Watchmen‘s third episode, “She Was Killed By Space Junk” is the best episode of the series so far with the role of main character temporarily switching from Angela Abar to Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake.
Directed by Stephen Williams, the story of the episode centers on Laurie being brought into the Seventh Calvary Case while flashing forward to her sending a message to Dr Manhattan through a phone to mars.
This message is a joke about three heroes, Dr Manhattan, Ozymandius and Night Owl, who appear before god to receive judgement.
All three go to hell until god sees a woman standing behind them who identifies herself as the girl who a threw a brick from the joke Laurie appeared to screw up earlier.
The brick falls from the sky and kills god, sending him straight to hell.
The flash forwards to Laurie’s joke are the best part of the episode because I was very intrigued by what the joke ended up being.
Personally, I think it has great thematic purpose with the girl who threw the brick clearly being representative of Laurie, and the joke itself being similar to Rorschach’s Pagliacci joke from the original graphic novel.
Dr Manhattan also seems to appreciate the gag because Angela’s car, which Will escaped in last episode, descends from the heavens, nearly crushing Laurie like god’s head got crushed by the brick.
In all likelihood, though, the car was most likely dropped by the people who rescued Will who want Laurie to become a part of the case for as an unknown reason.
But, for the moment at least, Laurie seems to believe it is Dr Manhattan, bursting out into laughter, being very reminiscent of her father The Comedian.
With this, and the fact that she has taken on his last name, it is apparent that Laurie has started to feel some kinship with her destructive father over the years.
As for the rest of the episode, it is also great with Laurie being revealed as part of a vigilante capture task force of the FBI.
Night Owl is also revealed to be in prison.
Laurie actually drives quite a few comedic interactions as well, like with Looking Glass, Red Scare (Andrew Howard), and Pirate Jenny (Jessica Camacho).
Then there is her Dr Manhattan dildo, which is a real “wait, what!?” moment.
Laurie also has a few action moments as well, shooting the Seventh Calvary member with the suicide vest who tries to kidnap Senator Joe Keene JR (James Wolk).
Speaking of him, I think it is pretty apparent that he will most likely be involved somehow in the conspiracy Will mentioned.
The fact that he was at Judd’s house where Angela found the Ku Klux Klan robe last episode also supports this.
Aside from these individual moments, however, one of my favourite things about the episode is its soundtrack with Laurie having a killer theme.
This soundtrack accompanies her pretty much through the entire episode, apart from the Ozymandias scenes and, unfortunately, it is these ones that keep the episode from being perfect.
While the scenes are great I do have a few flaws with them, like the CGI Buffalo, which look completely fake.
Then there is the official reveal that Ozymandias is… well, Ozymandias.
This was presented as some kind of shocking twist but I am pretty sure we all knew it was him going in so they did not need to act like it was some big moment.
Other than this, though, Ozymandias’ scenes are still intriguing, with us learning he is the captive of “the game warden.”
There are multiple theories about who this game warden could be but the most likely seems to be Dr Manhattan.
We will just have to wait and see as Ozymandias’ escape plan slowly comes to fruition.
Overall, “She Was Killed by Space Junk” is the best episode of Watchmen so far with just a few scenes holding it back from being a truly fantastic episode.
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