Reminder: Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan is a Creep
According to recent reports, HBO likely won't make another season of Watchmen if showrunner Damon Lindelof declines to return-- because the last thing they want to do is disrespect the wishes of the guy who wrote Watchmen. So in light of this news, with the book closed on the Watchmen story (for now), we'd like to take a moment to point out what a giant friggin' creep Dr. Manhattan is.
Spoilers for Watchmen...
Even more miraculous than surviving being vaporized in a science experiment gone wrong, somehow Dr. Manhattan survived cancel culture in 2019. We all rooted for him, even though, in retrospect, blue dude's actions raise a lot of red flags. Not just his predilection for showing nearly everyone his glowing Papa Smurf, but in the original comic he straight-up ignores his crime-fighting duties to leer at a "very young girl" Silk Spectre ...
... who we learn is around 14 or 15, and that he had an affair with her.
If the internet is to be believed, Laurie's closer to 16 or 17, which is still gross since Dr. Manhattan is in his late 30s. And the fact that he refuses to wear more than a pair of Underoos in public doesn't help matters. You could argue that this can all be excused due to his perception of time-- he hits on Laurie because he already knows they fall in love in the future. But time dongilation isn't a defense that would exactly hold up in court, Doc.
In the TV series, we see that this is part of a compulsive pattern. Dr. Manhattan observes Angela without her consent, hits on her in a Saigon bar, doesn't take "no" for an answer, and uses his knowledge of the future to gain her trust. It's a temporal paradox, but it's also a convenient excuse to creep on a woman almost 50 years his junior.
The episode "A God Walks into Abar" opens with a funk version of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"-- which seems like a pointed selection. Obviously, because Dr. Manhattan has literal and figurative blue balls, but also that piece was famously used in the beginning of Manhattan. Which is both a reference to Dr. Manhattan's name and possibly the similarly gross story in which Woody Allen dates a teenager, and everyone in the world Woody Allen created is surprisingly chill about the whole thing. Dr. Manhattan isn't "Superman", he's closer to a disgraced doctor that has to notify his new neighbors when he moves in.
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