Watchmen – Little Fear of Lightning Review

Remember a few weeks back, when Laurie Blake told Angela Abar that people put on masks in response to some sort of trauma – usually from their childhood or youth? Well, while we may still be waiting to discover why Angela is drawn to her particular masked persona, we definitely understand just what made Wade Tillman take on the mantle of Looking Glass. And boy, was that a hell of an origin story.

Deep dives into characters have become a hallmark of Damon Lindelof’s television work (Lost turned them into art and The Leftovers did its best work when one or two characters were the focus of an episode), and it appears Watchmen is no exception. We’ve gotten several episodes with POV characters, but the one’s looking at Laurie or Angela also contained important revelations about the greater world of the series. “Little Fear of Lightning” certainly filled in the blanks regarding the world of the series, but it was very much limited to Wade’s personal experience. We saw the psychic squid attack, but only through Wade’s eyes (which made it all the more traumatic).* We learned how the survivors of the attack coped with their experience, but only through Wade’s own mechanisms. We learned just why Wade selected his masked persona, and how it related to that trauma he experienced – and the trauma the world experienced. It was a tragedy in three acts.

*You can find out more about the events of the squid attack – including Laurie’s role in trying to stop it – through the original graphic novel or just googling, but in addition to plopping down in Midtown Manhattan and crushing some folk, the psychic scream is what was responsible for killing the vast majority of the 3 million people who died. The nightmare-like images that flashed through the minds of the survivors continued to haunt them for years after – the Reflectetine allegedly keeps the residual nightmares at bay (and protects the mind from future attacks of the same nature). It’s a pretty horrific thing to have survived and the scars are always there, even if they can’t be seen from the outside – another metaphor in an episode full of them.

So, Wade continues to be stuck in the past, unable to move beyond the what he experienced on 11/2. It infects every facet of his life: home (which is an end of the world survivalist paradise), work (his masked character relates, in every way, to that single moment in Hoboken), his romantic possibilities (lost his wife because he couldn’t get past his trauma, picked up a woman – played by the always excellent Paula Malcomson – who plays him like a fiddle because she knows his trauma). It’s a pretty classic tale twisted just enough to make it feel new. Lindelof and Carly Wray meticulously craft the story so that it never feels heavy-handed; rather, we genuinely feel each new hit that comes Wade’s way. It’s also a credit to Tim Blake Nelson that we care about Wade at the end of things, even after he’s betrayed Angela. This is something Wade didn’t choose lightly – but it’s something that makes complete sense with the man we’ve seen the entire episode. He puts on a decent front – he’s capable at both of his jobs, but he lets just enough slip through the cracks in his hard shell (a crack in the image of the capable man he projects outwardly). I’m legitimately worried for him, based on the four Seventh Kalvary guys heading directly to his house packing some serious heat at the close of the episode.

But, on a macro level, Wade is the quintessential symbol for what Watchmen is trying to dive into. He’s a living embodiment of the past, that reflects into the present at every turn. He assumed he could move on and put the actions of the past behind him, yet they spill over into his present life on a daily basis (which, to spell it out, is exactly what has happened with Tulsa’s own tragic past). Mirrors saved his life once and now the mirrored Reflectetine continues to protect him from everything around him, threats both legitimate (the Seventh Kalvary) and imagined (psychic attacks). While he may go by Looking Glass (which, of course, is just another term for a mirror), Laurie’s sarcastic choice of Mirror Guy is really the more accurate name.

Mirrors are interesting because they reflect back what they see. They show us their truth (which is different than THE truth), and we are forced to grapple with how that truth impacts us. Wade has spent 30 plus years running from the truth, and now that he’s been forced to reckon with it, he’s a broken man. It’s a tragedy of the past, present, and future. Senator Keene Jr. knew exactly this when he hand-picked Wade to be the one to betray Angela. Wade thought his mask could protect him from everyone and everything out there. Instead, it delineated him as the perfect mark. A man who cannot escape his past trauma is doomed to drown in it. And that’s exactly what happened here.

Final Thoughts:

— Wade is many things in the episode, but he is, at his heart, still that scared, weak young man that entered the fun house in Hoboken. Wearing a mask doesn’t change that. And while this episode really gets into the trauma behind the mask, it also highlights several character elements that have been hiding in plain sight. For one, Looking Glass “breaks” prisoners in his orb, but unlike Sister Night (who really breaks prisoners), most of the heavy lifting is done by the images within the orb and not Looking Glass. So, we’ve seen since his initial appearance that Wade lacks the ability to really delve into trauma or the psychological impact of his work. He’s hands off – he observes and experiences things but doesn’t get his hands dirty in all of it, which, is exactly how he lives his life outside of the precinct as well. It’s also how he betrays Angela in the end of the episode. Lots of interesting things about Wade came into focus this episode.

— Now onto this week’s Stories with Adrian Veidt episode: We found out that Veidt is living in a simulation on a moon of Jupiter. At least that’s what all the evidence suggests. Who put him there (Doctor Manhattan is the only person we know who can withstand space, but I suspect Lady Trieu might have something to do with this) and why was he exiled (one assumes it has something to do with the squid attack)? His message of “Save Me” made with the clone bodies was a genius move (we should expect that from a genius, after all), as it appeared right when the Juno satellite took a shot of the moon.

— For someone who went to pretty great lengths to stop Veidt from dropping the squid into Manhattan, Laurie appears pretty nonchalant when discussing the awful aftereffects suffered by the survivors. The key word there is, of course, appears. Laurie has plenty of her own trauma to work through, but I suspect she holds some residual guilt over her role in what happened in Manhattan. Not that she would ever show it.

— Senator Keene Jr. leading the Seventh Kalvary makes complete sense. First, of course he would want to try and control the levels of violence within Tulsa, as it can only hurt him if things get out of hand (or help him if there’s a flare up he helps put down). Plus, he’s an asshole white man in Oklahoma, as Wade said last week, of course he’s racist. The reveal that Judd Crawford knew of this and was also manipulating the police force in kind was also hardly a shock. The real question is how much Keene Jr. actually believes in the Seventh Kalvary (and how much Judd did as well)? Once we get an answer there, his motives become far more interesting. Sending four guys to, presumably, kill Wade at the end of the episode suggests he’s more invested in building up the Kalvary than he indicated.

— James Wolk is the perfect actor for a role like Senator Keene Jr. Just that smarmy smirk . . . it’s perfection.

— Whatever the Seventh Kalvary has planned for that teleportation window is not of the good, right? It can’t be.

— Nostalgia pills. Well, they weren’t a thing in the graphic novel, but they certainly seem to be powerful. And Angela downed a whole bottle. I suspect next week’s episode will be quite the journey for us all.