Watchmen: Season 1: Episode 3 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 new season on HBO.

Throughout this, we’ll be recapping the third entry in the series thus far and discussing where the show could be heading in the future.

There will be Heavy Spoilers here, so if you haven’t had a chance to watch episode three 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 video, now let’s get into our breakdown of Watchmen: Episode 3!

Watchmen: Episode 3 Breakdown

So far on Watchmen we’ve unearthed a huge conspiracy inside the police department that showed one of it’s high ranking officers were linked with a white supremacist group known as the Seventh Kavalry that carried out attacks on the police and public.

Episode 3 carries on this narrative but it also massively answers a lot of the questions that people have had about the show and how it ties in with the original graphic novel. This time we learn a lot of the history of the universe since the 80s and also discover what’s been going on with some of the characters of the source material.

The episode opens with Laurie Blake reaching out to Doctor Manhattan to tell him a joke. In classic Watchmen style it’s got a really dark punchline to it and this episode very much centres around Laurie and her actions. Now from the off this is clearly Silk Spectre Junior and those who are familiar with the source material will recall that she was a pivotal part in it and also the ex girlfriend of Doctor Manhattan.

Laurie’s True Identity

Since changing her name at the end of the graphic novel she was clearly unearthed. Those who don’t know, Laurie was closely tied to the Government through her relationship with Doctor Manhattan and we can assume that this gave her some leiency upon being captured.

She has slowly rose through the ranks of the FBI and is now a commanding officer that takes down vigilantes. Laurie used to be one but she has clearly seen first hand that allowing them to operate could lead to millions of deaths potentially as happened at the end of the book.

She’s had a very bad experience with vigilantes in the past and even though she used to rank amongst them, her certain change of heart makes sense in light of the actions of Ozymandias. Her heart clearly still fawns for both Nite Owl and Doctor Manhattan and in her apartment, we see a pet Owl named who as well as a blue dildo.

We learn that Nite Owl aka Dan Drieberg has been arrested for being a vigilante and Senator Joseph Keene, who’s father was behind the Keene act that outlawed masked crime fighters in the first place, tasks her with investigating Captain Crawford’s murder, promising her that if he becomes president, he will free her love.

Laurie has a rich past, her mother was the original Silk Spectre, her father was the comedian and she has had relationships with both Nite Owl and Doctor Manhattan, however she is at a point where she seems like she just wants to be as far away from the life of a superhero as possible, due to all of the mistery that it has caused her.

Escaping The Past

This long shadow is difficult to escape from and it’s clear that many are enamoured with her and her reputation. The potrayal is awesome and quickly Laurie became my favourite character in the show. When reading the comics I was never that bothered by her, finding her pretty uninteresting and boring. Don’t even get me started on the movie depiction cos yeah, there’s a reason Malin Akerman didn’t do much after it.

However, Jean Smart nails this, painting out the character as a hardened cop that only really lets down her guard when talking through the phone to her one connection to her past, Doctor Manhattan.

Now I’m gonna get into what I sort of took this as. I might be wrong but make sure you leave your thoughts on my analysis of this.

So we know that Doctor Manhattan is a God and that he is above all else, the most powerful being in the universe. Laurie is very much still a follower of him and in some ways she views him as a God as well. Her reaching out to him through the phone is this universes version of praying, she knows she won’t get a response but still she tries over and over because she believes him in and thinks that one day, just one day he may sort out her problems.

We learn that many people try and reach out to him but he never responds and this is almost like a church for them.

It’s subtly done and whilst I may be wrong it reminded me a lot of confessional booths in churches and was on the whole a nice metaphor for the show.

She knows of the truth behind the Squid lie and because of this views herself as a monster, doomed to go to hell, which perhaps is the reason she constantly turns to her religion.

The Mystery Of Captain Judd

Anyway, she arrives at the crime scene when Judd was found hanged and quickly notices Will’s tyre tracks in the dirt. This leads her to Looking Glass who she hilariously tears apart and puts down. If you’ve been keeping up to date with the channel you know how much I think that this guy is gonna be one of the big villains and she makes a mockery of his costume, even using his mask as a mirror to pick her teeth.

Laurie, due to what she’s been through, really doesn’t trust anyone and she is obsessed by her past and how much it bears weight on the present and future. She like her mother is consumed by it. Who remembers Silk Spectre Senior saying ‘Every day the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.’

Laurie has clearly inherited this view and she is very cynical throughout this re-introduction.

Everything in this episode builds to her getting to meet Angela face to face. It’s Judds funeral and it’s clear not to pick up on the obvious similarities between this and The Comedian, both were clearly bad people even though they were admired by the public and government and Angela is forced to deliver a eulogy discussing how good of a man Judd was even though this clearly wasn’t the case.

The Seventh Kavalry

In the backdrop of this, a member of The Seventh Kavalry crawls underground to Judd’s mausoleum, denouncing Senator Keene as a race traitor that has to be brought in. Laurie, however, snuck a gun in and manages to shoot him at point-blank range, second-guessing that the Kavalry member was lying about the bomb being rigged to his heart rate. However, it turns out that he wasn’t bluffing and Angela manages to avert more deaths though Judd’s body is destroyed by the explosion.

Throughout this scene, we once more have the return of the ticking clock and it reminds us that the countdown is on.

Ozymandias’ Plan

Elsewhere in the episode we see Ozymandias’ plan beginning to flesh out, there are more squids and a miniature catapult that will no doubt be used in some way. We can guess that Ozy is testing his suit for the temperatures of space and perhaps there’s a black freighter easter egg and he is clearly building something that needs to be thick and durable, capable of moving humans through a range of temperatures.

Ozy is stopped from getting a buffalo skin by a masked horseman and we later learn that this is the Games Warden. From this, we learn that Ozy was indeed captured and put in exile on the island. Clearly they know what Ozy did at the end of the graphic novel but, if the truth ever came out that it would cause the world economy to collapse so he has been placed here. Due to his wealth, he probably has free reign but they are aware of his plans and will not let him proceed in another one that could result in the deaths of millions which we know he is capable of.

Adrian rebuffs this but we know and the Games Warden know that he’s up to something, donning his infamous costume for this episodes big money shot which cements that he is definitely back.

Now personally I believe that Ozy is either on the Moon or on Mars and a prisoner of Doctor Manhattan. In episode one we say Doc building a castle and this was very similar to the one that Adrian now lives in. Personally I believe that he is looking for a way to build a suit that can protect the inhabitant through the coldness of space and he will use the catapult to shoot himself off of the planet in order to get back to earth.

This to me makes a lot of sense especially with the procedures that he is going through and the clones could be creations of Doctor Manhattan. Ozy is clearly somewhere that he can’t escape from and trying to build a suit in order to do it so I can see this being revealed later down the line.

Sister Night

Back in Oaklahoma there’s a mention of an intrinsic field generator being built in Russia which for those who don’t know, is the machine that created Doctor Manhattan.

Angela and Laurie meet on the night and the latter states that she knows that Angela took whatever was in Judd’s secret compartment. Laurie cannot perform an autopsy on Judd due to the explosion and she knows that there is something deeper going on here.

She tries to scare Angela but Sister Night doesn’t scare that easy and she pretty quickly cements that shes not the pushover that Looking Glass was.

Laurie ends up sleeping with her partner, making him wear a mask, desperate to reconnect with the life that she once had, even though she is now trapped in a world where she has been tasked with taking them down.

The Joker

Now I’m just gonna go through the joke that is laced throughout the episode and what it means.

The joke is about a bricklayer that teaches his daughter how to build a barbecue, this ends with her throwing an orphan brick up in the air as high as she can. From here she tells a joke about three heroes who die. These are Nite Owl, Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan. These three are judged by God who decides that they should go to hell for their misdeed. Silk Spectre who was given no talent of her own is asked who she is and she says “I’m the girl who threw the brick in the air.” The brick falls, killing god, completely out of the blue, which cements that Laurie believes she could bring it all crashing down, the lie from the end of the graphic novel and that she has the power to do it at any time.

The hell refers to jail in which Nite Owl and Ozy have been sent to and Doctor Manhattans self-imposed exile to Mars.

It’s a nice joke that is in keeping with Watchmen lore and Laurie leaves the booth.

At the end Will’s car comes crashing down and Laurie ends up standing there laughing much like how her father used to. This may indeed be Doctor Manhattan reaching out to her or a craft but whatever it is I think it’s building to a return of the God like creature as well as Ozy’s plan to escape and get back to Earth if he is indeed on Mars.