Watchmen – Season 1 Episode 9 (The Finale) Recap & Review

A Single Egg

The second half of Watchmen’s first season has really stepped up its game these past few weeks. Between some gorgeous, stylish segments and much-needed answers to the overarching mystery, all of this culminates in a decent finale, one that rounds things out nicely and ends the show with style – including a lovely ambiguous ending.

We begin with Adrian recording a message for the future President. A woman posing as a cleaner breaks into his office and hacks the safe, injecting herself with a sample while cursing Ozymandias. In 2008 Dr Trieu arrives and thanks Ozymandias for his efforts in stopping the cold war. As they talk, she goes on to mention Dr Manhattan and how she plans to take his powers and right the wrongs in the world. The conversation ends with him vowing to never call her daughter.

Back in the present, Adrian escapes from his cell in the estate and watches as a ship lands on the planet. The gamekeeper arrives and shoots Adrian but he catches the bullet and kills the man as they wrestle. The rocket launches into space and as it does, the words “Save Me Daughter” are spelt out on the planet’s surface.

Back at Trieu’s headquarters, she greets her Father and tells him they’re on the verge of killing Dr Manhattan. This catches us up with Agent Blake who finds herself in the midst of Cyclops headquarters, still tied to the chair, with Looking Glass posing as one of the cavalry. Promising to let her go, before he can action this Dr Manhattan appears in a white cell in the room, prompting the Senator to start his experiment.

Before he can jump in the cell and start however, Angela arrives and warns them that Trieu has been planning this all along. He ignores her though and after flicking the switch, a shockwave descends over the room and the Senator turns into a mass of blood and guts. Trieu arrives and addresses the room, going on to nonchalantly vaporize all the onlookers.

The oozing blood acts as a transmitter for Dr Manhattan, who manages to teleport Agent Blake, Looking Glass and Adrian to the latter’s headquarters but keeps Angela behind; he doesn’t want to be alone when he dies. As he fades from existence, his last words are “I love you Angela”.

Meanwhile, Adrian rushes to save the day (again) while Trieu turns the machine on and prepares to ascend to God-like status. Before she can however, the sky rains down squid. Angela rushes for cover in the movie theatre while outside, Trieu is crushed by the large floating orb. As Angela walks further inside, Will happens to be sitting in the front row.

Looking Glass and Agent Blake turn on Adrian after he saves the world, knocking him out with a spanner and arresting him. As they do, Angela and Will reappear from the theatre with her children, looking out at the wreckage as they head home.

After putting the kids to bed, Angela cleans up the broken eggs in the kitchen but finds a single egg inside the egg-box. Dr Manhattan’s words about transferring his powers to organic matter float in the air as Angela realizes that may well be what he’s done. Stepping outside, she consumes the contents and prepares to step on the water… where we end the series.

Much like Inception, I love a good ambiguous ending. Watchmen was always going to be a tricky series to wrap up in a compelling way without dumping a fair amount of exposition but the show does well to end things on a suitably satisfying note. Most of the story threads are wrapped up at the end here and the slow-burn open to this series certainly rewards those who have persevered with this and stuck it out for the later segments.

Watchmen is a classic example of a show that benefits from a binge-watch rather than a single episode every week. Given the first 2 or 3 episodes have meandered along with seemingly little direction, it’s only in hindsight that these bites of foreshadowing and scene setting actually complement the plot but this isn’t initially clear with a single episode at a time.

Thankfully, Watchmen bows out with a decent finale and with plenty of scope for fans to debate whether Angela has adopted Dr Manhattan’s powers or not, this is one that many people are likely to discuss in the near future for quite some time.