'Watchmen' all but confirms the identity of Lube Man as Peteypedia shuts down and Dale Petey goes missing
RIP Peteypedia. You made the world of 'Watchmen' a richer place.
With one final memo on HBO's 'Peteypedia' website, the finale of 'Watchmen' comes with a shutting down of Agent Dale Petey's (Dustin Ingram) collection of memos and documents cataloging information relevant to the events in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The specific reasons for Agent Petey's firing aren't stated explicitly, but combined with last week's memo, 'Watchmen' seems to be confirming once and for all that Lube Man is, in fact, Agent Dale Petey.
Last week's memo about Dale Petey's complicated relationship with the 'Fogdancing' novel — which mentions, among other things, the skin-tight silver suit that makes up Lube Man's costume — seems to have been a manifesto of sorts and the reasoning behind the superhero persona he now seems to be taking up full time.
In this week's memo, it is mentioned that Dale Petey has gone missing following his dismissal from the FBI. Following the events of the season finale, Dale Petey was directly ordered to return to Washington and cease the investigation.
Petey refused, which led to the Deputy Director of the FBI Max Farragut to call for Petey's dismissal — sending officers to Tulsa to relieve Petey of his badge.
Petey has since gone missing, and though the circumstances around that are not fully explained, the Deputy Director is of the opinion that Dale Petey merits investigation as a suspected vigilante.
Among Dale Petey's effects are multiple copies of 'Rorschach's Journal', hundreds of comic books, and most tellingly of all, "a jug of what appears to be some kind of canola oil" — or, in other words, the substance Lube Man uses to coat himself to make his memorable escapes.
Like the Dimensional Incursion Event of 1985, the events of the 'Watchmen' finale left a lot of people dead with little public explanation as to why. Dale Petey, strongly inspired by superheroes like Rorschach, would appear to be unsatisfied with the lack of answers, knowing there's something huge that's been covered up.
Lube Man — or, as he would most likely rather be known, Fogdancer — is not going to give up until he has exposed the truth of what happened in Tulsa. He may be searching for a while, however, as the truth is a concept more slippery than a silver man covered in lubricant.
While Lube Man's identity is never explicitly confirmed, the clues are all there, rather tellingly so. Then again, clues were laid out for the identity of Hooded Justice in the original 'Watchmen' series as well, implied to be strongman Hollis Mason.
As we all know, that assumption was proved wrong in HBO's continuation of the 'Watchmen' story, showing Hooded Justice to be Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr).
Without official confirmation, Lube Man may just be something that fans will be debating about on forums for years to come — or, at least, until another show, movie, or comic series expands the world 'Watchmen' yet again. Who's up for a Fogdancer spinoff?