WiC Watches: Watchmen
Mark Hill:HBO Official
Episode 102: “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship”
This episode opens with a flashback to Will Reeves’ father fighting for the United States of America, while German propaganda falls from the sky, trying to convince servicemen of color to abandon their post and defect to Germany. (That really happened, by the way, although it was during World War II, not WWI. Maybe superheroes changed the timeline? Or historical inaccuracy, whichever.) That didn’t work out for the Nazis, but Will’s father kept the leaflet, and Will has clearly remembered it. “Protect this boy,” his father wrote.
Back in 2019, Angela Abar has arrived at the site of Judd Crawford’s hanging to find an elderly black man in a wheelchair claiming to have killed Judd himself. Obviously, Angela doesn’t believe him and takes him to the bakery she uses as a front for her life as Sister Night. She tries to interrogate the man (Louis Gossett Junior), but he just keeps repeating that it was he who strung up the Chief, impossible as that may seem.
Mark Hill:HBO Official
Of course, the rest of the Tulsa Police Department is up in arms and goes looking for revenge at a shanty-town/trailer park where known associates of the Seventh Kalvary are living. Angela cautions Red Scare against inciting violence, but he’s too wound up to stop now, and after someone throws a broken bottle at him, all hell breaks loose and the cops eventually round up everyone for questioning.
We also learn how Angela and Judd became such close friends. You see, during the first Seventh Kalvary attack on the police — before they wore masks — Angela was nearly killed and Judd was wounded. The rest of the department resigned because the Kalvary had their faces, numbers, and home addresses, and they no longer wanted to put themselves or their family at risk. And although it’s never clearly stated, it appear as if Angela and Judd rebuilt the department from the ground up, this time with officers in masks to protect their identities.
Masked Police Officers hold the line. Mark Hill:HBO Official
That night, Angela attends a memorial service for Judd and fakes a fainting spell. Once she’s left alone upstairs to rest and recover, she puts on some Nite Owl-esque infrared goggle and goes hunting for literal skeletons in her old friend Judd’s closets. That’s when she fins a Ku Klux Klan white robe and hood with a sheriff’s badge on it. Seems like Judd was harboring a very dark past.
This got me thinking: When Angela and her husband were attacked in their home during “White Night,” she killed one Kalvary member but was shot by another, who seemed to close in for the kill, but when she awoke in the hospital, it was Judd sitting with her. His wound seemed superficial at best…maybe a flesh wound or bullet graze to his arm. Is the show hinting that Chief Crawford was actually the leader of the Seventh Kalvary, or at the very least, an active member? That would explain why Will, so affected by the Tulsa Race Riots as a boy, might target him.
Sister Night 2. Mark Hill:HBO Official
Anyway, Angela gets a DNA test, and loe and behold, she’s a descendant of Will Reeves. His granddaughter, in fact. I can’t wait for that story to be explored in future episodes, but it was for sure not getting done in episode 2, because the moment Angela had him in her car, a giant magnet was lowered from some sort of hovering ship and picked the car up with Will inside and flew away. The mystery deepens.
Finally, we have Jeremy Iron’s character looking bored as his simpleton maid and butler enthusiastically watch him blow the candle out on yet another cake. What the heck is going on here? Is he repeating the same day over and over?
His servants then act out a play retelling of the events that turned Jonathan Osterman into the blue god-like being known as Doctor Manhattan, complete with vaporization. Like Jeremy Irons kills the guy.
Jeremy Irons cake. Watchmen official. Colin Hutton/HBO
But it’s big loss, because when the play is over, everyone in the play removes their masks, and we see they’re all clones of the wait staff, Ms. Crookshanks and Mr. Phillips. Irons’ character has been experimenting with something as yet unknown to us, and he’s got a whole bunch of clones he can dispose of whenever he wants. They’re all as dumb as a box of rocks, which seems to bother their master.
This was a great world-building episode. We got insight into who Will Reeves is and how he’s connected to Angela, and we got to see Irons get down to some truly kooky and heinous shit. Next week, Jean Smart makes her debut as Laurie Blake, aka Silk Specter, I think. I’m giddy with excitement for the conversations between her and Regina King.