Watchmen Episode 3 Review

Director: Stephen Williams
STARRING: JEAN SMART, REGINA KING, DON JOHNSON, TIM BLAKE NELSON, YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II, ANDREW HOWARD, JACOB MING-TRENT, TOM MISON, SARA VICKERS, DYLAN SCHOMBING, LOUIS GOSSETT JR. AND JEREMY IRONS

SPOILERS: There are SPOILERS for Watchmen Episode 3 in this review.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.” Watchmen Episode 3, called She Was Killed by Space Junk, is I believe some of the best television I’ve watched in a long, long time.

This episode sees the introduction of Jean Smart as Laurie Blake, a.k.a. Silk Specter II, who’s now working for the FBI’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force, which is a pretty funny joke in itself.

Silk Spectre II is now the person tasked with finding masked vigilantes and locking them up. Incidentally, the episode starts off with her doing exactly that as she undergoes a sting operation to capture a masked ‘hero’ who looks like he ripped his costume straight from Batman.

Anyway, the episode is framed by a joke that Laurie tells Dr Manhattan via a futurist phone booth which supposedly sends your recorded message directly to the blue man living on Mars.

Laurie started a joke in Watchmen Episode 3

Watchmen Episode 3 introduces Jean Smart as Laurie Blake – Credit: HBO

Read more: Watchmen Episode 1 Review

Laurie starts to tell a joke about a girl throwing a brick up in the air, and then says she messed it up and starts telling a different one instead about three familiar sounding heroes going to God after they’ve been killed and being judged on whether they can go to heaven or not.

There’s so much going on in this episode and in this joke itself. One of Damon Lindelof’s (he’s the guy that created this new HBO show) favourite themes in his previous work is whether there’s an afterlife and whether or not God would actually care about human beings.

That’s the question that Laurie is posing herself constantly whilst recording this message to her former lover. Is he really listening? Does he really care? What the f*ck is he actually doing up there on Mars.

So far Watchmen has been an incredible show, but I believe this to be the episode where people really should start to take notice of HBO’s new series.

Lindelof and his Watchmen writers are really getting into their groove

Jeremy Irons in Watchmen Episode 3 (She Was Killed By Space Junk) – Credit: HBO

Read more: Watchmen Episode 2 Review

This is where Lindelof and his team of writers are really starting to flex their creative muscles. There’s so much going on in the script.

Themes intertwined with other themes. Jokes inside jokes, and a punchline to end all punchlines. I would go as far as saying that Watchmen would be given an award for this episode alone.

Then there’s Jean Smart’s performance as Laurie Blake. She’s perfect. I love how they’ve brought in actual characters from the graphic novel and developed them even further.

The same can be said about Jeremy Irons’ Adrian Veidt, and yes, he is playing Ozymandias and we even get to see him in the classic costume, which is very much like the one in the comic book.

If there’s one thing I would say about this episode, and Watchmen as I whole, it would be that it’s a bit dark, and I mean that literally

There were some points in the episode where I found it really hard to actually see what was going on, but that’s something I can live with, and it does make it feel rather moody.

Watchmen Episode 3 could be a bit brighter

Jeremy Irons in Watchmen Episode 3 (Credit: HBO)

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It’s shot almost like a Scandewigian murder drama, and I do like that fact, but they could have made it a tad lighter.

Lighting issues aside, this episode of Watchmen (episode 3) is fantastic and is set on the glorious backdrop of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ beautiful score.

I cannot wait to see where the show goes next.

Watchmen season 1 is being aired on HBO in the US and new episodes are available to UK viewers on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV every Monday.

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