Conclusion to Watchmen, Episode 8: The most important question from Doctor Manhattan, answered

Who is Doctor Manhattan?

More than any other figure in Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan feels more like a way to convey a point of view than a person. His main theme in the comic “watchmaker” effectively communicates how he experiences the vastness of time, but it is still difficult to imagine what it must be like to be a Doctor Manhattan. He is a person who does not experience the world as one person – or at least far enough from the experience of another, that his inner life seems almost incomprehensible. How does he see the world? What is it like to be him?

Watchmen, the TV show, tries to answer (understand?) These questions in “A God’s Going in Abar”, whereby Jon Osterman is basically considered human. The results are equally exciting and deeply frustrating.

The development of Jon’s comic life after the guards is more or less clear: after leaving the world, Doctor Manhattan does not go to another galaxy, but to Europe, where he tries, with Crookshanks and Philips, people he owns gave life to creating a perfect world Based on some English nobles, he saw bones. In 2009, he returns to Earth to go to a bar in Saigon to record his relationship with Angela Abar. Thanks to a tachyon lacing device developed by Adrian Veidt, he is Calvin for ten years and can not remember his former life. And after a short stay at the house in Tulsa, he is captured by the Seventh Cavalry.

Watchmen was ambitious and potentially very stupid in his creative work. Transforming Doctor Manhattan into an Amnesian black man is nothing if not ambitious and possibly very stupid.

I appreciate that Damon Lindelof revived Jon Osterman’s primary motivation. He is, as he was in the book, an incredibly horny man who is unable to really emotionally deal with anyone. Which is to say, a man. And Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is consistently excellent, presenting a version of Jon that is distanced and disarmingly charming, something that Jon encounters less in his person than in the slightly amused tone in which he says it. (Clearly speaking to Abdul-Mateen in front of Calvin Jon is a bit disturbing, but I think that’s how, if he keeps Calvin’s shape, after he’s been broken into two pieces, basically practical. Anyway, let us At moments when Jon laughs, Whether there are coincidences between two of his experiences or Angela’s sense of humor, we know what she sees in him.

Abdul-Mateen’s performance provides a revealing contrast to Nicole Kassell’s direction, which makes it very hard to keep Jon out of our sight – out of focus, hidden behind a glass or mask, head out of the picture – until he becomes Cal. In effect, unlike the rare scenes in which we see him as a classical Doctor of Manhattan (ie Bringing Life to Europe), it gives a sense of Jon’s experience of capturing the great and the small in equal measure. But the most important thing he can relate to is not Europe. It is Angela.

Regina King is great in this episode, especially as a (relative) newcomer who responds to Jon’s presence. Nevertheless, Angela’s actions are still a bit empty in the middle of the season. It’s fun to see her being so quiet and funny when faced with Doctor Manhattan – at least when she starts to believe him – and King and Abdul-Mateen have great chemistry. Still, I’m not sure why she’s in this relationship. They talk pleasantly and maybe have dinner the next evening. Two weeks later, she storms into a morgue to look for people he can fake. Does that sound like the Angela we know? Worse, Jon’s presence continues the flattening of Angela’s backstory, which happened in “An Almost Religious Awe.” From his point of view, and now in our view, it looks like a billiard ball that moves in a predetermined arc, based on the way it was beaten. One choice, the King in his performance and the complexity of the Angela that we have seen so far, does not do it justice.

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There are some really awesome moments in “A God Walks Into Abar,” but Angela’s actions encounter her major flaw: The episode mechanically fills in holes from previous seasons and tries to give answers if the premise of Doctor Manhattan – and Damon Lindelof’s entire career – suggests that it would be artistically more satisfying to throw away a few additional questions. Take the moment when Adrian Veidt casually surmises that Jon can use his powers in “life-threatening situations” even after his incarnation. It’s certainly the hardest thing Watchmen wrote, which existed all season long, to prepare for the moment when we find out that Jon rescued Angela from the cavalry, when it would have been much easier just to watch trust that this happened.

In the penultimate hour we also learn where Adrian Veidt has been all the time. He is in Europe, where he was originally supposed to be the leader of the new society that Jon built. He was never in prison; It should be a paradise. I think their scene together is the climax of the episode, not just because of Jeremy Irons’ hairstyle (which is good) or because of a joke about appropriation (which is bad but still very funny when Jeremy Irons says it with these hairstyles). This is because Doctor Manhattan recognizes one of his limitations: he disagrees on how he could do anything different than was previously planned – let’s say, Calvinist -.

Is Doctor Manhattan really unable to change the world, or does it just feel that way? The Guardian’s book does an excellent job of bringing the answer to a knife-edge. You might feel Jon is too distant and too nihilistic to do anything, or you might think that all his knowledge about the future looks like a set of Dune-style shackles. Watchers of the TV show suggest that the answer is both at the same time. Jon sees the path ahead of him – really all around him. He just never had the imagination to figure out how to do that.

This tension comes to a head at the end of the episode when Doctor Manhattan is captured and apparently about to be destroyed. In some ways, the conclusion is absurd – Doctor Manhattan is basically a god, and the idea that some racists with guns could kill him is illogical. But Abdul-Mateen’s performance suggests that Jon follows the plan for the most part because he thinks (knows?) What’s going to happen. Even in the last confrontation in which he actually does Doctor Manhattan things (blowing up white Supremacists, stopping bullets), he really only prevents Angela from being shot before he goes over to his predestined captivity.

How does it end? Aside from the obvious question, who will be the new god of this world if Jon is likely to be killed? – We need to find some answers to questions about the Seventh Cavalry, Lady Trieu’s real plans, her father’s identity, and most importantly, the identity of Lube Guy. (Oh, in addition, Veidt acquires another horseshoe in a sequence after the credits, with which he apparently begins to free himself from captivity.)

Like a carefully crafted clock, the moving parts and gears of the guards lock in and form a single machine. I only wish there were a few more parts that were only there to be beautiful.