WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Watchmen Episode 8, "A God Walks Into Abar," which premiered Sunday on HBO.
On a series filled with mysteries, from who murdered Judd Crawford to what's the deal with the squid showers, none captured the attention of Watchmen viewers from the very beginning quite like where Adrian Veidt is and, more importantly, why. While the fifth episode identified his otherworldly prison as Europa, one of Saturn's moons, such details as who sentenced him there were eclipsed by revelations like Will Reeves' true identity and, the big shocker, that Angela Abar's husband Cal is actually Doctor Manhattan.
However, with this week's episode, the shamelessly titled "A God Walks Into Abar," we learn, just as Veidt did, that one man's heaven is another man's hell. Occasionally disorienting, the episode is constructed to approximate how Manhattan experiences time -- past, present and future, simultaneously -- and shifts among 2009 Saigon, 1985 Europa, 1938 England, 2009 Antarctica, 2009 New York City and, finally, present-day Tulsa. We see Manhattan's first meeting with Angela (Regina King), in a Saigon bar on Victory Over Vietnam Day, when plenty of people paint themselves blue, and learn how the omnipotent being came to take the form of the late Calvin Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
While those scenes give Watchmen's first season the underpinning of a love story, they also depict the genesis of Veidt's Europa "prison,' intended by Doctor Manhattan as a Garden of Eden, and Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) and Ms. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) as a new Adam and Eve. He molded them in the image of the kindly couple who took in him, his father and other European refugees in 1938, and shaped paradise after their country estate. You see, Manhattan left Earth in 1985, but not for Mars; those images were a ruse. Instead, he played creator on Europa, where he was viewed as a god. But when he returned to Earth, and found love, his Adam and Eve had no one. Enter Adrian Veidt.
More than two decades after he saved the planet from nuclear destruction by teleporting a giant, squid-like "alien" into Manhattan, Veidt (Jeremy Irons) is isolated in his Antarctic retreat, Karnak, orchestrating periodic "squid showers" to maintain world peace, and lamenting the population isn't aware of what he did. Sure, he caused the death of 3 million people, but he ensured the survival of Earth; however, hardly anyone knows. He put this byzantine plan into motion to ensure a utopia, but he doesn't know whether he'll ever see it.
Paying a visit to his former friend and rival for the first time in 24 years, Manhattan, in his human form, discovers each has something the other wants: Veidt has a device -- the symbol Angela gruesomely removed from Cal's skull -- that will short-circuit Manhattan's memory, allowing him to forget who he is and what he can do, and effectively live as a human. In exchange, Manhattan has the handmade utopia that Veidt craves, populated by "beings who are designed to care for others instead of themselves." All his Adam and Eve want is to please and adore him, which Manhattan finds unsatisfying. But that's exactly what Veidt wants -- or at least thinks he wants.
The revelation that Veidt asked to be transported to this "paradise" -- as opposed to being sentenced there as some kind of punishment -- completely changes how we view his scenes on Europa (and provides us with a concrete timeline). Veidt was never intended to be a prisoner, although he certainly became one; he was, in effect, a replacement god. However, by the end of his first year in this utopia, as we saw in the premiere episode, he'd already become bored with this existence, which soon turned him into a cruel, benevolent god. He began to destroy his worshipers -- his clone servants -- first for amusement, then in escape attempts, and then in fits of rage.
This also colors the behavior of his servants as they turn on him, in the absurd, year-long trial and then, in the post-credits scene of this episode, in their humiliation of him as they try to make him say that he will stay. They already lost one god, Doctor Manhattan, and they don't appear willing to lose a second.
To that end, Veidt is locked in a prison within a prison, where he's visited by the mysterious Game Warden, revealed to be the original Adam, formed by Manhattan from the waters of Europa. We're left to wonder how the Game Warden's role evolved (he doesn't appear to be have placed in a jailer position by Manhattan), but as he brings in a cake with seven candles -- one for each year of Veidt's stay on Europa -- it's obvious any awe or adoration he might have once felt for this "god" faded long ago.
"Why is heaven not enough?" he asks Veidt, who responds, "This is not my home," before crafting a fantasy in which his "eight million children" are "undoubtedly standing in their cribs, crying out in desperation for me to return."
Indeed, no heaven, whether the one on Europa or that imagined on Earth, will be enough for Adrian Veidt. For him, nothing ever ends, and nothing is ever enough.
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.