Ozymandias may be the smartest hero in Watchmen, but he didn't pull off his master plan alone. The prequel series line Before Watchmen reveals how Adrian Veidt had the most unexpected and willing assistant in his bid to save the Earth from nuclear devastation.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal 12-issue comic series tells the story of a group of superheroes whose lives are effected after one of their own is brutally murdered. As the world is on the brink of nuclear destruction, the murder is revealed to be caused by Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, a former masked hero. Veidt killed the Comedian after he discovered Ozymandias' plans to launch a massive false-flag alien invasion in a gambit to unite the world. Despite the blood he shed to see his plans through, Ozymandias is successful at getting all hostile nations to call off nuclear war.
But it seems that Veidt actually had a surprising partner that agreed to help him see through his plan to the bitter end. In Before Watchmen: Moloch #2 by J. Michael Straczynski, John Higgins, and Eduardo Risso, the former super-criminal, Edgar Jacobi, aka Moloch, is down on his luck after being released from prison. Fortunately, Watchmen’s Ozymandias takes pity on the villain and sets him up with a job to help Edgar readjust to living a clean and honest life. Adrian gives Jacobi busy work to do in order to keep him close so Veidt can expose Edgar to radioactive materials and give him cancer in order to frame Doctor Manhattan. After Jacobi's diagnosis is made public during Jon's disastrous television interview, Veidt shows up to Edgar's apartment and reveals his plans to save the world. Shockingly, Edgar is okay with Ozymandias' plan and agrees to sacrifice himself to make it happen.
What Moloch Changes About Ozymandias' Plan
Edgar had already served his role in Watchmen by helping convince the world that Jon was giving people cancer, thus driving Manhattan off-planet so he wouldn’t interfere with Veidt’s plans. But Veidt had an issue that threatened everything he'd been planning: Roschach's investigation. Veidt needed him off the board to complete his work, but that was only going to happen if he had someone willing to help him. In a way, Moloch winds up playing one of the most crucial roles in the entire story.
Rorschach was determined to find out who the ‘mask-killer’ was and was relentlessly pestering Jacobi for information. Veidt knew that if Rorschach was blamed for killing Edgar, few would question it and the vigilante would stop being a potential threat to Ozymandias’ goals. What's fascinating is that instead of killing him outright, as previously presumed, Veidt gives Edgar the choice to help him see his plan through. Granted, Moloch's only other option is dying of cancer, but his decision to allow himself to be murdered gives Ozymandias' plan something it didn't have before: a willing sacrifice. Ozymandias' plan goes off perfectly, and he may just have this particular Watchmen character to thank.