After numerous references to the character throughout the first six episodes of Watchmen, last weekend’s ‘An Almost Religious Awe’ ended with the reveal that Doctor Manhattan has actually been with us from the very start of the series, having taken on the form of Angela Abar’s (Regina King) husband Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
And, with Sunday’s penultimate episode ‘A God Walks Into A Bar’ set to delve into the backstory of Angela and ‘Cal’, showrunner Damon Lindelof has been chatting to THR about how the Doctor Manhattan story line came to be:
“I started this whole journey from the perspective of a fan — what would I have to see in a television show daring to call itself Watchmen? Doctor Manhattan was near the top of that list. But even higher was that we needed to tell a new story with a new character at the center of it. Once we landed on Angela Abar as that center, the new rule became that any legacy characters we were using (Veidt, Laurie and Hooded Justice) could only be used in service of Angela’s story. She was the sun, everyone else needed to be orbiting around her.
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“So how could Doctor Manhattan, a man with the power of God, be in service of Angela’s story as opposed to the other way around? Based on his past (and all the tropes of Greco-Roman mythology), the answer was intuitive … love. We knew this relationship could only work if Manhattan took the form of a human, and so, the idea of Cal was born. And yeah, it came early. Almost from the jump.”
What did you make of the Doctor Manhattan reveal? What are your theories for the final two episodes of the season? let us know in the comments below or tweet us @FlickeringMyth…
Watchmen stars Regina King (The Leftovers), Jeremy Irons (Justice League), Don Johnson (Miami Vice), Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk), Louis Gossett Jr. (Iron Eagle), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman), Adelaide Clemens (Rectify), Andrew Howard (Truth or Dare), Tom Mison (Sleepy Hollow), Frances Fisher (Titanic), Jacob Ming-Trent (White Famous), Sara Vickers (Endeavour), Dylan Schombing (Sharp Objects), James Wolk (Tell Me a Story), Lily Rose Smith (The Vampire Diaries), Jean Smart (Legion), Hong Chau (Downsizing) and Dustin Ingram (Sun Records).
