But after the astonishing sixth episode, “Watchmen” has shifted focus away from heroes like Sister Night, Looking Glass and Hooded Justice — all humans of limited resources and power — and paid more attention to Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan and Lady Trieu, who have the ability to alter the course of history all by their lonesome. That’s not a mistake on Lindelof’s part, and not an unfruitful path to follow. The type of power they have or seek tends to be morally corrosive, whether it’s sought by Ozymandias, who seemed to think nothing of sacrificing three million innocent people to save billions more, or Dr. Manhattan, whose decisive role in winning Vietnam came with unintended consequences and who’s accused of not doing enough to end starvation or clean up the environment. Handing the finale over to these characters amplifies the spectacle because they can change the world in a second, but it minimizes the century-long quest for racial justice that initially drove the show.

Lindelof and his co-writer, Nick Cuse, seem aware of it enough to turn the Cyclops master plan into a feckless joke. Senator Keene’s father, who drafted the bill that banned vigilantism by costumed adventurers, sending many of them into retirement or government work, turns up to see his preening son become a white supremacist superhero. He’s joined by Jane Crawford and several pews full of witnesses and Seventh Kavalry goons, but from the moment Keene Jr. strips down to his skivvies and delivers his supervillain speech, it’s clear that his comeuppance is nigh. The speed with which they’re dispatched by Lady Trieu — Keene liquefied in the chamber, the entire Seventh Kavalry zapped like bugs at a barbecue — calls their “supremacy” into question.

The real battle in the finale takes place between “worthy adversaries,” Trieu and Veidt, two characters with big brains, bottomless wallets and the arrogance to believe they can rule the world. Their stories connect through Trieu’s origins as Sample #2346 in Veidt’s secret sperm bank, hidden behind an Alexander the Great painting, which her mother raids in 1985. Questions that were teased out in previous episodes get answered, like what Trieu intends to do with that mysterious device she’s been building and who Veidt was signaling with that gruesome arrangement of bodies on some distant moon. Between Trieu’s quantum centrifuge, the teleportation device and the special cell designed to hold Dr. Manhattan, the powers of a God are suddenly accessible to multiple parties.

The “Watchmen” finale gets around to a point that it happens to share with the “Silicon Valley” season finale last week: One person shouldn’t have enough power to change the world alone, even if his or her intentions are good. Trieu does get to give a big, satisfying speech to the leaders of Cyclops before wiping them out — or most of the speech, anyway — but when she steps into that chamber, ready to absorb Dr. Manhattan’s essence, she’s just another narcissist and megalomaniac whose powers are not to be trusted. When Dr. Manhattan exiles himself to Mars in the comic, with his line about how he’s tired of humanity, “of being caught in the tangle of their lives,” he is also acknowledging his own limitations as an agent of change.

That’s the thinking behind Laurie Blake’s “joke” about the heroes meeting God at the Pearly Gates: that they’re all doomed to fall short of their ideals and perhaps make some catastrophic mistakes in the process.