That 'Watchmen' Theater Scene Retold Doctor Manhattan's Origin Story
In HBO's Watchmen episode 2, there is a bizarre stage performance.
The theatrics depict the birth of Dr. Manhattan.
They also reveal the identity of the one man sitting in the audience.
With a robot/clone (?) set ablaze in a chamber, a naked blue man descending from the rafters, and a watch ripped from the robot’s charred hands, tonight’s episode of HBO’s Watchmen both hints at Doctor Manhattan's origin story from the comic of the same name, and may also be the most violently bizarre hour of television in some time.
Readers of the Watchmen graphic novel will no doubt understand what the performance entailed. But for those who watched confused (though, hopefully laughing; it was supposed to be funny), know that the stage act depicted the creation of the aforementioned Doctor Manhattan, one of the most important characters in any version of Watchmen.
Manhattan was born Jonathan Osterman to a watchmaker (time and timekeeping, an obvious thematic to the series; each chapter of the novel opens with a position of the infamous doomsday clock, ticking ever closer to midnight and nuclear Armageddon). His father, however, abandons watchmaking after the atomic bombs are dropped over Japan. He tells his son to instead study atomic physics. Osterman attends Princeton, attains a Ph.D., and begins research on “intrinsic fields.”
He meets Janey Slater (played by Mrs. Crookshanks in the performance), and the two fall in love. Osterman gives Slater a watch. One day, realizing he’s left the watch in the intrinsic field generator, Osterman returns. The door closes and seals Osterman inside. Then: boom! Osterman is obliterated by particle cannons. Two months later, he begins to re-materialize, first as a floating brain, then eyeballs, then a circulatory system. Finally, his full body resurrected in blue, Osterman returns as a semi-clairvoyant, matter-bending, teleporting being: Dr. Manhattan.
The significance of Manhattan’s creation cannot be understated in relation to the story. In the graphic novel, Manhattan’s birth literally changes the historic timeline; it is the moment the fiction separates itself from historic fact. Manhattan acts as a worldwide deterrent. He enters Vietnam and ends the conflict. This resolution changes the election. Nixon wins another term. Superheroes are embraced. People bow down and worship Manhattan. He is the personification of the bomb, of nuclear worship. His existence changes history, scientific knowledge, technology. It’s all a very big blue deal.
And it seems like no one in the HBO universe has forgotten. Jeremy Irons, the theater director, told Men’s Health that his character is trying to “remind himself what happened.”
Irons may have given away his character’s identity when he repeated the phrase “nothing ever ends,” the final words that Dr. Manhattan leaves with Adrian Veidt in the graphic novel. Veidt, Watchmen’s smartest character, operated under the vigilante name Ozymandias before retiring. Dr. Manhattan confronted Veidt after his plot to unite the U.S. and Soviets through terror. At the conclusion of the novel, Veidt is left pondering what Dr. Manhattan means by the words “nothing ever ends.” It seems he’s been pondering the question for some time.
The question now, of course: will Dr. Manhattan return for HBO's series? We'll have to keep watching to find out.
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