SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "An Almost Religious Awe," the latest episode of Watchmen.
At the end of Watchmen's latest episode, Angela Abar hit her husband Cal on the head with a hammer. But the real surprise then came when she took a device out of his skull, which promptly woke up the person who was hiding inside: Doctor Manhattan.
Somehow, Cal has been the all-powerful blue god all along, without even knowing it. The trailer for the series' next episode promises answers about the nature of Angela and Manhattan's relationship will come. As it turns out, this element of the story was nearly always part of the series' plan.
"I started this whole journey from the perspective of a fan -- what would I have to see in a television show daring to call itself Watchmen?" Damon Lindelof told The Hollywood Reporter. "Dr. Manhattan was near the top of that list. But even higher was that we needed to tell a new story with a new character at the center of it. Once we landed on Angela Abar as that center, the new rule became that any legacy characters we were using (Veidt, Laurie and Hooded Justice) could only be used in service of Angela's story… she was the sun, everyone else needed to be orbiting around her."
"So how could Dr. Manhattan, a man with the power of God, be in service of Angela's story as opposed to the other way around?" Lindelof continued, before confirming the character of Cal has been a part of the series' plan almost from the get-go. "Based on his past (and all the tropes of Greco/Roman mythology), the answer was intuitive: love. We knew this relationship could only work if Manhattan took the form of a human, and so, the idea of Cal was born. And yeah, it came early. Almost from the jump."
Watchmen's eighth episode, "A God Walks Into A Bar," airs Dec. 8, and the season finale will air the following Sunday, Dec. 15.
Developed by Damon Lindelof, HBO's Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jean Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tom Mison, James Wolk, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith and Adelynn Spoon. The series airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.