'Watchmen' theory explains why Lady Trieu bought Adrian Veidt's company

We caught a glimpse of her towering Millennium Clock in Watchmen Episode 3, but we didn’t actually meet Lady Trieu in Episode 4. The enigmatic trillionaire seems to be molding herself after Adrian Veidt (aka, Ozymandias). She bought his company and even has a statue of him on display in her “vivarium,” but is it possible the connections between Trieu and Veidt run even deeper?

An intriguing new theory takes a look at Veidt’s cunning plan from the original Watchmen story to figure out why Lady Trieu bought his company and what she could be planning. And if this theory is correct, this new character could be an even bigger threat than we thought.

Speculative spoilers for Watchmen below.

As redditor u/Lemonwizard points out, a key part of Veidt’s original plan involved spending billions of dollars on “tachyon” generators that were capable of blocking Doctor Manhattan’s ability to see into the future. When Lady Trieu bought Veidt Industries, she theoretically bought that technology too, and perhaps it helped her unlock the ability to see into the future just like Doctor Manhattan.

“Learning how to disrupt that information probably involved developing some level of understanding as to how Dr. Manhattan was receiving it in the first place,” the theory argues. “With Veidt’s research as a starting point, Trieu may have found a way to replicate Dr. Manhattan’s ability to perceive time in a non-linear fashion.”

So can Lady Trieu see into the future? There are a few other reasons to think she can. For one thing, she’s seemingly able to predict exactly when that meteor lands on the farm she buys in the opening scene of Watchmen Episode 4, though it’s equally possible she just observed it from space.

Then again, plenty of fans have picked up on earlier quotes stating that the Millennium Clock “tells time.” That makes it sound like an oversized clock, but maybe it’s a hint that Lady Trieu’s giant tower allows her to see into the future. That would explain a lot about what this mysterious new character is up to and how she became so rich and powerful in the first place. And if she’s anything like Ozymandias, we have a feeling that Lady Trieu could have something equally epic in the works.

Did you catch the hint that the Millennium Clock could survive anything but a direct hit from a nuclear bomb? That sure sounds like foreshadowing to me…

Watchmen airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO.