The origin story of Looking Glass is revealed, as is the truth behind the greatest hoax in American history, while the ‘Smartest Man In the World’ plots a daring escape.

HBO’s Watchmen smashes it out of the park again, with another origin tale, this time of Tim Blake Nelson’s Looking Glass. For the first four episodes he has been very much on the periphery, and finally we discover why he hides under a reflective mask to protect himself from psychic interference.

In Hoboken, 1985 on 11/2 (2nd November), with the Doomsday Clock set at a minute to midnight, a young Wade Tillman is tricked inside (and stripped of his clothes) a fairground house of mirrors. But just as he’s working out how to get away, giant interdimensional squid arrive and kill half of New York’s population. Survivor’s guilt hangs heavy on him, and even as an adult he’s attending support groups.

While the squid attack was included in Moore and Gibbons’ original comic books, Zack Snyder opted to change it for his movie, presumably considering it a stretch too far. It’s great to have this significant ‘squidfall’ back in the story, the giant beasts looking like they’ve wandered in from the pages of Lovecraft.

In addition to filling in ‘Mirror Guy’s’ back story, the secrets and revelations are coming from left, right and centre. We discover who is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry, where the squid actually came from, and even what was in the secret pills. With Angela gulping down the tablets just before she’s arrested, it’s pretty clear we’re going to find out what the mysterious medication does.

Meanwhile, over in Veidt’s prison, Jeremy Irons’ multi-millionaire and harbinger of doom has embarked on a trip into the atmosphere, where he lands on a lunar surface and rearranges the corpses of the catapulted clones into an SOS message. But he’s yanked back to meet his warden before there’s time for the orbiting satellite to pick up his plea.

Verdict: Another superb hour that places a key moment from the comic book source right in the middle of this spinoff’s lore. Who’d have thought it could be this good? 10/10

Nick Joy