Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Deffinition and you’re now locked into the channel where we break down all the latest movies, new game releases, tv shows and comic books.
This episode we’re gonna be covering one of the most mysterious elements of the new HBO Show Watchmen which is Ozymandias’ Plan and what exactly is going on with the character.
There will be heavy spoilers for the graphic novel and first three episodes of the show here and if this turns out to be true then big ones going forward so if you wanna go into the show without having anything ruined then I highly suggest that you turn off now.
Without further ado let’s get into our breakdown of his plan.
Ozymandias History
Ok so just a quick recap on the character’s entire history in case you haven’t read the graphic novel and just wanna get up to speed.
So Ozymandias, real name Adrian Veidt, was a masked vigilante born in 1939 to very rich parents.
After they died when the character was 17, he inherited their fortune but decided to donate it all to charity, choosing to build himself from the ground up instead. Veidt traveled the world, following in the footsteps of Alexander The Great and upon completing his journey, decided to become a crime fighter.
Extremely intelligent and someone who had trained their body to peak physical condition, Veidt quickly rose through the ranks until he became a renowned vigilante with the reputation for being the smartest man on the planet.
When The Keene Act was put in place which outlawed superheroes, Veidt came forward with his real name and identity and turned himself into a brand, selling himself and the technology he had developed in order to become a multi-billionaire.
Doctor Manhattan
Due to his foresight, Veidt realised that with the arrival of Doctor Manhattan meant that the world would begin to fear America and that this would increase countries to hate America to a point where nuclear war was inevitable. In order to avert this, Veidt decided that the best way to stop the war was to unite everyone in fighting a common enemy and thus instead of pointing their arms at one another, they would point them at this one threat.
Depending on whether you’ve read the graphic novel or have seen the film adaptation, this goes one of two ways with Ozy framing Doctor Manhattan for murdering millions or faking an alien invasion by a Giant Squid that too caused countless deaths. The latter of which required Ozy piling together psychics, writers, and artists to create the most fear-inducing being that would unite the planet under one common enemy and as the show is a direct sequel to the graphic novel, this is the continuity that I will be going with for this video.
Ozymandias HBO Show Biography
Now so far in the show we know that it is still widely believed that there was an alien attack 1985 though there exists some conspiracy theories that this was a hoax.
As for Veidt in 2012 after Trieu Industries purchased his companies the character went missing. Following this in 2017, the governor of Vietnam claimed that the Vietnamese Liberation Front had assassinated him as an act of terror against the United States and on September 9th, 2019, Veidt was officially declared dead.
However, from the show, we know that this very clearly isn’t the case and that Veidt is indeed still alive, though where exactly he is is up for debate and I’m going to kinda be discussing my fan theory on this as well as what the character is planning to do.
Where Is Ozymandias?
Ok so initially it seemed like he was living in paradise, surrounded by servants, living every day like it was his birthday, which it pretty much seemed to be. However, as the show has gone one, we’ve learned that he is indeed trapped in this place, unable to escape and desperate to getaway.
I think it’s a safe assumption to make that someone somewhere has indeed realised or already knew that Ozymandias was indeed behind the Alien Invasion and they have decided that imprisonment is the best place for him. They know that he could always unearth the truth and send the world back to war and due to this, they have moved him to a place where he is unable to communicate with anyone.
Those who were aware of the plan at the end of the graphic novel were Rorschach, who was killed because he refused to keep quiet about it, Laurie who we now know is an FBI Agent, Nite Owl who has been incarcerated and Doctor Manhattan who at the end of the work decided to leave Earth.
The only one out of these who seems like he not only has the means to move Ozymandias but also trap him in a place that will be difficult to escape from is Doctor Manhattan. In the original graphic novel, Doc is able to transport others to Mars in the blink of an eye and we know from the first episode of the series that he has been spotted on the planet. There are also confessional like booths that send messages directly to the planet so from this we can gather that he is indeed there.
Veidt Is On Mars
We also see video footage of the character-building what looks to be a castle on the planet and this bears a lot of similarities to Ozymandias’ home. Due to the time that it would take to get images of the planet and send them back to Earth, we can guess that this isn’t live and the footage may be from months or even years earlier, way back in 2017 when the character went missing.
Due to his birthdays, we do know that the Ozy sections in the show are taking place across several years so it makes sense that these date back to then.
I believe that Doctor Manhattan has kidnapped the character because he is able to see the future and was carrying out this because it is what had to be done.
Doctor Manhattan’s Abilities
In case you don’t know, Doctor Manhattan can see all-time at once, however he can’t interfere with it as it is all preordained and even if he wanted to change the future he would be unable to because that is not the way that things happen.
Basically the line that sums it up best from the graphic novel is ‘we are all puppets, I can just see the strings.’
Time is cyclical the past is the present as the present is the past and so on…anyway because of this Ozy would have known the outcome of leaving Doc on Earth and therefore it makes sense that he would have moved him to Mars.
Well It Doesn’t Look Like Mars
But how does that explain why it looks like Ozy is in the luscious countryside surrounded by endless fields and beautiful landscapes?
In the graphic novel, Ozy actually built something very similar to this in the Arctic Pole at his palace of Karnack. We see in that that the character created a giant dome with a luscious tropical rainforest within it and a larger version of this could be what is being used to house him. Now I am open to the idea as well that Ozy is still in the Arctic Pole like how we left him at the end of the graphic novel, trapped in a dome there, I just think Mars seems a bit more likely due to the fact that Doctor Manhattan was seen building a castle on the planet.
Either one of these locations is inhospitable for humans though so it could really be, either way, I just think that by now surveillance on Earth, as well as expeditions to the poles, would have picked up on this.
Anyway, Ozy is clearly trying to escape this in order to get back to civilization and thus he has been using the clones at the location to test out the safest way to do this. These clones could either have been provided by Doctor Manhattan who can create duplicates or by Ozy who we know has dabbled in genetic engineering due to his cat Bubastas which he created using science.
A Journey Through Space
Either way, Ozy has been using them to test the temperatures of the environment outside of his prison and this is why we see the clone in episode 3 come back frozen solid. Ozy realizes that he needs a thicker skin and thus attempts to use a Buffalo’s hide though he is stopped by the Game Warden, who is probably the Warden of the prison…yeah the clues in the title.
The catapult could be potentially used to throw him beyond the barrier of the prison into the cold reaches of space which he will need the suit for.
There is also a theory floating around that Ozy is using all of the bodies of the clones in order to build a raft. This ties in with the Black Freighter work from the source material in which a stranded sailor uses the corpses of his comrades in order to build a raft to sail back to the mainland. In that, the character goes mad and ends up murdering his own family who he believes have been taken by the titular Black Freighter that left him shipwrecked and in the story, this always had clear allusions to Ozymandias’ arc.
The Black Freighter Connection
Could this also be carrying on with the character attempting to carry out a similar process to the character sailor in that book? Potentially, Mars is millions of miles away from Earth so it would be a long journey but there may also be crafts, space stations and the like orbiting the planet. We know from the original work that technologically, the world of Watchmen is far more advanced than our own and they may have the means to send a manned craft to Mars.
There may even be outposts on the planet that he is trying to reach in order to send an SOS message. Now I have seen people say that Doc would know all this and stop him, however, the character’s foresight has been limited before by Ozy who was able to manipulate tachyons in order to stop him viewing the future.
To conclude, I think there is enough evidence here to support the theory that Ozymandias is on Mars, he is building means of travel to escape the planet, using whatever resources that he has around him in order to reach either an outpost or another ship so he can finally travel back to Earth.
The character has the intelligence, means, and ability to do this and though he may be a bit senile, watching him piece it all together is definitely my favorite part of the show.
Your Thoughts
Obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on this theory and if you agree with my take or if you have an even better one. If you’re from the future and this video has aged like vinegar then make sure you let us know what really happened!
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