Watching Watchmen 8: “I am the Eggman”
Episode 9: See How They Fly (Spoilers ahead.)
The season finale of Watchmen was, as expected, amazingly epic. We got most of what we wanted:
The reappearance of Looking Glass.
Lady Trieu’s plans revealed.
Dr. Manhattan’s massive blue penis revealed.
Adrian Veidt stops being an asshat for 10 whole minutes and saves the world again.
Angela invites her grandfather home.
There’s one egg left in the carton.
I must also admit to experiencing complete delight at Senator Keene getting liquified into cough syrup and all the white supremacists getting lasered. If that makes me undesirable “woke,” I can live with that.
But the delivery of justice – this time unhooded, unmasked – can’t keep this episode from feeling bittersweet. We lose Dr. Manhattan, and though he’s been assuring us the end is tragic for several episodes, we kept hoping the narrative would change. It didn’t.
How this show got me to love a character that was – in many ways – absent from most of the action throughout the season is beyond me. I cared nothing for Dr. Manhattan prior to A God Walks into Abar (Episode 8).
The writing and directing talent behind this show is shocking, innovative and transformative. Watchmen is having real-world ripple effects, including the finding of what’s most likely more mass graves in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Watchmen’s manipulation and deception is to our benefit as viewers, delivering a gut-punch to the senses that still resonates uncomfortably when you tune in to the news the next day. Yet in the midst of its politics, its race war and generational hate, waits clarity and hope – a small escape on foot as your world burns in the distance.
The pain doesn’t resolve when the fight is won, but that was never the promise or the point. The lesson here, I think, is to keep moving forward, keep living. No matter how many minutes are left on the Doomsday Clock… No matter how naked they leave you… No matter how much they burn…
Carry on. Move forward. Let them see your face.
We do not heal in darkness.
And when we face the end of things, we often find a new beginning – an unbroken egg amid the ashes. It is the paradox allowing us to continue…
…a thermodynamic miracle…
…the chicken and the egg, not one begetting the other, but coming into being at the exact same moment in time.
- By Jaimie K. Wilson