"A God Walks into Abar"
Airdate: December 8, 2019
Angela reawakens Dr. Manhattan, who had been masquerading as her husband Cal. As Dr. Manhattan comes into consciousness after a decade and Angela frets for his safety, their first encounter is seen. In 2009 Vietnam, Dr. Manhattan approaches Angela in a bar and tries to convince her to have dinner with him, promising that they'll have ten years of joy together before tragedy strikes. Simultaneously, he's also creating life on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and the beings who would become Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks were intended to be its inhabitants. Six or so months after Dr. Manhattan meets Angela, they have a fight about his perception of time and how it throws a wrench in their relationship, leading Dr. Manhattan to visit Adrian Veidt. Veidt gives him a device that will cause him to forget about his powers in exchange for visiting a utopia; Dr. Manhattan brings him to Europa.
Back in the present, Angela asks Dr. Manhattan how Will Reeves learned about her and Judd. In that moment, Dr. Manhattan is visiting Will Reeves in 2009, and asks that same question to Will. He explains to Angela he knows the Seventh Kavalry is coming for him and that there is nothing he can do. Angela attempts to defy this and the two take on the Seventh Kavalry together, only for the tachyon cannon to teleport him to places unknown.
Meanwhile, Veidt, locked up in a prison cell, is confronted by the Game Warden, who wonders why he would want to leave paradise. The Game Warden presents him with a cake to celebrate his seventh anniversary; Veidt notices a horseshoe in the cake and is filled with glee. He starts digging.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adam and Eve Plot: Mr. Phillip and Ms. Crookshanks are the "Adam" and "Eve" of Dr. Manhattan's utopia on Europa, modeled after a kindly noble couple who sheltered him during his exodus from Germany whom he caught in a Primal Scene.
- Anachronic Order: The episode starts in 2019, with Dr. Manhattan just awakening, then flashes back to 2009, his chronologically first meeting with Angela, then jumps along the timeline. Justified in a way — Dr. Manhattan doesn't perceive time in a linear fashion but can instead be in several time points at once, and the episode is following along his thought process.
- Dead Person Impersonation: "Calvin Jelani" was a nobody who died alone in Vietnam. Angela had access to the morgue, so she was able to find a corpse for Dr. Manhattan to imitate. Her rationale for doing so instead of having Dr. Manhattan create a new identity out of whole cloth is that real people have records and papers that would make it easy for him to "exist".
- Dissonant Serenity: The Ominous Latin Chanting during the final battle scene.
- Hope Spot: For a second there it really does look like Jon's prediction about the Kavalry's tachyon cannon might have been wrong.
- Lies to Children: Averted. The couple that Jon catches almost having sex are completely honest (in a way a kid would understand) with him about what they were doing. They explain to him that they’d just lost a baby and were trying to have another. They tell him that sex is a beautiful act between two people who love each other and that they hope he’s able to experience it one day.
- Mythology Gag:
- At one point Jon says to Angela, "I leave it entirely in your hands", which is the famous last line of the original comic book, though used in a completely different context here.
- The way Jon kills the Seventh Kavalry members looks the same as how he killed Rorschach in the comic. The connection between the two scenes is emphasized by the Kavalry members wearing imitations of Rorshach's mask.
- Jon asks Veidt if he can build him the device to erase his memory, Adrian chuckles and responds "I did it thirty years ago", calling to mind his wording when revealing Owl, Rorschach, and Spectre were too late to stop him ("I did it thirty minutes ago").
- Precision F-Strike: The Game Warden's response to Veidt's reason for wanting to leave paradise:"Enjoy your fucking cake."
- Pun-Based Title: "A God Walks into Abar", which plays on the "X walks into a bar" joke and references Dr. Manhattan meeting his future wife, Angela Abar, at a literal bar.
- Stable Time Loop: Ten years ago, Will Reeves learned Judd Crawford is KKK only because Jon asked him about him after Angela, in the present, tells Jon to ask Reeves how he knew Crawford was KKK.
