Warning: SPOILERS for Watchmen Episode 8.
The Doctor Manhattan-centric Watchmen episode 8, "A God Walks Into A Bar", teased an intriguing possibility: Are Adrian Veidt's servants on Europa actually clones of his parents? The true nature of Veidt's butler Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) and maid Ms. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) was revealed back in Watchmen episode 2; there are multiple clones of Phillips and Crookshanks and they exist only to loyally serve their master Ozymandias. But there may be an even greater link between Veidt, Phillips, and Crookshanks and, for that matter, Veidt and Doctor Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
Watchmen episode 8 clarified that the clones were the new lifeforms created by Doctor Manhattan in the years between the graphic novel and TV series but he abandoned them to return to Earth; instead, he teleported Adrian Veidt to the paradise he created and Manhattan's clones gladly accepted Ozymandias as their master. Based on the number of candles on Veidt's anniversary cake, which his servants prepare for him every year, Adrian has lived on Europa for 7 years and has been actively trying to escape his idyllic prison for about 5 years. Veidt cares nothing for his cloned helpers; he calls them "simpletons" and Adrian ruthlessly massacred them before catapulting their corpses outside of his haven, where he used their bodies to spell out an SOS. Veidt was captured by the clone in charge of Europa, the Game Warden, who was the original Phillips clone Manhattan built; Ozymandias was tried by the clones and imprisoned for the crime of trying to leave paradise (although one of the clones secretly gave Veidt the means to escape his cell in Watchmen episode 8's post-credits scene).
But the inspiration behind Doctor Manhattan's clones could tie into Adrian Veidt's origin story as well and the possibility exists that the blue super being is playing a cosmic joke on his old colleague/adversary because of who the original people were that the quantum-powered demigod based Phillips and Crookshanks on.
Phillips And Crookshanks Are Based On Real People
As Doctor Manhattan told Detective Angela Abar AKA Sister Night (Regina King) at their first meeting in 2009 Vietnam, when he was a little boy named Jon Osterman, he and his father Hans fled Nazi Germany in 1936. They took refuge in a country manor house in England where Jon met the (unnamed) Lord and Lady of the manor, who kindly gifted him his first Bible and introduced the idea of Genesis and "creating something beautiful" in his young mind. The Lord and Lady were altruistic people who helped many Europeans escape the threat of fascism to America.
The British Lord and Lady left a lasting impression on Jon and 7 decades later, as Doctor Manhattan, he modeled the clones on Europa after them - but the superhuman hoped to make them "better" than humans by designing Phillips and Crookshanks to care only for others and not themselves. This made them ideal servants but not very interesting or challenging as people - a definite flaw in Doctor Manhattan's design.
Are Phillips And Crookshanks Veidts?
But could the Lord and Lady of the manor actually be Adrian Veidt's parents? The timeline of Watchmen's past synchs up: Jon and Hans Osterman arrived in America in 1939, the same year that Adrian Veidt was born. Even more curiously, Jon initially "met" the Lord and Lady when he accidentally watched their lovemaking so we know they were actively trying to conceive a child. If the Lord and Lady were Veidt's parents then it's fitting that young Jon, the future Doctor Manhattan, was present for Adrian's birth (or at least conception), because Ozymandias was born in 1939, the same year Jon emigrated to America.
Working against this theory are the known facts about Adrian Veidt: His parents were German immigrants named Freidrich Warner Veidt and Ingrid Renata Veidt but the Lord and Lady were British. However, plenty of the British upper class in the 19th and early 20th century were actually of German descent (including Queen Victoria and the current Royal House of Windsor) and the Lord and Lady of the manor could be no different. The Lord and Lady could very well be the Veidt family who also emigrated to America in 1939 as World War II began.
So, did Doctor Manhattan actually trap Veidt 390-million miles from Earth with doppelgangers of his parents? In turn, was Veidt's wholesale slaughter of the clones and his intense desire to escape possibly driven, at least in part, by resentment against his parents? As cold and distant as he can be, Doctor Manhattan is capable of laughter and can appreciate a cosmic joke, which is as much a cornerstone of Watchmen as thermodynamic miracles.
Watchmen's season 1 finale airs Sunday, December 15 @ 9pm on HBO.