Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Little Fear of Lightning’

The nuclear tensions that roil in the graphic novel “Watchmen” are resolved through a mass catastrophe, orchestrated by Adrian Veidt, to draw the world’s attention away from the imminent mutual annihilation of the United States and the Soviet Union. Put succinctly, Veidt drops a giant inter-dimensional squid on Manhattan, killing about three million people to save the lives of hundreds of millions more. The fallout from his actions affects the characters in “Watchmen,” but their impact on society is beyond the scope of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s book. At some point, artists have to choose when to put down the brush.

For Damon Lindelof, however, exploring such enduring traumas is a primary motive for extending the world of “Watchmen” decades into the past and decades more into the future. Just as the legacy of the Tulsa massacre of 1921 has informed the show’s interest in racism and white supremacy nearly a century later, the impact of Veidt’s giant squid still reverberates in the daily lives of those who were affected by it. The great triumph of Lindelof’s HBO series “The Leftovers” was how much it built onto the foundation of Tom Perrotta’s novel about a mysterious, inexplicable event that disappeared 2 percent of the population in an eye blink. Life might carry on after such a catastrophic loss, but for those within the blast radius, one foot will always be stuck in the bog.

The bravura opening sequence flashes back to 1985 Hoboken, N.J., where a young Wade Tillman (Philip Labes) takes a dramatic first step toward becoming Looking Glass, the Tulsa detective who is rarely seen without a reflective mask at least partially covering his face. The Doomsday Clock has tick-tocked to a minute before midnight, and Wade nervously wanders a carnival of the teenage wretched in search of souls to save before the apocalypse. One such soul decides to seduce the earnest rube for sport and leave him naked in the fun house, but the attraction is just protection enough to spare him from Veidt’s squid attack.

Veidt’s act of large-scale misdirection succeeds in misdirecting Wade, too: He came to New Jersey expecting to die soon along with everyone else, and now he is doomed to a life of lingering horror and uncertainty. Over 30 years later, he’s leading a support group for other survivors with “extra-dimensional anxiety” that bears some resemblance to the Guilty Remnant in “The Leftovers,” minus the cult signifiers of white clothes, chain smoking and an eerie code of silence. Just as the Guilty Remnant refuse to carry on as if nothing happened — and make it a point to force others to remember — Wade and other “friends of Nemo” wonder how people can face periodic squid storms by simply pulling over their cars, turning on the wipers and moving on with their day. (“Why isn’t everybody petrified?”)