HBO’s ‘Watchmen’: The many killings of Mr Phillips and Ms Crookshanks by Ozymandias aka Adrian Veidt
HBO's 'Watchmen' concluded on a truly brilliant note. The question of whether Angela Abar (Regina King) can or cannot walk on water being left unanswered was, perhaps, for the best.
So after having had enough time to rewatch a few favorite episodes, scenes and shot, one of the things that merits looking into is Adrian Veidt's (Jeremy Irons) connection to the many Mr. Phillips (Tom Mison) and Ms. Crookshanks (Sara Vickers) who had served him on Europa's manor.
For instance, let's go back to the first time we met the three of them. Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks gave Veidt his birthday cake, after which Veidt decided he wanted to stage a play about a son of a watchmaker.
This was the first time we saw Mr. Phillips die. One of them, to be accurate. It was during the play when he entered a pod for a scene that would symbolize the rebirth of Jon as Dr. Manhattan.
Then, we saw Mr. Phillips being used by Veidt as a means to experiment on space travel. He fits one of the many Mr. Phillips with his version of a spacesuit to check if it would work fine.
Then, we see Veidt go on a rampage. It is assumed that Veidt's rampage was a result of another failed attempt at escaping the manor that had come to mean a prison more than the paradise he had once thought the manor would be.
During this rampage, he ends up killing every Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks who work in the manor for him. They are victims of his frustration that stems from his failure.
After this, Veidt has no one to serve him and so he ends up at a lake where he fishes out fully formed fetuses from traps that have been set. There are many that are disfigured or have not been formed completely, and so he looks for ones that are formed to his taste and then he sets them inside a pod where the male and the female fetuses grow into fully formed humans -- Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks.
After he brings the two back to the manor, Veidt continues to research the best possible way to get himself ready for space travel. He even succeeds and that's when we see tens of bodies on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
He has no qualms about using the bodies of all Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks to post an SOS message addressed to his daughter, Lady Trieu (Hong Chau). Right after this, he is pulled back to the manor by the Game Warden, who happens to be another Mr. Phillips, the very first one in fact, who was created by Dr. Manhattan.
After having been captured by the Game Warden, we had thought that Veidt would now not be killing any more of Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks. Instead, we saw the Game Warden die in the arms of Veidt in the last episode of the show when Veidt had tried to escape from the manor.
This scene was, in fact, one of the most important scenes to indicate that Veidt had programmed the Game Warden to be a tough adversary. After all, Veidt prospers in the presence of an adversary. Then, Veidt began to get bored with the manor and so, when his daughter sent him a space pod to escape to Earth, he bolted at the opportunity.
