You haven't seen every episode of watchmen yet. Please turn this off. Especially the tenth episode need to see the tenth episode. There's no tenth episode but there are nine incredible episodes. Make sure you've watched all them and I think think also if you haven't listened to the first two episodes of this podcast definitely worth a listen to before we get to this one. We are going to be unpacking everything we are going going to be analyzing everything we're going to be talking about the big finish now. I can just jump to the end if you want. I could just go right to them and start saying okay. Does this this meanness does. This mean this but I'm not going to do that. I I will eventually get to those but I like to UNWRAP. These gifts. Slowly are three episodes that we're covering here episode. Seven eight and nine nine are entitled an almost religious. Aw a god walks into a bar and the final episode. See how they fly. The series stories managed to throw dozens and dozens and dozens of balls into the air. And not only did they all land beautifully but everything turned out to be intentional. Everything had purpose. Everything added up and that is Beautiful it's a beautiful thing when the equation balances out and you know. I asked you last time. We spoke what. What was your sense of how things are going? What's your sense of how things went? Can you feel about what you've accomplished now that it's done done well. I'm immensely proud of the show. I've I've talked a lot of I apologize for my stammering because I'm I'm still processing. And the experience of making the show overlapped period of the show starting to air. We were finally viz effect shots and working on the sound in the music. All the way up until basically Thanksgiving so I've had maybe nine or ten days as the conversation that we're having right now to be finished finished with it and so I'm still processing so I'm immensely proud of the show on a on a subatomic level. All writers want is to communicate this thing inside out of us that we can't quite verbalize can only verbalize it through our storytelling. And so you don't know what that is when you first start you feel that that that glimmer twinkle of inspiration Spiratou of I have something to say. And then basically spent two years of my life figuring out what that wanted to be and then as that effort became more collaborative the show stopped feeling like mine. It started feeling like ours. The second most important thing if not the most important thing was that when these nine episodes were all said and done whether people love them or hate them that the general consensus would be. This guy really loves watchman and his. His intention was clear that he wanted the show to earn. The name watchmen. It had to be watchman for people who have had a thirty year. Relationship with watchmen like I have or came to it later. People who have a pre existing relationship with this who may have watched the show with their arms crossed from jump which is how I would have been watching it had I not been making making it if their arms gradually sort of unfolded. I don't need them to be clapping at the end. But if they made it to the end of episode nine in her sort of like okay this thing can call. Itself Self Watchmen. That was the brass ring. And I don't know right now whether or not that's going to be the mass consensus or what the mass consensus even even is any more in the pop culture. But I am sort of feeling right now at this moment in time like this thing is in conversation with the original watchman you you can call it a sequel. You can call it in Oman but it's not a cover band like it tapped into that same kind of energy that launched the original. Its Own thing but that's the thing that I wanted most under my Christmas tree. Well you are allowed to be proud and it strikes me that you saw something as a kid. Did in watchmen that you really admired that you loved and one need decided. I think I'm going to go create some life of my own and you did. I WANNA get into our first episode here an almost religious awe. And we're GONNA talk about Fema Lot here because as I arrived at the end of this show I kept finding in these loops of themes that were going through and recurring over and over and here. We see the Millennium Clock. We're not quite sure what it's going to do yet. That is ticking. Down to an event you talk a little bit about how you guys thought of time as an element in a show called watchman. I think that anybody who's ever been in a writer's room and engage in that collaborative process. You spend hours and hours and hours and hours talking about theme and ideas and you interrogate gate. Why you're doing this? You talk about things that are interesting to you etc.. And then it comes time where the Buzzer goes off and you just have to write the story but hopefully the audience can feel all the conversations that you had. I've talked about this with you before. which is we made? The sort of recipe list of adjectives that we would use to describe. The original watchmen are also also plot ideas the Matt visual ideas like the Smiley face it Cetera. But we also knew that we had to sort of invent our own. So it's like we did a smiley face in the pilot but then we were like we have to start to find our our own motif. So maybe that's going to be an egg and the reason that it's GonNa be an egg is gonNA set up something that we're doing in the finale so it all comes together but it screenwriting one. Oh one that you need to have a ticking clock and if you try to avoid it in the third act of a movie if you're doing any kind of particularly this genre right Superhero Asura or sci-fi it's like you always want to avoid it and so it kind of felt like one of the narrative postive necessities of this show was setting up in the pilot that the seventh cavalry had a plan and that their plan was gonna come to fruition in the end game of the series and that was going to be one the things that was just sort of powering things through and on the heels of that revelation was the idea of God. We don't WanNa do that. You know like is there a way to subvert that idea the cavalry is going to have a plan but what if someone has already figured out a way to decimate their plan. What if the cavalry's plan is secondary to someone else's plan and then per the the clock idea? I think that the ideas like it's not watchmen if you aren't constantly referring to clocks and so that is going to be a motif and how can we make o'clock in emotional no idea for many of the characters and kind of went from there. Well in general I think one of the things you guys do so well is considered what is expected. And then lean in into it. Only because you're using misdirection. It's a a really useful technique but only when it's well done as we have progressed through the series. It's not like we have detached from what I think is the main theme which is race And there is a moment in the story where we're getting Angeles story and Angela a bar. There is this not well known comic called Ibar Black Superman. It's a it's actually a black station film. Oh to fill. Yeah Yeah Oh comic. It's no Not Not if there should be a comic of it well there might be now. Yeah exactly and so. That was intentional. Yes this is one of the hidden little bits here and that is mirrored by something that happens in this episode. We see Young Angela. She's a little girl. She's living in Saigon with her parents. The wars concluded America Echo has won because of Dr Manhattan's intervention and. She is trying to rent a movie.