Spoilers below for the latest episode of HBO's Watchmen, so be sure to check it out before reading on.
When it was announced that Watchmen was being turned into an HBO series, a certain section of the fanbase immediately considered the premium cable network to be the perfect place for creator and superfan Damon Lindelof to bring Doctor Manhattan's superhuman blue dong to TV audiences. Lo and behold, the Lost and Leftovers creator delivered just such a colorful penis in only Watchmen's second episode. Well, sort of.
During the episode's bizarro Watchmaker's Son play performance, Tom Mison's faux Jon Osterman was "resurrected" as Doctor Manhattan, complete with a blue body and a lack of clothing. Mison revealed that it definitely was not his penis that was seen in the episode, but it wasn't a completely hands-off process, and he said the weirdest thing about doing Watchmen was having to pick a body double for the genitalia. In his words:
Actually, the process of choosing a double was — I mean, Watchmen, as you’ve seen, is a pretty weird show in parts. But the process of choosing a willy double was by far the weirdest. I’ve never had so many, well, any pictures sent to me. I wasn’t in a room with a line-up. [Laughs] Like The Usual Suspects? No.
Well now I want to see a penis in that line-up that speaks incoherently like Benicio del Toro did in the twist-driven Usual Suspects.
In any case, Tom Mison clearly dealt with the kinds of work duties that 99% of the jobs on this planet actively warn against, and was responsible for sorting through stacks of pictures of male genitalia. I can't imagine whether it would be more uncomfortable to be doing that alone or in the company of others, especially if the point is looking for something comparative. (It can be assumed that Tom Mison's dong isn't blue, though.)
Speaking with TVLine, the actor continued:
They kept emailing me more and more, pictures of these poor boys who just have to take pictures of themselves in their bedrooms. And I had to sift through. ‘No, no, no.’ I ended up with a boy called Fergal. Lovely chap.
When Doctor Manhattan states that "Nothing ever ends," he obviously wasn't talking about TV audiences' long streak of not seeing Fergal's peen on TV. Guess it's back to the starting line for that one.
For as troublesome as that might have been, Tom Mison took it all in stride for a role that is shaping out to be one of Watchmen's most mysterious and question-driven characters. As one of many cloned servants of Jeremy Irons' Blonde Man – who is almost definitely Watchmen's O.G. villain Adrian Veidt – Mison's Mr. Philips was revealed in Episode 2 to be some kind of cloned entity, along with Sara Vickers' Miss Crookshanks.
It's a storyline that will no doubt get even more complicated in future episodes. Why is maybe-Veidt so obsessed with seeing his own interpretation of Jon's life before and after his Doctor Manhattan change, to the point where he's making one of his servants cover his nude body in blue paint? (Also, who painted him?)
With a lot more questions and answers to come – and possibly a full-frontal look at the real Doctor Manhattan's manhood – Watchmen airs Sunday nights on HBO at 9:00 p.m. ET. Check out our full easter egg rundowns for both the Watchmen premiere and for Episode 2. Be sure to watch and get vocal about your love for the show to guarantee that HBO doesn't make this a limited series.
