Doctor Manhattan is both the pinnacle of science and someone who completely defies it, so it makes sense that Adrian, in his old age, is still fixated on him. Only later did Jon figure out how to piece his atoms back together to become an all-powerful glowing blue meta-human. “Gila Flats” is the name of where Jon was working when he accidentally stepped into an Intrinsic Field Subtractor, which destroyed his physical body. The play that Adrian forces his servants to put on for him is essentially the story of how the scientist Jonathan Osterman became Doctor Manhattan. He’s also, unsurprisingly, obsessed with Doctor Manhattan. In the comic he had a genetically made red and striped lynx, and in the show he’s obviously figured out how to make humans (or at least robots who convincingly look human). It’s not clear where he is - his lair in the comic was in Antarctica, but he could also be off-world at this point - but he’s entirely alone, surrounded only by an army of identical servants. It seems Ozymandias has gotten away with his genocide. That leads us to the events of the show, set 34 years after the comic. Doctor Manhattan was the only living person Ozymandias saw as his equal, but as Doctor Manhattan said earlier, Adrian is nothing but a “termite” to him. Nothing ever ends.” Ozymandias’ last panel in the comic is him staring unhappily at his map of the galaxy. Doctor Manhattan’s answer clearly unsettles him: “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. “Didn’t I? It all worked out in the end,” he frets. Before Doctor Manhattan flies off to Mars - where he still is to this day, according to the show - Ozymandias asks him if he did the right thing in killing millions to save billions. Ozymandias ostensibly wins, but at the end of the comic it’s clear he’s not satisfied. Rorschach did mail his findings, which implicate Ozymandias, to a right-wing newspaper before his death, but considering that paper is shown to peddle conspiracy theories, the real accusations were likely buried. The only one who refuses to lie is Rorschach, so Doctor Manhattan kills him. Night Owl, Silk Spectre, and even Doctor Manhattan agree to keep the lie about the aliens when they see that Ozymandias’ terrible bombing literally did cause world peace. (For whatever reason, he decides this alien is going to be a giant squid monster, hence, the raining squid in the premiere episode.) In the final chapters, the costumed vigilantes Rorschach and Night Owl rush to Ozymandias’ lair thinking they’ve arrived just in time to stop him, only to learn he already unleashed his squid on New York City and three million people are dead. It’s convoluted, but prior to the events of Watchmen, Ozymandias retires from hero work, builds a corporate empire, and uses his massive wealth to buy a secret island and hire scientists to build said alien threat. So Ozymandias hatches an elaborate plan that unfolds across the comic. He doesn’t even believe the godlike Doctor Manhattan, the only actual superhuman in Watchmen, who can bend space and time, can deter a nuclear war, and in fact believes his mere presence accelerates the possibility. He definitely doesn’t trust the costumed vigilantes to be able to prevent a war, as none of them have powers, and he sees them as all either unintelligent or morally bankrupt. He begins to believe global nuclear war is inevitable, and that the only way to stop it is to unite all humans against some alien threat. Ozymandias starts off with breaking up organized crime, but soon sees war as man’s greatest danger. Adrian deeply idolizes Alexander, and fixates on how he too wants to “bring an age of illumination to a benighted world.” So he adopts the superhero identity Ozymandias, in reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s titular poem about the “king of kings,” and decides to vanquish the “evils that beset men.” Adrian feels his incredible intellect isolates him, and claims the only human he feels any kinship for is the long-dead king, Alexander the Great. A man of “implacable intelligence” and near-superhuman athleticism in the comics, Adrian is a wealthy genius who develops electric vehicles and genetically altered animals by the ‘80s. Iron’s Ozymandias doesn’t sound or look that imposing, but the danger of Ozymandias has always been his mind. (Press materials for Watchmen name Iron’s character as “ Probably Who You Think He Is.”) Ozymandias in the comics shaped the Watchmen world as it stands today, and his weird, secretive activities in the show may just hint at an even more nefarious plan. In the HBO series he’s declared dead, but it’s pretty obvious that Jeremy Irons’ unnamed, reclusive aristocrat is Ozymandias himself. Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, is the smartest man in the world in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen comic, and the primary antagonist behind everything that occurs.
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