Please watch the episode before reading. Spoilers ahead.

Do the sins of the past ever tarnish the future? How long does the damage last?
Episode two of Watchmen left me with more questions than answers. I’m not at odds with this, though I hope they’re answered by the time this season is through.
The episode opens with a German typist during the First World War. She’s being tasked with typing up some propaganda to convince black US soldiers to turn coats and join the Germans. Promises of equality, respect and safety are offered to the soldier. At first this is delivered to us through a German officer, dictating to a typist, followed by the father (the soldier from episode one) of Will Reeves (the old man), seen marching in formation. We witness a white soldier on horseback spit in his face.
Angela Abar is later revealed to be related to Will Reeves and the soldier. A choice is offered to both Angela and her great-grandfather. Both begin to doubt the righteousness and reasons for the wars they are fighting. Both are forced to take a long hard look at the America that they live in.
While it’s fair to assume that the soldier does not accept this offer, it does appear to strike a chord with him.

Shifting focus to the present day plot and Angela is in a position not dissimilar to her great-grandfather. She’s part of a uniformed organization and experiences vitriol from white people. She’s also presented as having conflicted feelings about her position and peers.
Her relationship with Chief Judd Crawford is being set up to be a defining aspect of Angela’s arc and the show. Drawing a parallel to the comic, I see this as the ‘remixed’ version of the Silk Spectre/Comedian relationship, wherein Edward Blake (The Comedian) is killed at the start and we learn that he was a pretty bad dude. Amongst other things, he’s a murderer and a rapist. While the reader doesn’t come to like him more (I didn’t), we do learn through the course of the story that he was a man of complex morals and did care about some people.

Judd Crawford is being played in reverse. Initially, we see a caring, personable and reliable leader/father figure. He’s well liked by his peers and subordinates.
Then comes episode two. Wherein Angela finds his Klan Uniform.

As far as modern and still existing groups go, the Klan are one of the most unforgivable. This is a serious transgression for a character to have made and raises serious questions about the nature of Judd. Is this a relic of his past? It being on a mannequin in his secret closet would indicate respect and reverence. Tradition and rank. The presence of the police badge on the uniform ties the concepts of police and white nationalism directly together.
Despite this revelation, I’m burdened with questions about Judd still. Does he really believe in this ideology? His close personal, almost familial relationship with Angela and her family would indicate that he’s moved beyond his ties to the Klan. Has he crossed back over the line? Are the Klan and the Seventh Kavalry directly connected?
We see the ancestry of Angela in more clear focus, with more dedicated screen time. The show reminds us of the ancestry of the Kavalry in this scene. Both heroes and villains have a past. While they are fighting similar battles they have both evolved. Angela’s grandfather wore the uniform and she wears the mask. The Klan wore robes. The Kavalry wear masks. I take this as the show hammering home the similarities between the two again.

Parallels seem to be a core component of the show and the comic itself was full of commentary on politics, society and superheroes. What we see in the show is a world that has failed to learn from its mistakes. There are still racial divisions. The police aren’t depicted as trustworthy, they wear intimidating masks and the law seems to be more like a set of guidelines. In the real world, in an age of filming the police this is a terrifying prospect.
In Watchmen and the real world, there are many lines and many lines have been crossed.

The episode ends with Angela deciding to arrest her grandfather, Will Reeves. He’s confessed to the murder of her father figure/boss Judd Crawford, the closeted Klansman. As she places him in her car and gets ready to leave, he’s rescued from above by some unseen flying vehicle with a giant magnet. As the car and Will are carried off into the night, the letter his father recieved from the Germans is dropped (echoing the imagery of the opening). Angela has a choice, just as her ancestor once did. Will she cross that line?
A Word on Recurring Imagery
A key factor of the subtext and thematic DNA of Watchmen was its use of recurrent imagery. I’ve been pleased to see that they really are taking the remix idea to heart and incorporating this into the show. While I’m sure some of these may have some actual narrative significance, things like Topher building a model of the castle that Jeremy Iron’s character dwells in reminds me a lot of the motifs of Doctor Manhattan from the comic. Things like Doctor Manhattans past with clocks and his creation of a weird crystalline clock palace on mars. These probably do have a purpose, as they did in the comic, but I still dig it as a meta-textual acknowledgement of what and where the show came from.

The similarities between the opening and the closing scenes are a brilliant stroke of visual storytelling that neatly connects Angela’s story to the past and furthers this idea of ancestry. Not just within the story itself but on a bigger level, referencing the approaches and stylistic choices of the comic. Watchmen continues to hit a lot of buttons for me.
Thanks for reading.