Squidgate is real
This week’s episode, “Little Fear of Lightning,” begins with the origin story of Looking Glass, whose traumatic experience in the house of mirrors shaped him into the paranoid wreck he is today.
Almost the entire episode is dedicated to fleshing out Glass, which is a treat - between this performance and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Tim Blake Nelson is fast becoming one of my favorite actors on television.
Turns out, Glass used to be a doom-mongering evangelical, unfortunate enough to spread his nonsense to an extraordinarily spiteful teenage girl, who leads the poor boy into the house of mirrors to humiliate him. It’s a great deal of effort to discourage an annoying Jesus-freak, and culminates in the great psychic squid attack orchestrated by Veidt at the end of the Watchmen comic.
The slow, sweeping shot of said squid is spectacular, capturing the absurd horror of the incident in a way that the colorful pages of a comic book couldn’t quite convey; this is very much the 9/11 of the Watchmen universe, and New York is seemingly still trying to restore its reputation as a safe tourist spot.
Glass, who is employed as a living, breathing lie detector, has the unique ability to spot the truth, even in the artificial world of advertising and product-testing. It’s not clear if Glass is simply skilled at measuring body language, or outright psychic (he could have potentially absorbed something from the squid attack).
Regardless, Glass’s entire life was destroyed by Veidt’s lie, his nights spent cowering in fear of another interdimensional attack, his free time spent studying the phenomenon. His reflective mask isn’t just a creepy interrogation technique; it’s a shield, the material serving as protection in the event of another psychic shockwave, even coating the inside of his baseball cap, a literal tinfoil hat.
Glass might be able to see through people, but Laurie can see right through him, and Glass really hates being observed. But Laurie has bugged his desk, and is close to cracking Angela’s secrets. She’s also repeatedly shown that the masks aren’t keeping anyone’s identity a secret, merely serving to socially isolate the wearers, which is, perhaps, their real function.
After a visit to Glass’s ex, who clones pets for a living, Angela’s pills are revealed to be “Nostalgia,” memories in pharmaceutical form, which explains the night terrors of Lady Trieu’s daughter. Just like our world, the world of Watchmen is weighed down by nostalgia, the attack on New York having ushered in a frightening new reality, introducing an existential fear of otherworldly, Lovecraftian behemoths. It’s a strangely familiar situation, mirrored by 9/11 and the bizarro world of Trump’s presidency - reality hasn’t felt quite the same since, has it?
Glass seems to be weighed down by nostalgia himself, attracted to a woman in his support group who resembles his ex, unable to move past his trama. After a date which, amusingly, highlights the existence of squid-inspired Oscar bait, Glass realizes that his companion is a member of the Seventh Kavalary.
Following her pickup truck, Glass makes his way into Kavalary headquarters and discovers that the group is experimenting with teleportation technology, and planning something more ambitious than Veidt’s attack. Which makes a twisted sort of sense, I suppose; the squid isn’t going to stay culturally relevant forever.
Of course, Senator Joe Keene is a mask-wearing member of the Kavalary (his smile was too creepy not to be), and reveals that he and Judd were maintaining a kind of harmonious balance inside their hate groups. Whoever shot the cop in the first episode crossed a line, upsetting the circle of intolerance, and Judd’s murder escalated the situation beyond control.
Thus, Joe politely advises Glass to turn Angela in to the FBI, or he’ll send his boys to her house for a good ol’ fashioned homicide, and as a bonus, he reveals the truth behind the lie that shaped Glass’s entire life.
A video of young Veidt, explaining his hoax to President Redford (whose election he orchestrated), fills in some substantial gaps for non-comic readers, and of course, Glass, who is faced with the uncomfortable realization that the white supremacists were correct all along - the alien squids were indeed a government conspiracy, orchestrated to prevent nuclear holocaust.
Shattered by the truth, Glass is faced with a moral dilemma, and decides that Angela’s safety is more important than her freedom, or indeed, their friendship. Drawing Angela into a trap, Glass explains the nature of Will’s mysterious pills, and watches as his only ally is arrested.
But Angela jumps headfirst into a potential psychotic breakdown, downing the entire bottle of Nostalgia, a reckless action that might just cause her to lose her own identity, overdosing on Will’s traumatic childhood, but makes a great excuse for a flashback episode next week.
Meanwhile, Adrian Veidt finally escapes his prison. Having built a robust space suit, Veidt is catapulted into the sky, and breaks free of the illusion, emerging not on Mars, as expected, but an icy moon orbiting Jupiter, probably Europa.
This confirms that Veidt’s weird situation was indeed a prison constructed by Doctor Manhattan, and after reshaping a pile of dead clones into an S.O.S., Veidt broadcasts his message to the world, with the help of a nearby satellite.
Veidt is still the smartest man in the world, it seems. But the mysterious warden isn’t happy; he’s the only Manhattan-made lifeform with any form of agency, and appears rather upset by Veidt’s declaration that their “God” has left, and is never going to return - absent-mindedly leaving a human-populated petri dish to fester seems like a very Doctor Manhattan thing to do.
But Veidt’s situation is still shrouded in mystery; we don’t know what time period his imprisonment takes place in, and he might even be the cargo that Lady Trieu picked up on the Clark’s farm.
The episode ends with the Kavalry coming to murder Glass, his purpose seemingly served and his newfound knowledge a potential threat. Interestingly, Glass almost rejects his new “squid attack” alarm system, but he can’t quite bring himself not to install it. You never know, after all - the grand reveal could be just another conspiracy (this is how you turn into Alex Jones).
This episode confirms a few suspicions, but mostly serves to expand the weird world these characters inhabit, through the lens of the immensely likeable Looking Glass, who is hopefully going to survive next week’s onslaught.
If you enjoyed reading, check out my previous episode recaps:
Episode 1 “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”
Episode 2 “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship”
Episode 3 “She Was Killed by Space Junk”
Episode 4 “If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own”
Episode 5 “Little Fear of Lightning”
Episode 6 “This Extraordinary Being”
Episode 7 “An Almost Religious Awe”
Episode 8 “A God Walks Into Abar”
Episode 9 “See How They Fly”
