Warning: This post contains spoilers for Watchmen.
HBO’s Watchmen TV show tells a separate story from the 1987 graphic novel from which it borrows its name. The graphic novel was set in an alternate version of New York in 1985, at the height of the Reagan era, and dealt with a group of masked men and women trying to figure out who is picking them off one by one. The television series is set in an alternate version of Tulsa in 2019. Everything that happened in the 1985 graphic novel is canon, but the show focuses on totally new characters and a new set of events.
The central character in the show is Angela (Regina King), a policewoman living in Tulsa who — along with her colleagues — was the target of a mass attack several years before by a group called the Seventh Cavalry. The White Supremacist group invaded the homes of police officers on Christmas Eve, killing them and their families.
Angela survived, but in the years since, she and fellow members of law enforcement have been forced to hide their jobs from the public, wearing masks while on duty and resorting to ethically questionable practices when they hunt down, interrogate and capture suspected white supremacists. The tension in the town is informed by the real-life massacre of black business owners and residents in Tulsa in 1921, as depicted in the opening scenes of the series.
While all these characters and elements are new to the show, the series has abundant references to the original story. The white supremacists wear masks inspired by the odious antihero Rorschach from the graphic novel. A character from the original story, Adrian Viedt, shows up midway through the first episode. And the scenes are littered with images of smiley faces and clocks, potent symbols from the original comic. They even may give us a hint of what is to come in the show.
Here are all the Easter eggs and references you may have missed in Watchmen, to be updated after each episode of the show.
Episode 1
Rorschach masks
Rorschach is one of the most controversial “heroes” in the original Watchmen graphic novel — and arguably in all of comics. He lived by a black and white moral code (as reflected on his ever-shifting black and white mask, which resembled a Rorschach Test). But his personal prejudices against women, gay people, people of color and poor people informed that code. What readers thought of his actions proved, itself, to be a Rorschach test for their own personal and political beliefs.
In the television show, a group of white supremacists have adopted Rorschach’s mask and wear it while carrying out acts of terror. There’s a clear visual parallel between the KKK hoods featured in the first scene of the show when white people, including Klan members, massacre a group of black residents and business owners in Tulsa in 1921, and the Rorschach masks that the white supremacists of 2019 wear later in the episode.
They even quote Rorschach in the threatening video they send to the police, though they offer a slightly altered version. Rorschach wrote in his diary in the graphic novel, “all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, ‘Save us!’…and I’ll look down and whisper, ‘No.'” The men in Rorschach masks in the show end their video with the same message, though they change the word “politician” to “race traitors.”
Dr. Manhattan destroying his palace on Mars
The show offers a fleeting shot of a news cast of Doctor Manhattan on Mars. In the graphic novel, Doctor Manhattan — who gained his powers during a radioactive accident — eventually becomes fed up with humanity and banishes himself to the red planet. There, he builds a giant glass clock-like towering structure from sand.
Eventually, he and his girlfriend, Silk Spectre, debate whether Doctor Manhattan should return to Earth to protect humanity. During the conversation, Silk Spectre becomes frustrated with the fact that Doctor Manhattan can see all of time at once and thus predict everything she will do or say. (Everything is preordained.) As they discuss the past, Silk Spectre realizes her father is another masked fighter, The Comedian, and that she was conceived when he raped her mother. In anger, she throws something at the wall and the entire structure collapses. It is at this point that Doctor Manhattan decides to help humanity, citing the extraordinary series of coincidences that had to happen to lead to Silk Spectre’s birth.
It seems that in the television show Doctor Manhattan has returned to Mars and the U.S. has set up some sort of live video stream to him.
The smiley face in the eggs
During a classroom demonstration, Angela (who masquerades as a baker but is really a cop) cracks three eggs in a bowl, making the shape of a smiley face. Smiley faces show up throughout the graphic novel, beginning with the death of the Comedian in the first scene of the book. He falls out a window and a drop of blood drips across a happy face pin he wears, giving the graphic novel its eventual cover image.
Nixon and the U.S. won the Vietnam War
Angela tells the classroom that she lived in Vietnam both before and after “it became a state.” This is a reference to the events of the comic book: The U.S. won the Vietnam War with the help of Doctor Manhattan. As a result, Nixon was re-elected.
Nixon shows up again and again in the show. The suspected white supremacists live in “Nixonville.” When a suspect is being interrogated in the pod, we see an image of Mount Rushmore, which now includes Nixon’s face. And in the classroom, behind Angela, there’s a poster that lists the “four most important presidents”: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon and the current president, Robert Redford.
Conspiracy theories about the fake alien attacks
During the interrogation scene, the suspected Seventh Cavalry member is asked whether he thinks the otherworldly attacks against the United States are a government conspiracy. This is a direct reference to the events in the final pages of Watchmen.
In the graphic novel, a caped crusader-turned-businessman named Adrian Veidt (alias: Ozymandias, played in the show by Jeremy Irons) orchestrates a fake alien attack on New York City. He argues that creating a fake threat from space will force humans to end their squabbling and unite against this new foe. He’s right: Shortly after the fake invasion, the Cold War ends. But Doctor Manhattan — the only superhero with actual superpowers in the graphic novel — suggests that the peace will not last for long. And it seems that since the 1980s, people have become suspicious of the attack. Perhaps the fact that there have seemingly been no other alien attacks on the planet has nudged conspiracy theorists closer to the truth.
American Hero Story: Minutemen
A bus advertisement introduces a show within the show: American Hero Story: Minutemen. The series seems to riff on the true story of the Minutemen, the group of masked men and women who joined together to fight crime — for better or worse — in the 1940s. The Watchmen graphic novel flashes between a group of younger heroes in the 1980s and their predecessors in the 1940s. In both time periods the various vigilantes’ motives and codes of ethics prove questionable.
The show suggests that the Minutemen have become a key part of American mythology, politics and entertainment in 2019.
“Veidt officially declared dead” headline
Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias, played a key role in the Watchmen graphic novel, between killing off many other Masked Men and faking his own assassination attempt and the faked alien attack described above. In the book, Doctor Manhattan leaves Veidt at his hideout in the Arctic. Now, in 2019, it seems that the media presumes him dead. But in the episode, we see him at a fancy castle, living out a strange and opulent existence with bizarre-acting servants.
The blood on the police chief badge
The graphic novel begins with the murder of the masked antihero, the Comedian. He is kicked out of his own window and lands on the ground. A drop of blood falls on a happy face pin that he wears, an image so indelible it eventually served as the cover art for the book. Rorschach begins to investigate the death, discovering a conspiracy as he proceeds.
The first episode of the show ends with the killing of the police chief. The drop of blood on the police chief’s badge mirrors that image of the Comedian’s pin from the comic. It seems that Angela, like Rorschach before her, will have to investigate the murder — and possibly uncover an insidious plot against the police. The image also suggests that the police chief’s honor is stained in some way, just like the Comedian. Could there be more to this man than meets the eye?
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Eliana Dockterman
October 20, 2019 at 04:06PM
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