Could This Familiar Watchmen Character Be Hiding In Plain Sight?

HBO’s newest offering, Watchmen, has just premiered and that can only mean one thing. That buzzing hive of active imaginations that is the internet has awoken and is theorizing as to what it could all mean. Those who watched the first season of Westworld may have heard that most of the major twists were guessed after the second episode. So here we are, doing it all over again. In the spirit of ruining the presentation of this fine series, I would like to reveal to you one of my theories that is pretty much proven at this point. I know there’s only been one episode so far, and I wouldn’t say I’ve cracked all the mysteries of the show, but the ones I’ve got are definitely, totally, irrefutably true. 

Secret identities are a major theme of the 1986-87 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The show is no different in this regard. Speculations are flying about the true nature of many characters. Maybe Jeremy Irons is playing Ozymandias, maybe not. Maybe Judd Crawford is, in fact, Dan Dreiberg (he’s not.) Who in the heck is the old man in the wheelchair? Only this I know for certain: The identity of Ms. Crookshanks. 

In case you have no idea who I am referring to, Ms. Crookshanks is the thigh-rubbingly cheerful servant of Jeremy Irons’ “Lord of a Country Manor”, played by Sara Vickers. She is everything a wealthy Lord would want in a servant: enthusiastic, loyal, well mannered and apparently not too bright. In the brief scene in which we see her, she seems only to want her master’s happiness. Almost as though she was created to serve him. It is this reporter’s opinion that she was created for this very purpose. Not only that, but she was created before the events of the esteemed graphic novel. A graphic novel in which she apparently dies. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I believe Ms. Crookshanks is none other than Adrian Veidt’s loyal pet, Bubastis. 

Bubastis is Ozymandias’ loyal companion, a genetically engineered cat monster of whom he insisted there be action figures. Toward the end of the book (Spoiler Warning), Bubastis is disintegrated in an intrinsic field subtractor and that is the last we see of her.

But as we’ve seen, disintegration in an intrinsic field is hardly a death sentence. There is one other character whom we see suffer that same fate, Jon Osterman. Only Jon Osterman pulled himself back together and became the godlike being known as Dr. Manhattan. If a simple physicist could accomplish this feat, why not a four legged sin against nature like Bubastis? 

“But Jimbob,” I predict you protest. “BuBaStIs IsN’T a LaDy. sHe’S a CAt.” Perhaps Bubastis is a cat. Jon Osterman was a nerd before he got Manhattaned. When he reconstituted himself, he took the form of a buff, bald, blue badass. He even demonstrates the ability to change the hue and brightness settings on his skin at will. There’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t take the form of a completely different species if he so chose. And so it is with Bubastis. She chose to rebuild the Legos of her form into that which would better serve her beloved master, Ozymandias. 

The final piece of evidence I present is her name. This wouldn’t be a Damon Lindelof show if the characters’ names weren’t of significance. I mean, he actually called a character John Locke and Jeremy Bentham. With that in mind, Ms. Crookshanks can only be a deliberate reference to a character of the same name from the popular book series, Harry Potter (that’s right, we’re spoiling Harry Potter now too). In those books, Crookshanks is the name of Hermione’s pet cat. A cat which many fans speculate is actually an Animagus, a wizard disguised as a cat, by the name of Regulus Black. In other words, Ms. Crookshanks is a cat in human form named after a human in cat form. Very subtle, Lindelof. 

There you have it. Definitely, undeniably, evidence based truth.