Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Watchmen season 1, episode 8.

HBO’s Watchmen has retconned the 1985 master plan of Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) once again, adding even more complexity to Ozymandias’ original scheme to save the world in the DC Comics graphic novel. Watchmen episode 8, “A God Walks Into A Bar,” re-introduced Doctor Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and revealed the depths — and tragic ramifications — of his love affair with Detective Angela Abar AKA Sister Night (Regina King). It turns out Adrian Veidt played a crucial role in how the blue super-being was able to live as a human named Cal Abar and be married to Angela for 10 years, thanks to a new wrinkle in Ozymandias’ plot from the comic.

In the Watchmen graphic novel, Adrian Veidt planned to save the world from nuclear war by shocking the world’s nations with a hoax: an invasion by a giant squid “from another dimension,” which Ozymandias fabricated. Being the World’s Smartest Man, however, Veidt knew he also had to contend with Doctor Manhattan, the lone being with the power to stop him. Thus, Ozymandias developed a multi-pronged scheme to take Manhattan off the board: he knew outright destroying the superman would be tricky so Veidt opted to further alienate Jon from humanity. By giving cancer to Manhattan’s loved ones like his ex-girlfriend Janey Slater and his oldest friend Wally Weaver, and then publicly framing the Doctor as the cause, Veidt successfully provoked Manhattan to voluntarily leave Earth for Mars. However, Ozymandias was also aware that his fellow superheroes like Nite-Owl and Rorschach would try to stop him, so he prepared contingencies in case Doctor Manhattan also decided to interfere — which he did. Ultimately, Ozymandias’ plan worked, but he still had to face Doctor Manhattan at his Antarctic base, Karnak.

In Watchmen episode 8, Doctor Manhattan (in Cal’s body) surprised Adrian by visiting him in Karnak for the first time in 24 years. The superhuman was looking for Veidt’s help with his current conundrum of how he could live as a human with Angela; of course, because Doctor Manhattan can see all points of his past, present, and future simultaneously, he already knew that Ozymandias would have the answer: the device shaped like his hydrogen atom logo which could short circuit Manhattan’s brain, causing him to forget who he is and what he can do. Veidt also confessed that attempting to destroy the blue demigod with an Intrinsic Field Subtractor (that killed Veidt’s beloved pet lynx Bubastis) during their 1985 battle was actually his Plan B, i.e. “blowing [Manhattan] up.” Ozymandias’s memory-erasing device was his original Plan A, i.e. “amnesia,” which would effectively turn the world’s only super-powered being into an ordinary human. As we’ve seen in HBO’s Watchmen, Veidt’s Plan A worked a lot better than his Plan B did.

The fact that Ozymandias created a device to rob Doctor Manhattan of his memories is Damon Lindelof’s newest retcon to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ original story. Watchmen episode 5, “A Little Fear of Lightning,” revealed that Adrian Veidt naturally thought ahead and developed long-ranging plans for what was to happen after he successfully fooled the world with his hoax, which he hoped would usher in a utopia. Veidt also successfully plotted to have Robert Redford elected President of the United States, after which Adrian revealed his hoax to the new POTUS. However, their relationship soon soured and Veidt ended up retreating to Karnak, fuming at how despite his best efforts, the world still hadn’t become the paradise he envisioned.

Of course, as the World’s Smartest Man, it’s perfectly in character for Ozymandias to have prepared several options to deal with Doctor Manhattan. It also makes sense that Veidt resorted to Plan B when the blue demigod confronted him in 1985; Adrian was in no position to convince Jon to allow him to erase his memories and turn him human at that point, hence Veidt tried to destroy Manhattan instead with the Intrinsic Field Subtractor. By inventing Plan A, however, Watchmen brilliantly created a means to enable the mind-blowing twist that Angela’s husband Cal was Doctor Manhattan incognito all along and Lindelof further deepened the intricate complexity of Watchmen’s macro story between the graphic novel and the HBO series.

Next: Watchmen’s Poster Gave Away The Big Twist - And We All Missed It

Watchmen’s season 1 finale airs Sunday, December 15 @ 9pm on HBO.