A Big Watchmen Twist was Inspired by a Dumb Horror Movie
(Giant Dr. Manhattan-sized SPOILERS for the last episode of Watchmen)
HBO's Watchmen wrapped up its first (and possibly only) season this past weekend. And a whole bunch of stuff of crazy stuff happened; everything from a deadly rainstorm of baby squids to a dude in a Speedo getting liquified by a vengeful trillionaire to a woman eating a raw egg and possibly obtaining God-like powers instead of possibly obtaining salmonella poisoning. One of the best twists of the finale involved Ozymandias, aka Adrian Veidt.
In the beginning of the episode Veidt is rescued from Europa, the moon of Jupiter where he's been living his "Downton Abbey on bath salts" fantasy life. For the ride home, Veidt is put into hibernation like a common Corellian spice smuggler, and encased in a gold-like substance. It's then when we start to clue in that not only has all of this happened prior to the events we've been following on Earth, but that solid gold Jeremy Irons we saw earlier in the series isn't just a sculpture, but the real Veidt who has been hiding in plain sight this entire time, preserved like a pair of acclaimed British baby shoes.
Where did they come up with this stuff? Well, it turns out that Watchmen, one of the most critically-praised series on television, was inspired by... a Donnie Wahlberg movie. According to executive producer Damon Lindelof the idea for this particular plot wrinkle came from the ending of Saw II. If you didn't see Saw II (Spoilers) we learn that Detective Donnie Wahlberg's son Daniel has been abducted by Jigsaw, and see him being held in a trap-filled house. But in the end, it's revealed that those events happened n the past, and Daniel was actually shoved inside a safe that, like with Ozymandias, was right under our collective noses the entire time. Lindelof also mentioned that the iconic twist in Lost's third season, too, owes a debt to Saw II. No word on whether the Hostel movies inspired any episodes of Succession.
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