Stately Tony and Oscar-winning thespian Jeremy Irons just ripped an uncomfortably long fart in an extravagant purple cape before being sentenced to death by a screaming horde of pigs and it's probably like, the eighth or ninth most important thing to discuss from Watchmen episode 7, "An Almost Religious Awe."

Obviously, the big reveal of this absolutely bananagrams, brilliant episode—directed by David Semel, written by Stacy Osei-Kuffour and Claire Kiechel—is that Cal Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) has been Doctor freaking Manhattan this entire time. There's probably about a thousand and one reasons we could have seen this coming, including that one time at the breakfast table when Cal calmly explained to his daughter that there is no God. That's a Manhattan-ass move if I've ever seen one. Pancakes and French toast contain the same amount of particles, after all. Structurally, there's no discernible difference.

But, no, this is still a straight-up jarring reveal, in an episode that was chock full of jarring reveals. We've got a pretty clear idea of the Joe Keene Jr's (James Wolk) plan. We've got Angela Abar (Regina King) We've got Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) tied up in a basement. We've got a random elephant (random elephant) working as a memory doctor.

You for sure have questions. I definitely have some questions. Let's get into it...

So! Cal Abar Is Doctor Manhattan?

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Image via HBO

It certainly looks that way, because unless I was woefully misled by the film You Were Never Really Here, bashing a normal man's brains in with a hammer does not make him glow blue. Here's the story of Angela and "Cal", from what we've been shown so far: Angela met Doctor Manhattan in Vietnam, presumably after the universe stopped taking regular dumps on her head by horrifically killing her family members at the most inopportune times. Manhattan inserted something into his cranium—it resembles the symbol from the comics that he burned into his forehead to own some studio suits—that not only transformed him from a jacked sexy blue man to a jacked sexy black man, but erased all his Manhattan memories. The cover story that Angela then ran with is that a car accident wiped all of Cal's memories from like, the entire time before he was 30, which is...genuinely insane and falls apart under the slimmest scrutiny, probably why it was described in only the vaguest terms until this episode.

Either way! Like most revelations on Watchmen, this answer raises about a dozen new avenues of questions. For one: How does one enter into a loving relationship with a glowing blue deity who spent a large portion of his life in outer space? Even baffling than that: Why would Doctor Manhattan be interested in the first place? That's not a knock on Angela Abar. Doctor Manhattan's entire schtick is that he doesn't...feel...anything? His arc in the comics ended with him effing off into the cosmos to create his own universe just to get the old tingle back again. My dude had erectile dysfunction but for recognizing living organisms as something worth his attention. The White Night was three years before the events of HBO's Watchmen, so sometime between 1985 and 2016, Manhattan returned to Earth and found a woman he'd give up everything for, including omnipotence.

A third Manhattan-focused question:

Could Doctor Manhattan's Transformation Into Cal Be the Reason For All This Nonsense?

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Image via HBO

Adrian Veidt's entire situation up there on the Jupiter moon Europa has officially—if you'll allow me to finally cut loose and engage in a "bit"—gone hog wild. We're about seven years into Veidt's imprisonment and things have gone completely off the rails. The "Smartest Man in the World" is in full vigilante costume for a trial being presided over by an army of clones, judged by another clone in a jaunty safari mask, and ultimately decided by a squad of pigs. It's nonsense all the way down on Europa. It's pandamonium to the tune of Ozymandias' flatulent Ozymandi-ass. To sum it all up:

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Image via NBC

But is it all Angela's fault?

Maybe, kind of. Last week's episode confirmed that whoever it was that created this strange prison on Europa, he abandoned his handiwork. If we run with the all-but-confirmed idea that it was Doctor Manhattan—even the end to the comics support it—then he didn't exactly just run out for a pack of smokes and never come back. He's been on Earth, living domestic bliss in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not even aware he left a clan of clones in outer space to look after the biggest mass-murderer of all time. That hypothetical situation is...hilarious. Objectively hilarious. It's "getting too high and forgetting that you left the stove on" to a cosmic, incomprehensible degree.

What Is the Seventh Kavalry's Plan?

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Image via HBO

It is extremely difficult to be a white man in America right now. So I’m thinking, I might try being a blue one.

Woof. Just a giant, respect-filled shout-out to Watchmen for using an already-iconic story and sci-fi storytelling to craft the most 2019 story of all time. Ask anyone who's ever made a Youtube video about The Last Jedi's plotholes that runs longer than 26 minutes: There is a prevailing idea among the worst corners of the internet that, in Joe Keene Jr's own words, "the scales have tipped way too far" against white dudes. These kinds of people usually find role models in all the wrong places. In people like Rorschach, for example, an unhinged, Joker-adjacent anti-hero who used words like "society" to hide the fact he was angry at everyone. Or, say, Doctor Manhattan, a completely ordinary dude who, when it comes down to it, pretty much "lucked" into the powers of a god. (This is also the origin story for like 90% of the MCU and you can do with that what you will.)

It appears that the Seventh Kavalry messed around and created the same machine that zapped average scientist Jon Osterman into the godlike Doctor Manhattan. According to Lady Trieu (Hong Chau), the only missing ingredient is the OG Manhattan himself. "They’re going to destroy him and then they’re going to become him," Trieu tells Angela. There's no historical precedent for gifting a white supremacist organization with the power to create and destroy matter at will, but as someone who has at least read the Watchmen comic and watched these episodes pretty closely, I can go out on a limb and guess that would be Bad.

Is The Comedian Lady Trieu's Father?

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Image via HBO

Bear with me. Lady Trieu's revelation that her daughter Bian (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) is actually a clone of her mother being slowly injected with her own memories is kind of distracting. So you might have missed this quick, extremely ominous exchange between Trieu and Angela about turning on the Millennium Clock.

Trieu: I'm on the verge of completing my life's work. Is it wrong to want my parents with me when I do?

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Angela: Your dad's here, too?

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Trieu [the shadiest, most foreshadowing-heavy tone humanly possible]: He will be.

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Image via DC Comics

How could that possibly point to The Comedian? Well, the memories being force-fed into Bian's are all fire-filled, horrific, and set in Vietnam. The parts of the source material that are most fire-filled, horrific, and set in Vietnam mostly revolve around the mayhem Edward Blake caused during the Vietnam War. More importantly, the child Blake reared during the Vietnam War. In one of the many examples of Blake being history's #1 Asshole, a pregnant woman confronts the Comedian just as the war is ending. When he turns her away, the woman slashes his face with a broken bottle, to which Blake responds by shooting her in the chest. The last we see of the poor woman, Doctor Manhattan is looking down at her body with the thinkey-emoji on his face. Unfortunately, with Doctor Manhattan, that look could either mean he's thinking about resurrecting this woman from the dead so she can be part of a twist on an HBO series three decades later, or he's pondering completely unrelated events happening on like, Saturn.

So, it's a stretch, but the show's companion material itself has floated the possibility. A newspaper profile of Lady Trieu compiled in the Peteypedia ultimately deems the rumor FICTION, but also specifically notes that The Comedian encountered Bian in Vietnam. Via a Trieu spokesperson: "Bian My did have one unforgettable encounter with Mr. Blake. In 1971, Mr. Blake and his battalion of ‘Blazin’ Commandos’ passed through her village outside My Lai. Their uniquely warm demeanor made quite an impression on her.”

Part of me thinks this would be too far on to the Lost island, even for the source material-obsessed Lindelof, and especially when you consider it would also involve somehow bringing Edward Blake back to life. (His death is kind of the whole reason Watchmen happens in the first place. But then I remember that this show stuck Doctor Manhattan in plain site for seven straight episodes and gave him the same name as Superman the whole time and realize nothing is off the table.

Where Is Wade Tillman?

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Image via HBO

Folks, please believe when I tell you I cheered out loud when this episode revealed Wade Tillman (Tim Blake Nelson) violently owned all four Seventh Kavalry members who came to kill him. Looking Glass' whereabouts are currently unknown. "A Kind of Religious Awe" set the table for a Trieu/Reeves vs. Seventh Kavalry showdown, but think about what a wild card Wade is running around on his own. My dude knows:

A) The truth about the biggest hoax in history, which would turn 30 years of tentative peace between world powers on its head.

B) The nitty-gritty details of the Seventh Kavalry's plan to create a new crew of Doctor Manhattans, which he probably didn't love but he did immediately betray Angela after hearing it.

Plus, he's obviously angry, according to the pile of corpses left in his paranoia bunker. These remaining few chapters are going to be wild. Just a few hours until we turn on the Millennium Clock, folks, and only two episodes left overall. Lotta' ground to cover. We don't even know the identity of the Lube Man. Remember the Lube Man? Yeesh. At least we know that no matter how tangled this vast conspiracy becomes, the Lube Man will have no problem fitting in somewhere.