Shortly after this episode aired, I got a text from Multiversity founder/Marveling at the Movies co-host Matthew Meylikhov, that said, and I quote, “Holy fuck. What an episode.” I concur. Let’s dig in.
This week’s title is an excerpt from a Jules Verne quote: “If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.”
1. The past
This episode, more than any other, is reliant on two different scenes that take place in 1985. The first is the opening of the episode, which is a flashback to Wade Tillman, aka Looking Glass, in Hoboken on November 2nd. This scene is heartbreaking for Wade, as his sincerity and naiveté combine with a flawed approach and hormonal realities and, well, his world falls apart. When he’s left naked in a hall of mirrors, you get the impression that walking outside and having to explain to his pastor and his fellow missionaries what happened would ruin his life.
Instead, his life is, maybe not ruined, but changed forever, by him being in that funhouse at that exact moment. The humiliation he felt was shortly replaced when everyone he traveled with was killed, indirectly, by Veidt. But he didn’t walk away unscathed, as he would be dealing with the realities of that day up until the day that we met him.
The other scene from 1985 is Veidt’s video message to President Redford, which he recorded on Halloween 1985. This answers one of the biggest questions of the show thus far: what does the world know about November 2? Well, it turns out, they don’t know much more than they did on November 3rd. As far as they know, a giant squid came through a dimensional rift, and killed millions of people. This video also confirms Veidt’s continued influence on the world, even until today. He briefly mentions in the video the concept of the squidfalls as being necessary to keep the ruse up.
All of this helps this particular episode feel the most “Watchmen”-y of the bunch, after “She Was Killed By Space Junk” previously holding that distinction. Yet, at the same time, there is very little happening in this episode that really connects to the comic. We are getting such a new story here that the comic connections, though important, are taking a backseat. And that’s the way it should be.
2. A clear picture of Wade’s life
There are a lot of aspects to Wade’s character that get fleshed out in this episode, and each of them comes back, in some way, to November 2nd. We see a failed marriage, caused in part because of the insecurities of that day, both from the Squid and having his pants stolen by a cute punk girl. We see a bombshelter of a home, even when he’s above ground. He’s eating cold canned beans, which is basically survival food (and a very, very obvious Rorschach reference), he’s living his life doing additional squid drills, and wearing reflectaline all the time.
We also see how his ability to read people is so important to him, as that inability is what led to his trauma in the mirror house. Although, as it is revealed later in this episode, maybe women who are showing him the slightest bit of interest are his blindspot to his exceptional powers of observation.
But the part of his life that I found most fascinating was the support group he runs. First of all, as I go into on the podcast, I loved all the twists on traditional Alcoholics Anonymous that we see: “A friend of Bill W.” becomes “A friend of Nemo.” The Serenity Prayer is replaced by a mantra of being in the only dimension that matters right now.
When Wade sees the video of Veidt, it invalidates his fears, but not his experience. He was still in Hoboken on November 2nd. But for some of these other folks, it would literally rip away a huge part of who they are. The support group may not seem that important, based on screen time, but they are the perfect representation of how the world would feel if a giant lie like this were to ever get out.
Continued below3. Pop culture in a post-Squid world
There is a lot in this show that hints at pop culture, but this is the first time we’ve got a sense of how entertainment was effected by November 2nd.
Note: Peteypedia and the liner notes of the first volume of the vinyl soundtrack have way more on this, so dig into that stuff if you like.
I’ll get to the more important part in a bit, but when Wade is at his ‘cover’ job, he’s watching the ‘New York is back!’ commercial, and we see Michael Imperioli, clearly playing himself, talking about eating squid with lemon and marinara sauce. It’s a funny moment, but it got me thinking about Imperioli in this world. Now, obviously none of this matters, so shut up, but do you think The Sopranos exists in a post-Squid world? I feel like most New York/New Jersey/Connecticut pop culture would be so different, that I’m not sure if, even 14 years later, there would be a show like that.
But what does exist in this world is Pale Horse, Stephen Spielberg’s film about November 2nd. The way it is described is pretty much exactly how he made Schindler’s List, in black and white with one red item popping off the screen. This led me to start thinking about how and if certain past tragedies would be viewed in light of the Squid. Obviously, this wouldn’t negate the Holocaust, for instance, but it did take Spielberg away from making a film about it, and instead focusing on a November 2nd film. In a more contemporary example, I wonder how much Holocaust-inspired art didn’t get produced after September 11th, because that was a more modern and, in some ways, relatable situation. An outside attack, where you can point to a small group of people being at its core, is much easier to work your mind around than realizing that our entire world essentially let Hitler do what he wanted to do, until it was too late.
Veidt talked about how this would save the world by uniting it in one mission, and Pale Horse seems like an anecdotal, but really well stated example of how, at least for a little while, it worked.
4. Checking in at the castle, part 5: Moonshot
So, this week, we see Veidt fly through the void and land on a moon. There isn’t a ton of consensus on what planet the moon was orbiting, but I’ve seen folks say Jupiter, and I’ve also heard folks say Mars. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s a fucking moon, and that’s crazy. Veidt is incredibly smart, duh, and so he has given his ‘mission’ on the moon a lot of thought, and he is taking the frozen, dead bodies of his servants and turning them into a message. A message that reads “Save Me D” and then we don’t see the end of the message. Dr. Manhattan? Droids? Druids? Deftones? Who knows.
But the important part is that a satellite picks up what he has done. The implications of that are unknown at the moment, but it appears that this is the first time that Veidt has been able to do any sort of communicating with the outside world for 4 years.
5. The big twist
So, Wade gets hosed by the lady at the support group, and he stumbles into her trap to bring him to the 7th Kavalry HQ. Here, it is revealed that Keane is ‘leading’ the 7K, and he very much takes a “I’m not really one of them” position, and he claims that Judd knew what was going on, and that he and Judd were working ‘together’ to keep the peace. Obviously, he is trying to manipulate Wade, but it is somewhat unclear just what he’s exactly trying to do here. He says he is ‘setting him free,’ but that’s sort of horseshit. He is using Wade to get to Angela, which works, but it’s more than just that. He has the resources to get to Angela on his own, but wants Wade to be the one to do it.
Then again, he then sends the 7K after Wade following his role being finished, so maybe this was just a way to take two of the better detectives off the board.
Continued belowI’m not sure how I feel about the show introducing an overarching big villain, but as the aforementioned Matt Meylikhov keeps telling me, this is a remix of the original, and so there needs to be a Veidt-esque character pulling the strings. However, that leads me into…
Three Big Questions:
1. Is Keane the Veidt of this show, or is Trieu?
It seems like the show is telling us that Keane, Judd, and the 7K are on one side, and Trieu and Will are on the other of some sort of grand chess match. I’m likely simplifying things quite a bit, but there are also a lot of similarities between what is happening. Both Trieu and Keane speak about something happening in ‘a couple of days.’ Both have very different public and private identities. Both seem to think they are doing the ‘right’ thing.
Could they both be Veidt-ish?
2. Could Vedit and Trieu still be in cahoots?
I saw my pal/occasional Multiversity contributor Benjaming Birdie tweet out a theory that Trieu saw Veidt’s message, and that it is him that we see crashing into the Clarks’ farm in the start of “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own.” I really like this theory, and am made I didn’t think of it before.
But we know that Trieu took over his company, and we know that she reveres him. But she also knows what he looks like as an older man; could this be why? We don’t know when Veidt’s story takes place; what if this all happened a few years ago? And they have been in contact since?
3. Is the Game Warden a Mr. Phillips?
We haven’t had a really clear look at the Game Warden; is he a Phillips? Is he the original Phillips? Is he just acting out a role that Veidt invented for him, too?
