The following contains spoilers about "Watchmen's" seventh episode, "An Almost Religious Awe."

(CNN) Even after the opening flurry of episodes, "Watchmen's" master plan remained difficult to foresee. Yet over the last few hours, the HBO series has dizzyingly blended its new elements with the source material, with producer Damon Lindelof and his team having played the long game in spectacular fashion, proving that time really was on their side.

At first, the connections to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' landmark graphic novel and director Zack Snyder's flawed but ambitious 2009 movie seemed tenuous. Same universe, but merely distant echoes of what transpired there.

In recent weeks, however, the original characters -- decades older, since that story principally took place in the 1980s and this one is contemporary -- have gradually become integral parts of the show's framework, in a way that honors the original while boldly building on it.

Granted, there wasn't much mystery that the strange, wealthy recluse with robotic servants was Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons), a.k.a. Ozymandias, The Smartest Man in the World, whose scheme to create harmony -- killing millions in the process -- was the gut punch of the comic.

Slower to arrive, though, were Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), a one-time costumed hero, now an FBI agent; and finally, Dr. Manhattan, the godlike figure who isn't bound by conventional laws of time and space, who had been notably absent.

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