Watchmen Theory: Ozymandias Is Trying To Recreate Doctor Manhattan

The plot of HBO's Watchmen TV series is still shrouded in secrecy, but what we've seen so far suggests that Jeremy Irons' Ozymandias could be trying to create a new Doctor Manhattan. Created by Damon Lindelof (Lost), the show takes place around thirty years after the end of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original graphic novel, in a modern-day Tulsa, Oklahoma that looks rather different from the one in our own timeline.

Doctor Manhattan was born Jonathan Osterman and later became Dr. Jonathan Osterman - a nuclear physicist who was vaporized after accidentally shutting himself inside an intrinsic field subtractor. Though at first presumed dead, he later began to manifest sporadically as a series of disturbing blue apparitions, before finally succeeding in creating himself a new body. Doctor Manhattan was effectively a walking, talking, thinking weapon of mass destruction, capable of reducing matter down to its atoms and rebuilding it in new forms. The American government wasted no time in putting him to use, sending him to Vietnam to put an end to the war within three months, and employing him in the Cold War strategy of mutually assured destruction.

At the end of Watchmen, after Ozymandias carries out his horrifying plan to transform and transcend the world (teleporting an enormous mutated squid into the middle of New York City to create the illusion of an alien invasion), Doctor Manhattan decides to leave Earth and explore the rest of the universe. With HBO's Watchmen setting up Ozymandias to return as the villain, it seems perhaps inevitably that Adrian Veidt will want to get his hands on another weapon like Doctor Manhattan - or perhaps even turn himself into one.

Jeremy Irons Is Playing An Older Ozymandias

Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias is the only character from the original Watchmen story who is confirmed to be returning for HBO's Watchmen (so far), and he will be played by veteran villain actor Jeremy Irons. In a lengthy open letter regarding his intentions for the series, Damon Lindelof said that everything that happened in the graphic novel is canon in the TV series - including Rorschach and the Comedian dying, and Doctor Manhattan leaving Earth - and that the TV show will not "retread" what happened in the original story nor be a straightforward sequel. So, don't expect to see too many familiar faces dropping by.

That being said, Lindelof's letter said that, "We also intend to revisit the past century through a surprising, yet familiar set of eyes... and it is here where we'll be taking our greatest risks." That (like much in the letter) is vague, but the "surprising, yet familiar" eyes could be Ozymandias, and this time around we could get to see the story play out more from his perspective. This wasn't really possible in the original graphic novel, because showing too much of Adrian's perspective early on would have spoiled the ending twist of him being the villain. So, if Irons' Ozymandias is more of a protagonist this time around, what is his goal?

Watchmen Footage Connects Ozymandias To Doctor Manhattan

The first footage from Watchmen doesn't give much away, but it does contain a massive clue as to what Ozymandias' plan could be. In the one shot where Irons says ominously, "It's only just begun," he is standing in front of lettering that spells out "Gila Flats 195_" - the testing facility in Arizona where Jon Osterman suffered the original accident that transformed him into Doctor Manhattan.

A set photo of a prop newspaper from Watchmen revealed that Adrian Veidt has been officially declared dead (or rather, "presumed deceased") after having not been seen by anyone for 10 years, so it's possible that the Gila Flats facility has become his new base of operations. The facility was shut down following a terrible fire and has presumably been left abandoned ever since, so it would be a fitting location for Ozymandias to turn into his new fortress - and one that would appeal to his poetic soul. Whether he has set up shop there or whether he's just visiting, there seems to be one very obvious reason why Ozymandias would want to go to Gila Flats: to recreate the set of circumstances in which Doctor Manhattan was born, and "gift" the world another godlike being.

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Doctor Manhattan played by Billy Crudup in Zack Snyder's Watchmen

Theory: Ozymandias Wants To Recreate Doctor Manhattan

The prop newspaper from Watchmen revealed more than just the fact that Adrian Veidt had been declared dead. Below that article was an intriguing headline that stated, "Intrinsic Chamber Talks Begin In Moscow" - obviously a reference to the intrinsic field subtractor that created Doctor Manhattan. If the Cold War has persisted into the 21st century in Watchmen's universe (perhaps an unintended side effect of Ozymandias' original attempt at ending it), then Russia and the United States may still be engaged in an arms race, and Russia may be planning to use an intrinsic field subtractor to try and create their own Doctor Manhattan. If that were to happen, it would radically disrupt the balance of global power, which would certainly give both the U.S. government and Ozymandias an incentive to create a new Doctor Manhattan before the Russians manage it.

To be clear, creating a superhuman being with godlike powers is not as simple as popping a person into the instrinsic field subtractor and turning it on. The initial effect of the accident was Jon Osterman's body being completely vaporized, and for most people that would likely be the only effect. Jon's rebirth as Doctor Manhattan was not an automatic process; he had to learn to rebuild his body from the atoms up, at first appearing only as ghostly apparitions of nervous and skeletal systems. It's implied that Jon was only able to do this by applying the same expertise he once used to repair watches - and his knowledge of nuclear physics probably helped as well.

So, if Ozymandias is planning to create a new Doctor Manhattan, he will need to have a very special candidate in mind... and it wouldn't be at all surprising if that candidate was himself. After all, Adrian Veidt is now approaching the tail end of his life without having achieved the seismic shift in world history he so desired, and becoming the new Doctor Manhattan would certainly be one way to cheat death and acquire unimaginable power. He's also regarded by many as the smartest man in the world, so if anyone can follow in Jon Osterman's footsteps and build a new body using knowledge and intellect alone, it's Adrian Veidt.

What This Theory Reveals About HBO's Watchmen

At the end of Watchmen, Ozymandias succeeds in his goals... in the short-term. He teleports a giant alien squid to New York City that kills half of the population. However, his belief that this would result in a "dazzling transformation" for all of mankind doesn't quite seem to have panned out, based on what we've seen of HBO's Watchmen TV series so far. There are more people wearing masks than ever, now including even police officers, and mankind seems as fraught with adversity, distrust, and hatred as ever (one of the headlines in the newspaper refers to the KKK vandalizing the Statue of Liberty). In short, Ozymandias' dreamed-of new world has not yet manifested itself.

What that means, essentially, is that Adrian Veidt's legacy is incomplete - or, to borrow his words from the trailer, "it's only just begun." It seems as though Watchmen is once again setting up Ozymandias as the villain, only this time the audience knows it from the start. The big remaining mystery, then, is who will oppose him. The brief footage we've seen so far included a shot of a new character wearing a Rorschach mask, and since the original Rorschach died because of his determination to sabotage Veidt's plan, it would be fitting for his successor to take up the same fight.

While this is just a theory for now, it would certainly be interesting for the Watchmen TV series to revisit the implications and ramifications of creating a "superman" by showing Ozymandias' efforts to do so. We don't yet know when in 2019 Lindelof's show will premiere, but hopefully HBO will be unveiling more clues soon.