Hey guys, Pete here. This will be my Watchmen episode 7 recap. of course this
will contain spoilers for everything that's happened in HBO's Watchmen
through episode 7 so if you haven't watched it this video is not for you. the
episode was titled "An Almost Religious Awe" which was a callback to a line Dr.
Manhattan said in the original comic about soldiers wanting to surrender to
him personally after his involvement led to the United
States winning the war in Vietnam. that involvement led to Vietnam becoming the
51st state and that's where Angela spent her childhood. episode 7 had a lot of
reveals as it should since we're heading into the end of the single season story.
I mentioned in my recap several episodes back that I was impressed on how they
are answering enough questions to keep us engaged while maintaining enough of
the big mysteries to keep things interesting and this episode is pretty
much the epitome of that. we learned a lot of important stuff but we still
don't have all the answers. for instance we learned that lady Trieu
does have a plan it involves stopping the Seventh Kavalry. it's tied to Will, we
also have this countdown going on in the background of the Millennium clock going
live and we get a reveal here about her daughter. her daughter Bian is actually
her mother - a clone of her mother, but we don't understand why she did that.
there's a scene where she's talking about her biggest failure being
Nostalgia. she created it so people could learn from the past and evolve, but it
turns out that people wanted to fixate on the past. so why is it that she would
be cloning her mother which is obviously her being tied to the past. we know that her
and Will are working together she tells Angela that will came to her
for her resources because the 7th Kavalry who are tied to the Cyclops want
to destroy and then become Dr. Manhattan, and later Senator Joe Keene lays this
out for Laurie and we see that they are in fact working on some kind of a device
that will turn him into Dr. Manhattan. Laurie ends up with Senator Keene after
she goes to confront Jane Crawford. she lays out her ideas about why Will was
after him why Will had him kill himself and to our surprise Jane activates a trap
door, takes Laurie prisoner right after she confesses that, yeah, you're right
that is what we're trying to do, but we basically decided that making Joe Keene
president was kind of small potatoes and we moved on to something else. in the 7k
facility Laurie doesn't really seem interested in what Senator Keene says
although this feels a lot like she's wearing her mask. he gives a spiel about
restoring the country's balance. he says is extremely difficult to be a white man
in America right now, which we can only imagine is a response to being in a
liberal run world where reparations are a real thing. it's pretty funny to hear
it said in this context considering this is the kind of thing that we hear all
the time in the real world, but here he takes it a step further and says it's
extremely difficult to be a white man in America right now so I might try to be a
blue one. this leads us into the biggest reveal of all that Dr. Manhattan is not
on Mars he's on earth and he is in fact Angela's
husband Cal which is something that people had guessed the theories been out
there for quite a while at this point but I don't think at least in my
interpretation of the theory that people realized that Angela would know this or
that Cal himself does not know this. which means that essentially Dr.
Manhattan has been hidden not only from the world but from himself.
we'll have to figure out how that worked and what that means for the rest of the
story I'm sure we're gonna learn a lot more about that next episode, but the 7th
Kavalry seems to know, Will seems to know, and both sides seem to be in pursuit of
the blue god for different reasons. in the Petey files on Peteypedia we learned that
Angela discovered Cal who had a different last name at the time was
disoriented after an accident in the next episode we're likely going to find
out about how Dr. Manhattan met Angela and how they hatched this plan. it
changes everything, but in a way that it brings everything back down to Angela.
and in this episode we learned a lot more about her. how she came to be a mask, how
she picked the name Sister Night. It's from a movie that she wasn't allowed to
watch when she was a child. agent Petey writes up a
description of the movie even though he hasn't been able to see it yet and we
learned that there was a period of time when Hollywood was making movies that
were called "Black Mask" movies they appealed to African American audiences
they starred African American actors playing superheroes. the movie Sister
Night was released in Vietnam and we saw Angela wanted to watch this but her
dad wouldn't let her because he was still traumatized from his childhood
being the son of Hooded Justice. the episode opened with a Ken Burns style
looking documentary about Dr. Manhattan also known as Jon Osterman we see that
he was both worshipped and feared which is where the title of the episode came
from his accident inside the intrinsic field generator gave him actual
superpowers the United States government weaponized that and used him to win the
Vietnam War and the documentary asks the question is he a liberating hero who
single-handedly ended the war or a cold blue Conqueror who decimated an entire
way of life and we see this a bit in the graffiti that we see in the background
and of course we see this bombing which takes the lives of Angela's parents by a
young man who's obviously part of a group who's fighting against that
imperialism or that colonialism that occurred after the war was over so in
her backstory Angela watched both of her parents die right in front of her just
as her grandfather did. her grandmother comes at some point to try to take her
home to Tulsa but she has a heart attack on the same day and then we really don't
know what happened afterwards. we know that the seeds were planted for her to
be a police officer and that eventually she becomes that but we're gonna have to
get more of the backstory in the next episode. I think it's interesting to see
how Dr. Manhattan was regarded there and just think about how that would be it
ties in later to one we see Lady Trieu reveal the people their conversations in
the prayer booths when they talked to Dr. Manhattan and ask him for things we
know that there was a tech backlash after the squid attack that kind of
turned people against him but it would be really interesting to see why he came
back to earth in the first place and how he ended up meeting
Angela. I liked how they made the reveal through Angela bashing Cal with a hammer
she needs to get out the device that's hiding inside his head and I thought
that this method of extraction was particularly fantastic. the whole idea is
hard to wrap your head around as far as what it means about what we didn't
understand about her character to this point and what that blue glow that we
see starting to shine will mean for the rest of the story. why not have it come
from bashing a main character in the head with a hammer?
because Cal didn't know and she has the like coax him into letting her do it, it
made for a memorable moment and I really enjoyed it. outside of Tulsa we
visit Adrian Veidt he's on trial he has been for a year and it stood out to me
that this was the first time that the stuff in Tulsa seemed more interesting
and I almost didn't want to leave to go to Europa. Ms Crookshanks'
closing argument was great but the whole idea of him being found guilty and being
disillusioned with the whole process at this point - it's just like man I want him
to get back into the main story or have his effect on the main story. what's
going on there isn't what I'm most interested in anymore. it's not to say
that I didn't enjoy this, it's not to say that it wasn't fun all the way up until
this point, I just feel like we're getting closer to the end of the main
story so I think it's just time now that the whole story with him sorts itself
out. and I think overall it was a really good episode I didn't necessarily like
the idea that Cal was Dr. Manhattan when I first heard that theory but the
way I understood the theory was a little bit different I like the idea that
angela has been hiding dr. Manhattan a lot better than dr. Manhattan was hiding
as a normal person there's still a lot more that we need to understand about
how all this happened but I like the way that the mystery is centered around
Angela rather than the other way around agent Petey does go to look for Looking
Glass and he doesn't find him. I have a feeling this is gonna play into him
having a large role in stopping the 7k Petey found members with Rorschach masks
with one missing I'm guessing that that means that Looking Glass has one of
those and hopefully he'll play a part in undoing whatever they're planning and
it really all comes down to the idea that we had all these seeds planted
they've been paying things off episode after episode can they still surprise us
with something that is gonna make us think at the end. the one reveal that
doesn't really necessarily make sense at this point is that whenever she busted
through that door there was an elephant behind it we've seen elephant imagery
related to her the Lady Trieu from folklore was supposed to ride a war
elephant the symbol for her company the "T" is obviously an elephant her
mother's book on parenting was called pachyderm mom so a lot of elephant
references there's a common saying that an elephant never forgets
are these all big clues to what lady T is up to? there are definitely theories
out there that could fit that Bian tells Angela that her questions are
related to her dissertation that's on the adaptive function of empathy and the
role of rage suppression in social cohesion that could tie into this idea
of her being a clone and the concept of generational trauma, but the cure for
taking someone else's nostalgia is to connect them to an elephant? where was
Will he didn't show up we kind of expected him to be behind that door or
something else I don't think anyone guessed it was gonna be an elephant so
we know a lot but there's still a lot to find out and I'm completely excited to
see what they have in store for us the trap door was awesome I really
enjoyed that they did a pretty good job of making it seem like there might be
another side to Judd Crawford's story so I really liked how they brought that
down and while there may be something you know who knows but if Jane Crawford
had a trapdoor installed in her living room she was complicit all the way down
even if Judd didn't know what was happening so I really liked how they did
that I really liked that Angela took her name from the VHS cassette I like that
she explains it to June that she looks like me. I think it's a good backstory
for this character she grew up alone in a world where she looked different it's
far away from where she came from but it also mirrors the experience that
her grandfather had in their home country as a person of color
Damon Lindelof did an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about the episode and
I will link to that in the description it's definitely worth a read he talks
about the decisions they made in relation to making Cal Dr. Manhattan and
about Angela's experience growing up and having her grow up in Vietnam he
mentions that Angela's story is all about "Who am I?" her journeys about
answering that question as an orphan she has no sense of place in that interview
some will be upset to find out that Lindelof does confirm that Dan Dreiberg
Nite Owl II will not show up in the series other than his owl ship and the
dildo that he made for Laurie they really couldn't figure out a way to fit
him into the story probably the funniest Easter egg of them all is that the name
of the sex toy was Excalibur which people used as a hint that Cal Abar
would turn out to be Dr. Manhattan I like that the Adrian Veidt stuff is
still mysterious they did show the statute quite a bit in this episode I go
back and forth from day to day thinking that that was him that arrived on that
farm some days I think it's him some days I think it must be something else
either way it's good to know that we're gonna find out what's going on with him
and how he gets out of that situation in Europa in the next two episodes Lady
Trieu is the big question mark still I feel like they are giving her that role
similar to Adrian Veidt in the original story like where she's there all the
time we learn about what she's doing but we don't really know what she's up to
100% I don't think it'll be a one-for-one where she does exactly the
same kind of thing and gets the exact same kind of results but I think that
I'm very intrigued to find out what her and will are up to looking forward to
looking glasses return wills return how Angela keeps Dr. Manhattan from falling
in the hands of Senator Keene in the 7th Kavalry everything is feeling pretty
good at this point let me know in the comments what you think Dr. Manhattan's
gonna do now that he is back to being a part of the story what are we going to
learn about how they met what are we going to learn about what the 7ks doing
how they implement their plan what Lady Trieu is doing what's gonna happen
when she activates the millenium clock were you a fan of the Cal is dr.
Manhattan theory do you like this better the way that it turned out or what are
you thinking now that we know please like this video if you enjoyed it please
subscribe to my channel if you haven't already I'll have a trailer break down
and we'll talk about what we saw there in the next couple of days thanks for
watching I'll talk to you soon