HBO’s Watchmen concludes on Sunday night but even as the story is poised to tie together the series’ many plot threads, there are still a lot of questions heading into the end. With all of the twists and turns the puzzles presented during the season have taken, though, there are still a lot of theories and rumors about many of the show’s characters and elements — especially when it comes to the mysterious Lady Trieu and the creepy clones on Europa. While some things have been addressed — specifically that Doctor Manhattan created those clones Adrian Veidt has been lording over — there’s still a lot to unpack and now, Watchmen writer Jeff Jensen is debunking some of the major theories.
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Speaking with CinemaBlend, Jensen specifically addressed the Peteypedia piece about Trieu, “Lady Trieu: Fact of Fiction” that itself presented a series of questions about the mysterious character as being either fact or fiction, including questions about her paternity as well as her interest in Doctor Manhattan. In-universe, it’s set up as a fluff piece from a society reporter, but in actuality it was put together by Jensen — and he suggests that maybe everything in the piece isn’t quite true.
“Yeah, that was fun,” Jensen said. “That was a fun one to make, ‘Lady Trieu: Fact or Fiction.’ I wrote that with help from Damon, and I really love the design that HBO came up with for that one. But yeah, Lady Trieu doesn’t talk to the press all that much, and there’s certainly a lot of mystery and lore attached to her. It was definitely a fun way to download a tremendous amount of content about Lady Trieu, some of which may prove not to be true. We’ll see, you know. When you don’t talk to the press much, but you do the kind of things that Lady Trieu does, a lot of myths and lies and far-out rumors get attached to you, and it’ll be interesting to see by season’s end how much of that is accurate, how much of it is not accurate, and then maybe how much of it is close to the truth, but they got some huge stuff wrong. So all I know is that the society reporter at the Tulsa Star Sentinel is not exactly the most careful journalist, so we’ll see how well he and his fact-checking department got things right about Lady Trieu.”
But secrets and details about Lady Trieu aren’t the only questions fans are still pondering. They are also curious about the status of the “original” clones Doctor Manhattan made on Europa, the first Phillips and Crookshanks. While it’s been established that the Game Warden is that first Phillips, the status of the first Crookshanks is one that fans have been trying to figure out with some thinking that we saw her as the prosecutor during Veidt’s trial. However, Jensen didn’t really reveal much about that particular element of things, though he did admit that there’s still more to unfold about Veidt’s time on Europa.
“That’s a really cool theory. So I guess that people are speculating that theory, right? What I would say is that we are certainly not done with Veidt’s time on Europa and his conflicts and rapport with the Game Warden and all of the clones, and all of their permutations,” Jensen said. “And we will definitely be seeing them once more in the finale. Whether or not Crookshanks-Prime is in play, and whether or not she was the winking prosecutor in The Flatulent Trial of Adrian Veidt is a question I really don’t know how to answer. And I’m coming to you with something of a disadvantage, which is that, while I am very aware of what’s in the finale from the script-writing stage, I actually haven’t seen it myself. I really like your theory, and the line of questioning. I look forward to seeing myself whether or not the finale will give us anything to nurture or debunk that theory.”
Watchmen airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.
