Much like the impressively un-shrunken schlong of Doctor Manhattan, the secrets of Watchmen are being revealed for all to see, apparently immune to the Arctic cold and only growing larger the more freely they swing about in this penultimate episode's breeze. The wonderfully pun-titled "A God Walks Into Abar"—directed by Nicole Kassell, written by Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen—explained just how, exactly, the most powerful man in existence ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a memory-wiping device in his forehead and a vigilante wife at the center of a white supremacist organization's plot to rule the world.

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Image via HBO

It also did exactly as advertised; Doctor Manhattan descends from outer space and literally walks into a bar. It's V.V.N. Day in Vietnam, and police officer Angela Abar (Regina King) drinks alone to celebrate the anniversary of her parents' untimely death. From there, we learn the entire doomed history of these two star-crossed lovers. We see Angela's extremely reasonable skepticism that the blue stranger in the blue mask is the real doctor Manhattan; the whirlwind seduction that has her picking an identity off the corpse pile two weeks later so Manhattan can adopt the persona of "Calvin Abar"; the tension that comes with dating a man who can't kiss or dance or cuddle or make love without also simultaneously living through the gnarliest poops he's ever taken. (This is not stated specifically but it's also all I can think about, I'm sorry, I am so sorry.) We also learn that it was Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons)—living a solitary life in Karnak, presumably alone with his life choices + 30,000 bottles of Just for Men - Blonde—who designed the device that robbed Manhattan of his memories, leaving Big Blue free to live out a ticking time-bomb relationship with Angela on a fast-track to sweet, disastrous inevitability. "Ten years and then tragedy, huh?" Angela asks "Cal", her tone sounding like that irrational voice in your head that tells you to click on the weird spammy porn, even though you know, by definition, all weird spammy porn ends in tragedy.

This particular tragedy comes in 2019, in the form of a few racists in Rorschach masks wielding a whole-ass Tachyonic Cannon in the back of a 2003 Ford pick-up truck. Angela does her gun-wielding damndest to save her husband's life—he chips in with a few skull-pops, eventually—but there's no fighting what's already in the cards. The second to last episode of Watchmen's first (and only?) season ends with The Seventh Kavalry transporting Doctor Manhattan to Joe Keene Jr.'s (James Wolk) mysterious god-killing lair.

A lot going on, folks. I've certainly got questions. You most definitely have some questions. Let's get into it...

Who Is Doctor Manhattan, Really?

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Image via HBO

Doctor Manhattan's "origin story" issue in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' source material is one of the most beautiful, surreal tales ever told in comics. But I do dare declare that "A God Walks Into Abar" does a better job of explaining what it's like to be Doctor Manhattan, a man who exists in every second, all at once.

Essentially, Doctor Manhattan is Jon Osterman ("no H"), a nuclear physicist who left his girlfriend Janey Slater's watch in an intrinsic field generator like an absolute goofus and got every molecule in his body vaporized while trying to retrieve it. Jon pieced his entire being back together one part at a time, returning to the physical realm as a glowing blue god with the ability to shape matter to his will. It's never quite explained why the whole process resulted in the all-powerful, omniscient "Doctor Manhattan" and not, like, Jon Osterman the Horrific Screaming Skeleton Man Whose Guts Are On The Outside, but here we are.

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Image via DC Comics

The other important thing to keep in mind before we move in is the fact Doctor Manhattan, tragic a figure though he is, has always been kind of a dick. The dude was at the meeting of super-team The Crimebusters for like ten seconds before making eyes at a sixteen-year-old Laurie Blake, dropping Janey Slater like a bad habit soon afterward. (You may recall the ensuing relationship effed Laurie up so badly she's carrying around a quadruple-sized replica of Doctor Manhattan's penis 45 years later.) Throughout Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan's lack of human empathy develops into a full-blown god complex. This is a guy who left Earth not because he didn't like humans, per se, but because he'd come to view humans as a particularly bored scientist views his fourth microbe of the day.

Which brings us to "A God Walks Into Abar", which simultaneously paints Doctor Manhattan as far more tragic but, yupp, kind of even more of a dick. He created life with a wave of his hand, turning Europa—which, as my dear colleague and fellow Watchmen sleuth Haleigh Foutch pointed out to me, is a moon of JUPITER, a.k.a Laurie Blake's original surname—into an endless green utopia teeming with living organisms. And then he was like, "okay, and...?" Manhattan just left those people up there! In outer space! Because he was bored with his own creations loving him so hard!

But, damn him and his massive blue head, this episode still made me feel so flippin' bad for Doctor Manhattan. You know those anxiety nights where you randomly remember the time you asked your boss' extremely not-pregnant wife "so when's the baby due?" in stark, vivid detail and it keeps you up until like 4 am? That is Doctor Manhattan's every waking moment. The most jarring exchange in "A God Walks Into Abar" is Angela accusing Manhattan of not feeling fear for all 50 years following his accident, and him calmly responding that he is experiencing that accident over and over again, at all times. Imagine, like, trying to type an e-mail while reliving the moment harsh blue light disintegrated your bones. I can't even listen to loud music when I write. No wonder he can't relate to human beings. He basically lives outside of time, watching events rush past again and again like a passenger standing on a subway platform.

Which is a very long-winded way to get to the real question...

Why Didn't Doctor Manhattan Just Stop the Seventh Kavalry?

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Image via HBO

From episode one, this show has walked a fine line between endearingly puzzle box-y and infuriatingly convenient, and I think audiences might have a hard time wrapping their heads around this one: After it's been firmly established by both comics and show that Doctor Manhattan's powers can be summed up as "lol, uh, everything?", why doesn't he simply vaporize and/or teleport those Seventh Kavalry members into a volcano? But the entire theme of "A God Walks Into Abar" is inevitability, and the way Doctor Manhattan perceives the future as a present certainty. There's a sweet side to it, like the way he feels secure in his love for Angela even though the "moment" doesn't arrive for several years. But there's also this violent ending; Doctor Manhattan let some smalltown goon in a mask shoot him with a laser cannon because, to him, a smalltown goon in a mask has already shot him with a laser cannon. A smalltown goon in a mask has always been shooting him with a laser cannon. It echoes a scene from the comics, one of the earliest indicators that Doctor Manhattan is too spacey for his own good, in which America's superman fails to stop The Comedian from murdering a pregnant Vietnamese woman.

"You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes. You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Austria," The Comedian tells Manhattan. "But you didn't lift a finger."

But there's probably a purpose here, too. Think to what Manhattan says to Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.) in the distant past: “The future is uncertain and my ability to influence events is limited. In order to ensure an optimal outcome, I would like to form an alliance.”

Because the Marvel executives that secretly pay for my positive coverage have been getting antsy, let's talk real quick about Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Remember when Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) saw fourteen million, six hundred and five versions of the upcoming conflict and needed to let half of all living life die to ensure the, to a phrase, "optimal outcome"? That is essentially what Doctor Manhattan is doing. These two enragingly obtuse doctors both got their PhDs at The School of Withholding Exposition.

Speaking of!

Why Does Doctor Manhattan Need Angela to See Him Walking on the Pool?

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Image via HBO

First of all, Regina King yelling at an all-powerful superman to "get the fuck up off the pool" is objectively the best TV moment of the year and, honestly, the decade. Second of all, Doctor Manhattan saying "I'm hungry" and disappearing in the middle of an argument with his significant other is the first time I've ever understood God, and I went to Catholic school for 12 years. Third of all, this brief line from Manhattan to Angela is almost certainly worth remembering: "You need to see me on the pool. It's important for later."

I managed to deduce that this will be important for later because of the part where he says "it's important for later." But why? Shot in the dark, I'd say it will play into another seemingly random throwaway line: Manhattan's brief explanation of how he could, hypothetically, transfer his powers to another person. Now, a finale in which Angela just literally becomes a new Doctor Manhattan would be...way too cute. Too tidy. Too normal for a show this purposely wonky. But at some point, it's going to be very important for someone to believe. There's a reason that the still-skeptical Angela asks Manhattan barely five minutes into this episode, "Wait, you walk on water?”

Who Is Adrian Veidt's "Little Elephant"?

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Image via HBO

The wonderful reunion between Adrian Veidt and Doctor Manhattan offered a few confirmations on theories that have been floating around since episode 1. Yes, Ozymandias is still occasionally dropping squid-rain on to Earth as a way to keep his world-saving hoax alive. Yes, it was Doctor Manhattan who sent Veidt to that strange, distant villa, but no, it's not a prison; it's a gift for Adrian, who can't stand living among a populace that wasn't bred to rub down his shockingly toned thighs. But here's the strange kicker: Veidt was completely aware that Manhattan was on Europa, because, in his words, "a little elephant told me."

Now, a lot of things happen every week on this show—a flying magnet lifting a car into the night sky feels like it happened roughly six years ago—but you may recall that last week's episode featured a literal elephant. It was snoozing in Lady Trieu's (Hong Chau) headquarters, helping Angela get over her Nostalgia overdose. It was adorable. I'm so mad it wasn't wearing elephant-sized scrubs. Either way, I'm almost certain Veidt's "little elephant" is Trieu herself, who is shaping up to be the biggest wild card in the deck. After eight episodes we still don't really know anything about her other than A) She bought the crap out of Veidt's entire company, B) She is currently cloning her own mother, C) She is building a massive clock that's going to save the world, and D) She knows a whole lot about what Doctor Manhattan has been up to since 1985.

(I, personally, am still convinced that E) She is The Comedian's daughter, just FYI)

What Is Happening With Adrian Veidt on Europa?

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Image via HBO

Some very important things to point out during Watchmen's first-ever after-credits scene. First! The book Adrian Veidt is reading in his cell is Fogdancing, a fictional in-universe novel written by Max Shea. In the comics, Shea was one of several artists hired by Veidt to design his giant squid-monster under the guise of making a movie; when the project was done, Veidt killed them all to keep his secret safe. (Another one of these artists was J.T. March III, a filmmaker who adapted Fogdancing into a movie; in the world of the HBO series, March's grandson is the showrunner of American Hero Story: Minutemen. World-building!) According to the Peteypedia, Fogdancing was particularly popular among vigilantes, including Doctor Manhattan himself, who "was known to randomly quote lines from the text." In a genuinely shocking development, the Peteypedia also notes that "nothing ever ends" is a line from that text, suggesting that, yes, Doctor Manhattan plagiarized one of his most iconic lines in the comics.

But, more importantly, let's discuss the horseshoe in the cake. That escape-tool has been weaving its way through Veidt's odd vignettes since the premiere, when Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) errantly handed it to his master to cut a cake. It seems Veidt knew he'd need it eventually; think back to episode 4, when he plucked a horseshoe from a pile of corpses and said, "I don't need it yet." But it's also kind of just heartwarming to know Phillips and Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) would still try and get it to him, even after hours spent smashing tomatoes into their former master's face. The thing that Doctor Manhattan found so unappealing in his creations will be the same thing to save Ozymandias, a devotion that supersedes all betrayals.

Let's talk timeline: If Veidt was sent to Europa in 2009—the marriage between Angela and "Cal" lasted ten years, until 2019—and every time we've seen Veidt this season has been another year gone by—something Lindelof confirmed—then he is escaping here, during episode 8, in 2017. This lines up perfectly with the idea that the mysterious burning object Trieu watched fall out of the sky in episode 4 was, as hypothesized, Veidt's mad-dash return to Earth. Which would also mean the finale has at least one more doozy of a twist: Like Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias has been on Earth this entire time.

Woof. One more episode, and a lot of explainin' to do. Where is Veidt? Is Doctor Manhattan dead or alive? What does the Millennium Clock even do? And, and, AND, by far most urgent:

WHO IS THE MYSTERIOUS LUBE MAN

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Image via HBO

Answer my letters, Lindelof!