Watchmen: Silk Spectre Debuts in “She Was Killed By Space Junk”

HBO’s Watchmen aired its latest episode tonight, building upon the iconic canon of the DC Comics graphic novel of the same name. The first two episodes of the series largely contained tangentially references to the characters of the original story, outside of Jeremy Irons’ character, who certainly seems to be Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. But this week’s installment, “She Was Killed by Space Junk”, saw the return of another character from the original story, Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre (Jean Smart) — but in a wildly different way from how she was originally portrayed. Spoilers for this week’s episode of Watchmen, “She Was Killed by Space Junk”, below! Only look if you want to know!

This week’s episode opened on Laurie arriving at a bank, before quickly pulling a gun on the teller and declaring that a robbery was underway. This quickly drew the attention of a (rather Batman-like) vigilante named Mr. Shadow, who Laurie proceeded to quickly arrest for defying America’s anti-vigilante laws. As Mr. Shadow – and parts of the audience – quickly learned, Laurie was an agent of the FBI, who had been helping to catch vigilantes for quite some time. Laurie – who now calls herself Laurie Blake, as a nod to her father – was later visited by Senator Joe Keene Jr. (James Wolk), who informed her that she would be heading to Tulsa to investigate the murder of Judd Crawford (Don Johnson).

In the comics, Laurie is the daughter of Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre and Edward Blake/The Comedian, after the latter sexually assaulted the former. Sally motivates a reluctant Laurie into becoming a superhero, which she eventually takes a liking to after meeting and becoming romantically involved with Dr. Manhattan. Laurie semi-retires as a vigilante after the Keene Act is passed in 1977, and her relationship with Manhattan became strained during their time in hiding. During Watchmen itself, Laurie is brought back into the world of superheroics following the death of The Comedian, and ultimately becomes romantically involves with Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl. When they learn of the impending nuclear war, Laurie and Dan don their old costumes again to help free Rorshach from the Sing Sing penitentiary, and then travel to Mars to convince Manhattan to help them. When they returned, Ozymandias had already terrorized half of New York City with a giant squid, ending the threat of nuclear conflict. Laurie and Dan then embodied new aliases, although Laurie toyed with the possibility of getting a better superhero costume and a gun.

While there’s a decades-long gap between the Laurie of the graphic novel and the Laurie we meet In this episode, it’s arguably easy to see how her evolution took place. Watchmen‘s “Peteypedia” – a website that provides in-universe content tied to each episode – adds a bit more clarity of Laurie’s journey, particularly in the “Rohrshach’s Journal” memo. The memo reveals that Laurie once referred to herself as “The Comedienne”, taking the nod to her father’s legacy in a whole new direction. Later on in the memo, it claims that Laurie was arrested in 1995 for violating the anti-vigilante Keene Act, which could explain the stretch of time when she operated under that new moniker. Whether or not we’ll learn more about that stretch of time in Laurie’s life remains to be seen.

What do you think of Laurie Blake’s return in Watchmen? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Watchmen airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.