulsa, and they do so, appropriately, by turning the show's focus to someone who knows a little somethin' about the truth: Tim Blake Nelson's Looking Glass, a.k.a. Wade Tillman, a.a.k.a "Mirror Guy" if you're a charmingly dickish FBI agent.

"Little Fear of Lightning"—part of a quote from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the godfather of literature's Giant Squid Monster genre—revealed that Wade was across the Hudson River on November 2, 1985, the night Adrian Veidt dropped his inter-dimensional monstrosity on New York, killing roughly 3 million people and saving the world from nuclear war. Wade was just a young Bible-thumper from Tulsa at the time, visiting Hoboken to tell the youths that if you stop smoking dope you get to play with panda bears in the afterlife (genuinely tempting!) when the squid hit. That goo-ey blood-soaked catastrophe effed the future vigilante right the hell up, dooming him to a life of constant paranoia, lonely baked bean dinners, and literally wrapping his head in tinfoil to ward off the hypothetical arrival of another inter-dimensional creature. Speaking as someone who also went to Catholic school, this all tracks more than you'd think.

You certainly have questions. I for sure have questions. Let's dive in...

What's the Whole Deal With the Squid and the E.D.S. and the Reflectatine?

As we've discussed many a time before, in 1985 Adrien Veidt staved off nuclear war by distracting the world with the biggest, slimiest hoax in history. But what this episode does so effectively is build an entire timeline from the story Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons laid out in the comics. I fully believe that, given enough time, the world would straight up get over a massive squid alien landing in Manhattan. Human nature has built up an immunity to Weird Shit. Ben Affleck tweeted #ReleaseTheSnyderCut like two hours before I wrote this and it barely registered, and that's like at least 1/4 of an alien squid monster on the strangeness scale. But of course, Adrian Veidt planned for this; the "psychic blast" let off by the beast not only shocked the world but scrambled a generation's minds. No matter what noted American hero Michael Imperioli says about the quality of the city's scungilli, nobody is returning to New York because millions of people are living with permanent scars inside their heads. (Talking to Collider, Damon Lindelof called it "Post Traumatic Squid Disorder", which is funnier than anything I could ever imagine.)

We get a deeply depressing look into that life through Wade, who has devoted himself entirely to making sure whatever psychic nonsense went on in his head on 11/2 never happens again. His house is outfitted with emergency systems from Extra Dimensional Security and he's running test drills down in his paranoia bunker way more than the recommended amount. As you can see by the degree on Wade's wall, he's certified in "Extraterrestrial Squid Science", which, compared to our reality, is kind've like going to college to study the Loch Ness Monster. Every Tuesday, Wade hosts a support group, "Extra-Dimensional Anxiety and You", where he tries to tell survivors there is an end to their tunnel of suffering, as if he doesn't know the tagline to this show is "Nothing. Ever. Ends." And, saddest of all, Wade liberally uses something called Reflectatine—a shiny material sold by E.D.S. to allegedly ward off squid-like psychic intrusions—to craft both his vigilante mask and a hat he can wear for everyday use.

The extremely sad kicker, of course, is that Wade's life is built on a lie. He's been existing in a constant state of fear for his entire adult life because a megalomaniac in a purple cape pulled off the biggest mindfreak of all time. Tim Blake Nelson, always fantastic, sells the crap out of Wade's loneliness; there are hours and hours spent in an empty house hanging over his quiet delivery of "I have no friends." In all likelihood, Wade's obsession cost him his marriage to Cynthia Bennett. (Although, honestly, I probably would've split when I learned my partner's job involved casually putting perfectly good dogs into the failure drawer.) Plus, you have the small, subtle, crushing note at the end of the episode that is Wade digging his E.D.S alarm from the garbage, even after learning the truth.

 

Why Is the Seventh Kavalry Opening Portals?

In perhaps the least shocking news of all time, Joe Keane Jr. (James Wolk), he of the "oh me oh my do help" attempted kidnapping two weeks ago, is actually leading the Seventh Kavalry. According to him, Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) was playing a similar game as police chief, keeping the cops and the white supremacist organization apart as some form of peace. (We did learn from the Peteypedia that Crawford's dad and Keane's dad were tight back in the day, galavanting around being racist as hell and such.) What actually is surprising is that the Kavalry has constructed a teleportation device similar to the one Veidt used to transport his beastie into New York, which itself was based on Doctor Manhattan's teleportation powers. This most likely explains why the Kavalry was collecting those lithium batteries, which the comics established were charged with that sweet Manhattan juice. (It's only a coincidence that "Charged With That Sweet Manhattan Juice" is the marketing copy on Laurie Blake's sex toy.)

To be more specific, the device is a CX924 Teleportation Window, the scientific term for "some Stargate-looking thing." It obviously works—those basketballs randomly dropping into Wade and Keane's conversation is some masterful tension-building—but to what end? Apparently, not dropping another fake monster on to downtown Tulsa. "Where's the originality in that? We're gonna' do something new", Keane tells Wade, because history has shown that white supremacist organizations won't touch an evil scheme if it could be considered derivative.

Pretty Freaking Dumb of Adrian Veidt to Film This Whole Thing, Huh?

Yeah I'm gonna' go out on a limb and say Veidt probably could've explained this to Robert Redford in person. A general rule of thumb with super-villainery is if you're going to pull off a mind-bogglingly complex hoax that kills millions of people you don't explain your guilt in great detail on camera and then allow the video to exist for 30 years.

But, on the other hand, this is...extremely on-brand for Adrian Veidt. He actually is "The Smartest Man in the World" but his narcissistic streak is as long and plain to see as Doctor Manhattan's dong. My dude would 100% want to call his shot as publicly as possible. He probably did like 30 takes just to sound as responsible for genocide as possible. Look at his hair. It's immaculate. The fact that Adrian Veidt couldn't tell the world what he did probably ate his ass up, which is also probably why he is, um, wherever he is.

But Seriously Where Is Adrian Veidt?

Uh, NOT Mars, as I've been assuming for a few weeks now. "Little Fear of Lightning" sees Veidt—dressed in a spacesuit that he apparently hunted the local gorilla population to construct—successfully catapulting himself out of his simulated prison estate and into outer space, landing on a decidedly not-Mars surface. If it was Mars the surface would be redder and also Taylor Kitsch would be there. It actually looks like it's adjacent to a planet, honestly, a big brown-ish one, suggesting that he's actually on a moon. Unfortunately, there are 213 moons in our solar system, so picking at random is as good a guess as any. I'm putting money on Fornjot, one of Saturn's 82 moons, because it sounds like the name of a friendly frost giant in a Taika Waititi Thor movie.

Either way, Veidt gets to work spelling out "Save Me" using the many, many discarded corpses of past Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks, finishing just in time for a passing satellite to snap a photo before he's yanked back to prison. Which is where things get really interesting. The mysterious Game Warden is back, dressed like the Green Hornet on a jaunty safari trip, and both he and Veidt make reference to the "god" who created this space. “Our god has left us and it is unlikely he’ll return," the Warden says.

That "he" shoots the shit out of the idea that Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) is responsible for Veidt's predicament—I was going off the fact she seems pretty good at cooking up human life—and snaps Doctor Manhattan back into the likely culprit category. At the end of the comics, Manhattan pretty clearly tells Veidt he's off to create life for the lols of it. Nobody knows where the hell that big blue sonuvabitch is nowadays, so we're left pondering a situation where Doctor Manhattan abra-kadabra'd an entire civilization into existence out in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, stuck his greatest enemy in the middle of it, and then sort of got bored with the whole endeavor. This makes sense, because getting bored on a cosmic scale is Doctor Manhattan's whole thing.

Is Looking Glass a Goner?

In my admittedly limited experience, masked men don't jump out of a van and charge into your garage with shotguns because it's your turn to host Settlers of Catan. The fact that the Kavalry rolled up on Wade's house White Night style does not bode well for Looking Glass. It goes back to the whole thing about Veidt filming his confession. The fact that a secret involving a fake squid monster has stayed hidden for three decades is nothing short of a miracle, and you have to imagine keeping it that way has involved more than a few late-night visits from the uh-oh brigade.

But I'm also a big believer in "No Body, No Death" when it comes to TV shows. Especially on HBO. I'm fully aware that the Great Jon Snow Debacle of 2015-16 may have permanently broken my brain. Game of Thrones is MY inter-dimensional squid and the reason I meet with a support group every Tuesday. “We know there are other prestige HBO dramas than this one. But this is the prestige HBO drama we are watching and we will not live in fear."

What Is Angela Abar Going to See Thanks to Those Pills?

In-between unceremonious acts of puppy clone murder, Cynthia Bennett explains to Wade that the pills left behind by Will Reeves in Angela's car are called "Nostalgia", memories in pill form that were found to cause psychosis in people who took them. To put it a shorter way: Angela about to trip absolute balls.

Absolutely worth noting that "Nostalgia" is also the name of the Veidt-branded cologne that weaves its way through the background of the comics. Assumedly, Trieu Industries inherited the brand when it absorbed Veidt Enterprises, which suggests "Nostalgia" is also what's pumping into Trieu' daughter while she sleeps, for some reason. (You might remember Trieu's daughter recounting horrific, highly specific nightmare-memories and Lady Trieu responding, like, "tight.")

So! Assuming those are Will Reeves' memories inside that bottle, Angela is about to learn some truths about her grandfather, which means we are finally going to learn this guy's identity. Is he Doctor Manhattan in disguise? Is he Hooded Justice, as Collider's Matt Golberg boldly claimed? Is he legit just a 100-year-old former cop who lifted a grown-ass man into a tree? Is he...none of those things?

I legit cannot even begin to make a suggestion, but I do want to point out a throwaway exchange from this episode I found really interesting. It's between Red Scare (Andrew Howard) and Panda (Jacob Ming-Trent) discussing American Hero Story: Minutemen.

Red Scare: “Bullshit, Hooded Justice was around in 40s, Doctor Manhattan didn’t exist until l1960.”

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Panda: “So what? He could time travel…I watched every episode and Hooded Justice was Doctor Manhattan.”

It's not at all what they're saying, but just...the way this discussion is framed. They sound like theorists. They sound like the internet. They sound like, uh, me, every week in this space. They sound like two people trying to solve a show and sounding ridiculous. Also important to remember: In the context of Watchmen, Red Scare and Panda are both dumb as shit. Red Scare is out here making sandwiches with murder lettuce. Panda, in a world where people must wear masks to protect themselves from targeted murder, chose half a panda mascot head. In just 20-ish seconds, Watchmen put the type of breathless predictions that we (see: I) love to pour over into the mouths of two dumb-dumbs.

Basically, what I'm saying, is that the only expectation I have going forward is the up-ending of expectations. Who is Will Reeves? I have a feeling the answer won't be as simple as 1 + 1 = blue.