How Does Lady Trieu Fit Into Watchmen’s Big Mystery?

There are quite a few mysteries hiding inside of Watchmen season 1. However the two biggest ones seem quite distinct: whatever is happening with Angela Abar’s (Regina King) supposedly murderous grandpa Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.), and whatever is going on with the definitely murderous Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons), aka reformed masked crusader Ozymandias. 

Yet, Sunday night’s newest episode, “If You Don't Like My Story, Write Your Own,” confirms these narratives may be more connected than anyone could have guessed. The bridge between these two bizarre tales is the newly introduced Lady Trieu (Hong Chau). 

Putting together the conundrum of Lady Trieu may be the key to understanding where Watchmen is heading as the season 1 finale looms next month. 

“Write Your Own” gives us a few basic facts about Lady Trieu. She is a trillionaire originally born in Vietnam. She is a titan in the tech and engineering industry who is buying acres of land in Tulsa through shadowy means. Her company built the super machine that stole Angela’s car in “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship” and dropped the vehicle in front of FBI agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) in “She Was Killed by Space Junk.” Lady Trieu bought Adrian Viedt’s futurist company around the time of his 2012 disappearance and claims she owes her nearly incomprehensible success to “the seed of his inspiration.” Trieu even possesses a golden statue that looks almost identical to the costumed real-life Veidt we saw in last week’s “Space Junk.” 

Oh and Trieu is the owner of an unidentified object that came flying through the sky and landed on some farmland. 

While “Write Your Own” serves as a bit of a Trieu information dump, this isn’t the first time Watchmen has nodded towards her presence in Tulsa. In “Comanche,” we see a young girl show up to a downtown Greenwood newsstand and buy a gigantic stack of newspapers. Now we know that girl is Bian (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), Lady Trieu’s daughter. The newsstand purveyor asks if Trieu really reads all of the newspapers. “Of course,” Bian confidently confirms. Then, in “Space Junk,” agent Petey (Dustin Ingram) geeks out over a mysterious tower called the Millennium Clock. It’s the same clock viewers explore with Angela and Laurie’s “Write” visit to Trieu. 

“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” Petey says, quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias,” which is the work that gave Viedt his superhero alter-ego name.  Those are also the words that Lady Trieu said at the unveiling of the Clock, according to Petey. Petey seems to believe the reference was a “shoutout” to Veidt. It sounds a lot more like a threat. 

So Trieu took control of Viedt’s company and likely publicly criticized him, but we don’t know why. It is also unclear whether she had a hand in Viedt’s “disappearance,” which would more accurately be described as his imprisonment on a wildly verdant patch of land. We've yet to learn if Trieu knows Viedt is spending his time fishing for babies — and then rapidly transforming those babies into grown adults (Tom Mison and Christie Amery) — in his plan to escape. 

What we do know for sure if that Trieu is using the increased power she gained from buying Veidt Enterprises to do something possibly apocalyptic with Will Reeves. The pair signals their dubious plan in the final minutes of “Write Your Own,” where Trieu says that whatever they are doing will come to fruition in three days. Will responds that Angela will know he betrayed her family when those three days are over. “And she’ll hate me for it,” he adds. Still, he is in “all the way.” 

After a conversation like this, it appears likely ex-cop Will has something Trieu needs to pull off her grand scheme. That is why she seeming supplied him with the mysterious red pills he carries with him that keep him spry (“Write Your Own” wraps with Will standing on his own). She also used the flying machine to pull Will out of police custody after the death of Judd Crawford (Don Johnson). 

Considering Trieu is someone so unsentimental she would “joke” about murdering a baby, it’s impossible she partnered up with Will out of the goodness of her heart. It’s Watchmen’s job to reveal the long game.