HBO’s Watchmen Poster Gave Away The Big Twist (And We All Missed It)

HBO’s Watchmen blew fans’ minds with its latest gigantic twist, but the clues were there all along in the series’ promotional poster – and everyone missed it. Watchmen episode 7, “An Almost Religious Awe”, concluded with the reveal that Doctor Manhattan has been on the show since the beginning, in the form of Cal Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the husband of Detective Angela Abar aka Sister Night (Regina King). But it turns out Watchmen had cleverly sprinkled numerous clues to this shocker all along, starting with the poster.

Fans had come to accept that Doctor Manhattan was a peripheral presence in Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen; although the trailers indicated he would be seen on Earth at some point, there was no reason to suspect he was hiding in plain sight. Unlike Adrian Veidt, the former Ozymandias (Jeremy Irons), and Laurie Blake, the former Silk Spectre (Jean Smart), it was generally assumed the blue god-like being wouldn’t be a main character in Watchmen‘s primary plot about the war between the masked police and the Seventh Kavalry in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In fact, Watchmen consistently stated that Doctor Manhattan was living on Mars and had since 11/2/85, so there wasn’t really a reason for fans to suspect otherwise. But it turns out Watchmen‘s only superhuman is indeed integral to the series: the 7K/Cyclops white supremacist cult plan to kill him, steal his powers, and gift them to themselves. Not only did the 7K learn Doctor Manhattan was living on Tulsa posing as a human, but Angela’s grandfather Will Reeves aka Hooded Justice (Louis Gossett Jr.) also knew, and told Lady Trieu (Hong Chau). Of course, Angela already knew and had been maintaining the deception all along, leaving the fans as the last to find out.

Incredibly, Watchmen‘s poster gives away the Doctor Manhattan twist, but no one suspected it. The promotional image depicts an unmasked Sister Night standing in front of a doomsday clock. The poster utilizes Watchmen‘s two signature primary colors, blue and yellow, with Sister Night covered in blue in front of the yellow clock. However, the blue actually represents the glow emitted by Doctor Manhattan, which Angela was bathed in at the end of Watchmen episode 7 after she “killed” Cal and plucked the metallic hydrogen atom symbol from his forehead, releasing Doctor Manhattan from his human shell.

Additionally, the clock behind Sister Night represents the Millennium Clock, the device Lady Trieu built to “save humanity“, which involves stopping Cyclops’ plot to imbue Doctor Manhattan’s powers to an army of white supremacists. Without the proper context that comes with watching the series, Watchmen‘s poster is merely a striking image that integrates the graphic novel’s famous iconography with the TV series’ main character, but now that fans know what Watchmen is really about, it’s stunning how boldly the poster announces its epic swerve – and fans never suspected.

Amazingly, the Watchmen poster simultaneously drops the series’ other big twist as well: that Will Reeves is Hooded Justice. The fact that Sister Night is mask-less with only the black makeup covering the area around her eyes symbolically links her to the young Will Reeves (Jovan Adepo), who painted the area around his eyes white to fool everyone into thinking Hooded Justice is Caucasian, a ruse that worked for decades. This is another reveal that fans could never suspect without the proper context that came in the sensational Watchmen episode 6, “This Extraordinary Being”. It merely seemed like the Watchmen poster wanted to highlight the series’ star, Regina King, by not hiding her face, which is perfectly logical from a marketing standpoint.

Watchmen‘s creators should be commended for maintaining their twists so effectively, and for how brashly they integrated it all into the show’s marketing materials without anyone ruining the surprises. The Watchmen poster’s secrets laid bare only further proves how well-crafted and intriguingly complex the series is. Fans are now primed to see how it all ties together in Watchmen‘s final episodes,  episode 8 and episode 9, the season 1 finale.

Watchmenairs Sundays @ 9pm on HBO.

About The Author