On December 15th, the finale to HBO's Watchmen series aired, concluding the first and possibly the only season. At the time of this article being written, Damon Lindelof, the show's writer and producer has said he has not felt the necessary "spark" to create a second season as he got with the first.
This show personally hooked me for its entire airtime, having me waiting each week for the next episode with bated breath. I'd heard the name Watchmen before, being a comic nerd, but I never truly knew what it was. After hearing that it is meant to serve as a direct sequel to the comic series Watchmen (not the movie), and watching the first couple of episodes, I started to read the twelve issues of Watchmen that inspired the show to exist.
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic series released in 1986, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons. It takes place in an alternate America, wherein the 1940's, costumed vigilantes became somewhat of a cultural fad and even a societal norm continuing even into 1985 when the series takes place. Also in this alternate history, Richard Nixon remained president for five terms and nuclear annihilation via the United States and Russia going to war is imminent.
Despite that, there are no real extraordinary elements about the Watchmen world. Meaning, that none of the aforementioned costumed vigilantes had any sort of superpowers. That is...except for one. And he got all the superpowers.
The one I'm referring to is, of course, Dr. Manhattan; my favorite character in the Watchmen universe. In 1959, Jon Osterman, a man with a Ph.D. in atomic physics who went to work at a military testing facility in Gila Flats, New Mexico, where they are doing experiments with objects "intrinsic fields." He becomes accidentally locked in a time-locked test vault that attempts to separate objects from their intrinsic fields. He has literally been torn apart at the atoms. After reconstructing himself, he becomes the all-powerful blue being that the marketing department calls Dr. Manhattan. A news anchor utters the phrase, "The superman exists, and he's American."
His origin story is the most comic-book thing of all time, but this was probably intentional on Alan Moore's part, as Watchmen is meant to be a satire on comic-book superheroes and their tropes.
In addition to essentially having the powers of a god, he can also see and experience every moment of his (now never-ending) life at the same time. He can literally be in two moments at the exact same time, past, present, or future. However, he is powerless to change any of it. He says, "I can't prevent the future. To me, it's already happening." This, in a way, is meant to represent the audience as well. We are looking at all the panels of a comic book page at the same time, and if we have previously read the story, we can be in any moment of it we want, whenever we want.
This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Manhattan's character. Because despite all of his other powers and abilities, he still has very human flaws. He is, in a sense, almost beyond human morality, because he is no longer really human. But, he is still as powerless to change the future, just like any other human being. He even keeps the form of a naked blue man, when surely he could take any form he pleased. He has simply accepted that "everything is predetermined, even [his] responses" and that he too is a puppet, like everyone else. He is, by his own admission, "just a puppet who can see the strings."
Dr. Manhattan is my favorite Watchmen character because he challenges me to think about the bigger picture of life and what we call time. Who is truly to decide what is right and what is wrong? Are all things truly predetermined as it is in the Watchmen universe, or is it constantly changing chaos? "Which came first: the chicken or the egg? The answer appears to be both, at exactly the same time."
