Season 1 of HBO’s Watchmen ends with Detective Angela Abar, played by Regina King, stepping onto a swimming pool to test whether or not she inherited Dr. Manhattan’s powers - and the end credits music, a cover of The Beatles’ “I am the Walrus,” all but confirms she did.
Created by David Lindelof, the Watchmen TV series picks up three decades after the 1987 comic left off. It follows the storylines of both known characters like Laurie Blake and Ozymandias, and new faces like Sister Night, Looking Glass, and Lady Trieu.
One of the most important returning characters in the show is Dr. Manhattan. In the comic, he began his life as Jon Osterman, the man who stepped into a nuclear physics experiment to retrieve a watch for his girlfriend and came out the most powerful being in the universe. Towards the end of Watchmen‘s first season, the audience finds out he has been under its nose the entire time, in the form of Angela’s husband Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Throughout the show, it is implied that his awesome power could, in theory, be transferred to another person, making him a prime target for both the Seventh Kavalry and Lady Trieu. Although both villains are ultimately defeated, the possibility of Manhattan’s power transferring to Angela remains.
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The Meaning of Watchmen’s Beatles Song
As Angela steps out onto the pool, a test she earlier talks about with Dr. Manhattan about as proof of his power, guitars strum and the audience hears the first lines of a cover of The Beatles’ 1967 hit “I am the Walrus.” The screen cuts to black before the audience gets a chance to see if she passes the test, but the answer is in the song itself: ”I am he as you are he as you are we and we are all together.“
Throughout the season, the showrunners have left a breadcrumb trail hinting at the importance of eggs. In her first conversation with Manhattan in “A God Walks Into Abar,” the blue superhero uses an egg to explain how he could, theoretically, transfer his power. Angela finds a single egg in the carton that Manhattan left behind. When she eats it, it’s strongly implies that she transfers his powers to herself, as evidenced by the end credit song lyric: “I am the eggman.”
Is The Original Dr. Manhattan Really Dead?
Manhattan dies onscreen, and in fact Manhattan says himself that this is the moment he dies. But Manhattan has died before, when he was Jon Osterman, and although it took time he managed to build himself back up. He did so again after Ozymandias attempted to destroy him, so comic readers might question why he couldn’t just as easily bring himself back in Watchmen season 2. Once again, the end credit song hints at another possibility.
“I am the Walrus” is referenced by The Beatles in a later song called “Glass Onion,” which includes the lyric: “The Walrus was Paul.” In the 1960s, a conspiracy theory proposed that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident and the man on stage was a replacement put in place to keep the Beatles alive. In the same way, Angela inheriting Dr. Manhattan’s powers could allow his presence to survive, even if Manhattan himself really is dead.
