Tom Mison (the Game Warden) explores that post-credits scene and the Watchmen finale

During the penultimate episode of Watchmen, “A God Walks into Abar,” it was revealed that Mr. Philips (Tom Mison) and Ms. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) were originally created by Doctor Manhattan on the moon of Europa. He originally fashioned them after the Lord and Lady of an English manor house where he lived in as a boy, but left them when he grew unsatisfied with their unthinking love and adoration.

Later, Manhattan sends Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandias (Jeremy Irons), to Europa as a way of rewarding him for saving the human race from a nuclear apocalypse (or at least that’s how Veidt sees it). Veidt creates multitudinous clones of Mr. Philips and Ms. Crookshanks, treating them far more harshly than Doctor Manhattan did. Eventually, the very first Mr. Phillips — known as the Game Warden — puts Veidt on trial and locks him in a dungeon for his crimes, but in a post-credits scene, Veidt manages to get his hands on a horseshoe, and…well, we’re not quite sure what he’ll do with it but he seemed pretty pleased.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Mison said he thought that post-credits scene might have been cut entirely, and found out with the rest of us that it was still in. “I’ve been really bummed out for the last six months thinking the great scene with the Game Warden and Veidt was gone. But it’s in the post-credits, and I’m so happy!”

"Except for a few of the technical bits we shot in Atlanta, all of my stuff was shot before Damon [Lindelof] had even finished writing episode one for the rest of the cast. I was only getting the full scripts after I finished shooting 80-90% of my stuff. I decided I would watch the series as a fan, rather than read the scripts."

So Lindelof wrote Adrian’s Veidt’s adventures on Europa before writing the rest of the show. Interesting.

Mison explained how he and Irons worked very hard to find the right tone for that post-credits scene. Apparently, it went through a few versions. “With that scene, we tried it in lots of different ways,” he said. “There was one attempt we tried that was almost verging on physical violence. The Game Warden was really going to go for Veidt. That didn’t seem quite right. There was another take where Jeremy was pissing himself throughout, finding it hilarious that this clone was daring to try to be human, and he found it hilarious.”

"It was a really great day. We spent a long time on that scene. When you have something like that — a creation that came out of a lake, a person who was built from scratch, musing on deities and what it is to worship… where do you even begin with that?"

In this scene, the Game Warden seems to have Adrian Veidt right where he wants him, but clearly some Phillips or Crookshanks smuggled that horseshoe into Veidt’s cake, so the game isn’t over yet.

The seven candles on the cake represent the seven years since Veidt first came to Europa. Since we know Doctor Manhattan teleported his old friend there in 2009, that means it’s 2016 at the time of Veidt’s imprisonment. Back on Earth, events are transpiring in 2019.

Theories abound as to where Veidt is “now.” The most convincing has it that he’s already on Earth. In Episode 4, we saw Lady Trieu buy a farm mere moments before an object fell from the sky. Some fans think that was Ozymandias coming back down to Earth. The statue in Lady Trieu’s atrium, which looks just like Adrian Veidt did during his trial, suggests that the two have been in contact recently. Has Veidt been in Tulsa this whole time?

The one thing we do know for sure is that either the Game Warden or an ordinary Mr. Philips will make an appearance in the final episode. “You will see me in the finale,” Mison said.

Tune in Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. EST for the show’s finale, “See How They Fly.”

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