Part of what makes Watchmen so fascinating is its status as a sequel set many years in the wake of the seminal graphic novel. While that means we get to examine legacy characters like Laurie Blake and Adrian Veidt in new lights, it means there’s a whole set of new people to be intrigued by—and one of them is getting a very reflective spotlight next week.
Tim Blake Nelson’s Detective Looking Glass (real name Wade Tillman, as we learned last week) has all the trappings of potentially being the show’s new Rorschach, if Watchmen’s new Rorschach wasn’t the legion, frightening, and extremely racist Seventh Kavalry already. He has the mask—albeit much shinier—and the distrust of society to match, but there’s something all the more disconcerting about what he gets up to in his interrogation pod for the Tulsa PD than even his similarly masked predecessor could ever muster.
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We got glimpses in last night’s episode, the aptly-named “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own.” Tillman lives in a bunker, tinged in the red lights of his underground abode as he prepares photographs of the bizarre alt-dimensional squids that just so happen to fall out of the sky every now and then in the wake of Ozymandias’ grand deceit. When he’s at work, he barely takes his mask off even to eat, and when he’s at home, he seems just as reserved and panicky to be in any kind of conversation (even ones that don’t involve Regina King showing up at his doorstep with concerning revelations about their deceased chief of police).
But now that HBO’s previewed next week’s episode—“Little Fear of Lightning”—it seems like we’re getting to spend a hell of a lot more time with Mr. Tillman. Alternate Dimension therapy groups? The hunt for the Kavalry continuing? Veidt up to some more weird attempts to escape his bizarre prison? That’s all well and good, but the sense of dread that pervades this preview’s narration from Tillman, whether it’s the therapy group’s chant, or his thoughts on tunnels is what’s really exciting.
Slide me into all of this esoteric weirdness like that slippy guy went through that street drain. This could be Watchmen’s most intriguing episode yet.
