WATCHMEN: Season 1: Episode 8 Breakdown & Ending Explained

Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Deffinition and you’re now locked into the channel where we’ve been Watching The Watchmen to breakdown everything that you need to know about the full season on HBO.

After the huge twist that Blue our minds last week, it’s time to visit the Doctor and see how Angela met the guy named after the world’s biggest Dildo…and yeah I still can’t get over that Ex-Cal-Abar easter egg.

Throughout this video we’ll be going over the entire episode’s plot, giving our theories on what could be happening in the future and discussing the huge revelations in it.

There will be Heavy Spoilers here, so if you haven’t had a chance to watch the latest entry yet and don’t want to know what happens then I highly suggest that you turn off now.

With that out the way I just wanna give a huge thank you for clicking this, now let’s get into our breakdown of Watchmen: Episode 8!

Watchmen Episode 8 Recap

Ok so Episode 8 is a massive trip through time that shows how the past influences the future but also, due to Doctor Manhattan’s powers, how the future influences the past.

It’s very much a chicken and the egg situation which we even see referenced in the episode and for those who don’t know, Doctor Manhattan can see every single moment of his life at the exact same time. He knows what will happen in the future in the past and in the past knows what will happen in the future. Alan Moore wanted to create a character who was aware that time was cyclical and also show that in knowing what would happen in the future, how you would be tied to it, forced to live out every moment watching it all play out the way that it was supposed to.

The best way to describe it I think would be to say, imagine if you watched episode 3 of Watchmen first, then episode 7, then back to 1, you would have the knowledge of what would be happening but they would be re-ordered. Still they would possess the same narrative and thus you would be able to fit together all of the pieces in between.

Yeah..it’s difficult to explain.

Star Crossed Lovers

Anyway, this episode exemplifies what it would be like to fall in love with someone who knows everything, sounds like my Ex-Girlfriend, ey! YOU HAVING THAT.

Doctor Manhattan is a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing and one that doesn’t age. Watchmen really humanises Doctor Manhattan through one of our most human emotions and it shows how love can change someone. Turning God into a Man. Cal was able to accomplish this by losing his abilities and this is about reinstating them in order to save the world.

Episode 8, A God Walks Into A Bar, aka A God, Doctor Manhattan walks into A Bar, as in Angela A Bar, is shown from Doctor Manhattan’s perspective and like the Graphic Novel it follows a similar aesthetic of jumping back and forth to unveil the entire plan and how everything fits in together.

Questions Answered

It opens in Saigon and we see a bit of blue dick and then Doc walks into Eddy’s bar, Blue toned down and wearing a mask to fit in with everyone. He picks up two beers and this mirrors Jon’s first meeting with Janey Slater in the graphic novel in which she bought him one. He said it was the first time a girl did that for him and it was a big moment where their fingers touched as they handed over the glass.

The Doc shows up and just completely blows Angela away, almost talking in Riddles. There are comparisons to Zeus coming down to make love with the mortals. We learn that the vision of Manhattan we saw on Mars in Episode One is just a decoy carrying out pre-determined paths and that The Doc has been on Europa, creating a utopia that we know Ozy would later end up living on.

At the end of The Watchmen Graphic Novel, Doc did say that he would go off into the universe and create life there, however, we get the feeling that it was just too perfect to ever feel real and thus he abandoned it.

Anyway now we know that Doc created it this is why Ozy made the bodies say ‘Save Me D.’ It also explains why Ozy wants to leave and I love how there were actually some similarities with the two that I never really thought of. Jon lived on Earth and ended up abandoning it in the graphic novel because he was sick of being caught up in the mundanity of it and Ozy who lived on Europa too wished to leave because he too became bored.

Europa

We watch the Miracle Maker walk on Water and create Adam and Eve or Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks. When he was younger, Doc or rather Jon saw the two, the real versions of them getting it on and they became large influences on him, passing him a blue bible that made him learn about God and how he created life, which would go on to influence his actions down the line.

They instill in him the promise to return to the castle with the bible once he has created something beautiful and he fulfills this in his actions on Europa.

He also builds the castle that they lived in which was a huge part of his early life.

Throughout the episode, Doc’s face is hidden almost until the end and this is a smart move as it keeps the character separate from Cal and also means that fans of the graphic novel don’t have their prior image of the character changed.

Instead all we see is Angela’s reaction to it as she tries to tempt him to reveal his powers. Angela says she hates him because he’s basically changed the world and as we know the Watchmen universe vastly differed from the one we inhabit from that point onward.

Angela also mentions how the bomber that killed her parents was a puppeteer that held wanted to hold the strings and this is a reference to the graphic novel in which Doctor Manhattan, when discussing his ability to view time said ‘We are all puppets, I can just see the strings.’ This has shaped her perception just how Docs perception was changed by his powers.

God Complex

He was burdened by what the world wanted him to be and what they thought of him but inside he was crying out to be human. Doc wants to have dinner with Angela but she says that he would be unable to blend in. When visiting the morgue Angela reluctantly chooses a newly dear corpse named Calvin that just dropped dead. She clearly has some attraction to him but won’t admit to herself due to him being dead and Jon takes his form.

What the episode does excellently is that it shows how the two end up falling in love but also sets a deadline on it of ten years and we know that it will come to a tragic end. It fits into the regrets thing in which Jon says that he regrets Vietnam but how we also do things that we want.

Jon’s biggest issue is that he can never be in the moment and that Angela hates how much she is tied to fate. There’s also another easter egg for the graphic novel when Angela asks when the last time that he was afraid was. Similar to the book he discusses his transformation in the intrinsic field. As predicted Angela asks him to leave and he is devastated.

This kinda shows the complexity of the character as he can still feel the emotional weight of moments even if he knows them in advance. He visits Ozymandias in Karnac who, similar to his home on Europa has smashed the place up, watching as the world he wished to created didn’t come to fruition and that Humans will always be driven to create weapons.

Ozymandias And Doctor Manhattan

We see the two reminisce over old times and we also see Ozy is the one who creates the Squidfalls in order to maintain world peace. He’s been running them manually from his home, keeping up the lie.

We discover that Ozy created the device that stops Doc seeing the entirety of my life and that this is made of Tachyons. I thought this would be the case last time but here it holds more weight in the episode as we discover it’s pretty much his Kryptonite and it means that the character does actually have a weakness.

Before moving on the plan, Cal goes to visit Will and through Angela asking questions informs him that Judd is a member of Cyclops and about the robe. This, of course, shows how he knew ahead of time and how he was able to inform Trieu that Doc was in Tulsa and who he was as he had seen the character’s new appearance. Will lives in Captain Metropolis’ old pad and the two form an alliance to contact Angela and also look after their children on the night they come.

Angela believes she started it all but as mentioned earlier the past is the future and the future is the past and so on.

Ozy makes a deal with the Doc to move to the Utopia on Europa, wishing to escape due to his great failings on Earth. It’s a really emotional scene that grounds Ozy quite a lot. I always kinda looked at his character as being slightly underdeveloped but here Jeremy Irons really knocks it out of the park.

So yeah, theory confirmed, Doc created the castle for Ozy and the world and there is potential that Doc also told Trieu when Ozy would return and this is why she bought the farm at the start of episode 4.

Ozy could be Trieu’s father if the Comedian is not and she could have encased the character in gold which is what she was referring to when she mentioned bringing her mother and father to see the completion of her Clock.

They put the Tachyon device into Cal and they move to Tulsa, the location that she never got to see after the death of her grandma.

Passing On The Powers

We also learn that Doc can pass on his powers through someone eating them, which I think will play a big part in the show going forward, perhaps Angela will get them but it also shows that Joe Keene may get them through this method.

Finally, after 43 minutes, we catch up to the moment left last week on a devastating cliffhanger. The Seventh Kavalry are coming for Jon and all Angela can do is defend him.

Jon is also lost, weary from what is going on. We learn that it was Cal that saved Angela on The White Night as theorised. He seems completely nonchalant about the incoming attack.

Angela tries to stop them but we know she can’t save him. It’s a great action scene but one that is ultimately doomed to end in tragedy. Jon intervenes to save Angela but this as we know too will not work.

The Kavalry use the Tachyonic canon to transport Doc in the finale of the episode to The Kavalry headquarters.

Now will Jon die…hmmm I don’t think so and people have failed to kill the character in the past.

Episode 8 Ending Explained

Personally I believe that Joe Keene may even succeed in his plan with Jon passing on his powers as mentioned in the episode. However, he will gain a perception like Doctor Manhattan and then become completely removed from his views and goals due to the detachment that possessing the powers Jon has will carry.

If Tachyons can defeat Jon then they can likely defeat Joe and I think the weapons that he created for the Doc will be turned on him in order to defeat him.

Post Credits Scene

Also incase you didn’t stick around for the post-credits scene in that we see Ozy being punished for trying to escape. They squash tomatoes into his face and we learn that Veidt too suffers from the Utopia’s perfection. He wants to be needed.

The Game Warden visits and gives him another anniversary cake but it has a horseshoe in the bottom. It looks like the clones are slowly getting things wrong and we did see in the premiere that they gave him one instead of a knight. We also learn that the Game Warden was the original Mr. Phillips.

Anyway, using the horseshoe Ozy is gonna Shawshank his way out of the cell and finally make a break for it.

I do think that Ozy will return and having reached out to Doc and yeah, perhaps transport him back to Earth and then we will see him land on the farm where he will be picked up by Trieu.

The show is gonna reveal it all soon enough and hopefully this time next week we finally have all of the answers to everything.