Everything you need to know from the comic after Episode 2

The second chapter of HBO’s Watchmen has arrived, and with it comes a whole new set of revelations that link the show back to the comics.

I’ve seen most of the season already and am here to fill in the blanks. The idea isn’t to leave you with spoiler-y details that the show will get into further down the line, but rather to give you the context you need so you can better understand what just happened. 

If you’ve never read the comics and don’t plan to soon, but you still want to keep up with HBO’s Watchmen, keep reading.

New Frontiersman and “Keene”

Early in the episode there’s a scene that unfolds at a newsstand where a young girl buys a stack of newspapers for someone we never meet. Be patient on that count; answers are coming soon. For now, let’s talk about the one newspaper we get a clear look at.

You might recall me mentioning the New Frontiersman newspaper in the “comic questions answered” breakdown following the premiere. It’s the right-wing newspaper that received and eventually published Rorschach’s journal, the writings that form the basis of the Seventh Kavalry’s ideology.

New Frontiersman continues to be a presence in the world of HBO’s Watchmen.

There’s not much more to the reference than that at this point. New Frontiersman continues to be a presence in the world of HBO’s Watchmen. The page one headline we see – “Global squidfalls baffle scientists” – firmly establishes that the premiere episode’s squidfall was no isolated incident. 

The subsequent conversation between the newsstand proprietor and the man delivering papers spells out the fact that even 30-plus years after the big squid crushed Manhattan, people still harbor heavy doubts about the cause of these mysterious events. If we read the two men, both of them black, as everyday Americans, the doubts stem from an overall lack of trust in both the conservative and liberal wings of the U.S. government.

The newsstand proprietor is no fan of President Robert Redford and his so-called “Libstapo” (wow), but he’s also very much against Redford’s election opponent, a man he identifies only as “Keene.” We haven’t met the man he’s referring to, but the scene all but confirms that Redford’s opponent is the son of the (presumably former) Senator, John David Keene.

He’s the lawmaker who was responsible for the Keene Act of 1977, the federal law passed before the events of the comic that outlawed masked vigilantism. The younger Keene is described as a “clone” of his dad. (He’s probably not an actual clone, but given the Adrian Veidt revelations that surface later in the episode, who really knows?

American Hero Story and Hooded Justice

The fake American Hero Story TV series appeared yet again in Episode 2, and the way it’s introduced made a few things clear. First, this show, a work of historical fiction that looks at masked vigilantes from the past, is a big deal. It’s appointment viewing TV for everyone, from little kids to full-blown racists. It’s also apparently brutal enough to merit an FCC warning that the show could be “emotionally harmful.”

The episode we see introduces a masked vigilante called Hooded Justice, who you might have spotted in the American Hero Story credits sequence from the series premiere. His purple-and-red costume is accentuated by a noose looped around his neck, ropes around his wrists and waist, and a face-concealing mask that almost resembles a KKK hood.

The voiceover during that sequence suggests the hooded man is a former circus strongman named Rolf Müller. We learn that he’s been filled with rage since he was a child, and that he may have faked his own death and started wearing a costume because he “never felt comfortable in [his] own skin.”

The background laid out in American Hero Story tracks with the little we know of Hooded Justice from the comics – sort of. But there’s more to this story. In the comics, Müller was a circus strongman in pre-World War II Germany, as well as a serial killer who targeted children.

Müller apparently fled from his home before the war broke out. He ended up in America, where he signed on with a circus and continued his work as both a strongman and a child killer. He was at one point believed to be the man under the Hooded Justice mask, but the Before Watchmen prequel series made it clear that this is false. He was a killer who was eventually strangled by the Comedian, the government-sanctioned vigilante who’s murdered in the opening pages of the original comic.

It’s extremely notable that the pop culture take on Hooded Justice lines up with the false Müller narrative. Whoever’s telling these American Hero Story tales is either relying on an incomplete picture or perhaps intentionally steering the fictional reality away from the actual truth.

Which it is remains to be seen, but there’s a lot more significance to the introduction of Hooded Justice than might be apparent to people who aren’t familiar with the comics.

“The Watchmaker’s Son” and Adrian Veidt

The mystery surrounding where Adrian Veidt is and why doesn’t get much clearer in Episode 2. But his little one-act play and the circumstances surrounding it are… enlightening.

The watchmaker’s son is, of course, Jon Osterman, the human being who was transformed in a freak accident that left him naked, blue-skinned, and imbued with superpowers. The play is a retelling of Doctor Manhattan’s origin and it’s mostly true to the comic.

In the play, Osterman gets locked in a test chamber after he steps in to retrieve a watch that was to be a gift for his romantic partner and fellow researcher, Janey Slater. She’s unable to get the door open again because a test is about to begin, so the two lovers share a final, tender moment through the glass-windowed door before a burst of flame consumes Jon.

But he’s not dead! Moments later, a naked, blue-skinned figure wearing a painted fencing mask descends from the rafters. It’s Jon, but not Jon. This is the moment Doctor Manhattan was born.

Veidt’s version of the story gets the big details right, but that’s not exactly how it all went down in the comics. Janey didn’t stay in the room with Jon; in fact, she ran, despite him begging for her to stay, because she couldn’t bear to watch what would happen after the test chamber locked. There was no tender final moment in reality.

This is the moment Doctor Manhattan was born.

Doctor Manhattan also didn’t emerge right away. Osterman’s physical form was torn apart in the test chamber for his “intrinsic field generator.” His body reformed itself into the blue-skinned being it would become during the months that followed.

There’s some very important subtext here as it relates to Veidt. In the comics, Slater resumes her relationship with Osterman after he returns as a superpowered being. But that relationship crumbles over time, as the transformation pushes Doctor Manhattan further and further away from human concerns. Janey finally leaves him during the late 1960s, takes up smoking, and starts work as a physicist at a Veidt-owned research firm, Dimensional Developments.

Now we need to get into one of the bigger late revelations from the comics: Veidt despises Doctor Manhattan, and actively worked against him as far back as the 1960s. By the time of the comics, Janey has developed cancer. It’s suggested that her connection to Doctor Manhattan and the radiation he supposedly emits is the cause.

That’s not what really happened, however. Janey is one of a number of former Doctor Manhattan associates who worked at Dimensional Developments. Her cancer actually came from medicinal cigarettes that Veidt himself sent, ostensibly to help her with respiratory health issues. It was part of a larger plot to discredit Doctor Manhattan and turn him into a pariah.

Why Veidt would stage a play recounting Osterman’s death and rebirth remains unclear. He wasn’t there in the room when the testing accident occurred. He doesn’t have much of a connection to Slater beyond the cancer scheme. Staging “The Watchmaker’s Son” just leaves him with a pile of clone bodies – it’s not clear if they’re clones, really, but we’ll go with that for now – in his basement.

It’s clear he has plans, though. Stay tuned. More to come.