Chapter Summaries

Heisenberg, Lucifer, and Nidhogg struggled for two weeks to preserve the Nine Realms and force Aurorag to appear, but the realms collapsed while Aurorag remained hidden. Heisenberg then realized the lives in his pocket were also being destroyed, and the chapter ended as Odin and the other Asgardian gods began to shatter.

• Heisenberg sent Odin, Thor, and more than two hundred billion warriors into his pocket while using Nidhogg's wings as a trap for Aurorag.
• Nidhogg tried to reconnect the Nine Realms' lives and destinies, while Lucifer protected Niflheim and Heisenberg fought for control of the world's rules.
• Heisenberg asked the system for a strategy against Aurorag, but it gave no answer, so he continued the struggle without help.
• For two weeks, Heisenberg, Lucifer, and Nidhogg repeatedly rebuilt the collapsing Nine Realms, but Aurorag never appeared.
• Lucifer finally failed to hold up the World Tree, and the Nine Realms vanished except for Niflheim.
• Odin drank and joked with the gods in Heisenberg's pocket before he and the other Asgardian gods began to split apart.

As the Norse world vanished and its inhabitants were erased from everyone’s memories, Heisenberg and Lucifer forced Nidhogg to disappear so the world could be rebuilt. They then revealed their plan to repeatedly help Aurorag recreate the Norse world, hoping to master the path to omnipotence, and began the cycle again.

• Odin and the Norse gods and beasts accepted their destruction, while Baldr vanished after Frigga and Loki spoke with him.
• The Norse beings across countless universes disappeared, and nearly everyone forgot they had ever existed.
• Heisenberg and Lucifer attacked Nidhogg and erased him, leaving the two to accelerate Aurorag’s reborn world.
• Heisenberg used information from the system to locate the new Norse world, and he and Lucifer helped recreate its legends and fates.
• Heisenberg explained that repeating the world’s creation could help them reach omnipotence, and the pair set out to confront Nidhogg again.

Heisenberg and Lucifer repeatedly recreated the Nine Realms to strengthen their foundations, but Heisenberg realized the process was making him accept cruelty and destiny without judgment. He destroyed the world and told Lucifer that pursuing omnipotence through Aurorag’s creation would turn them into Aurorag and erase their own path.

• Heisenberg and Lucifer reenacted the creation of the Nine Realms thousands of times, shaping lives such as Surtur and Valkyrie while discussing creation and possible paths to omnipotence.
• Heisenberg and Lucifer arranged the next events in Norse destiny, with Lucifer returning to his world and continuing his exchanges with Nidhogg.
• After more than eighty million repetitions, Heisenberg grew uneasy as he realized he had begun treating every act of cruelty as acceptable because the perpetrators and victims were creations.
• Heisenberg incinerated the Nine Realms, angering Lucifer, who protested that they had worked hard to continue the lives and destinies there.
• Heisenberg told Lucifer that the Nine Realms belonged to Aurorag and that following this method could make them omnipotent only by turning them into Aurorag and taking away their own path.

Heisenberg realized Aurorag's repeating Norse world was assimilating him and Lucifer into new versions of Aurorag, so he dragged Lucifer out and purged the invading rules. After Heisenberg beat Lucifer back to his senses, they agreed to return Aurorag's gift.

• Lucifer angrily accused Heisenberg of destroying the children they had created, and his reaction made Heisenberg recognize how Aurorag's rules were changing their minds.
• Heisenberg warned Lucifer that they had taken the wrong path, but Lucifer said he planned to become omnipotent by following Aurorag's example.
• Heisenberg pulled Lucifer out of Aurorag's universe and discovered that Aurorag's rules had begun infiltrating both of them, especially Lucifer.
• Heisenberg split into countless versions of himself and expelled the Norse rules from his bodies, then explained that accepting them would make him subject to Aurorag's will.
• Heisenberg beat Lucifer until the clashing rules left his body and his sense of self returned.
• Lucifer and Heisenberg agreed that they had to put Aurorag's rules aside and return the favor for his gift.

After Aurorag nearly assimilated them, Heisenberg and Lucifer abandoned their plan to attack him directly and retaliated by altering Norse world, then unleashing a Cthulhu tentacle that began invading it. They watched Aurorag repeatedly replay the world to contain the invasion, and Heisenberg stayed with Lucifer to keep the aberration from spreading further.

• Lucifer urged Heisenberg to give up plotting against Aurorag and return home with what they had learned from Norse world's reenactments.
• Heisenberg decided to punish Aurorag by disrupting Norse world's fate, and he and Lucifer changed its inhabitants and myths, including turning Odin into a woman.
• After Aurorag reset the feminized universe, Lucifer returned with a Cthulhu tentacle and, at Heisenberg's urging, threw it into Norse world.
• Cthulhu's influence took hold through Kraken, which assimilated Jörmungandr and spread aberrations across the Nine Realms.
• Aurorag repeatedly replayed Norse world while Odin and the gods adapted to fight the invasion, but they failed to defeat it.
• Heisenberg celebrated the payback, then asked Lucifer to stay and help prevent the dangerous tentacle from spreading beyond Aurorag's world.

Heisenberg and Lucifer watched the Norse world defeat Cthulhu’s influence through the rise of mechanical life, then returned to Heisenberg’s divine kingdom. After resolving the memory confusion caused by the repeated world evolutions, Heisenberg began upgrading Mogo, leaving Martha lost in the kingdom’s suddenly expanded kitchen.

• Lucifer agreed with Heisenberg that a watchman was needed, and the two played games while keeping watch over the Norse world.
• Odin and the Norse beings abandoned their flesh for machinery, linked their consciousness through the mechanical World Tree, and ultimately defeated Cthulhu’s invasion.
• The Norse collective consciousness turned against Aurorag, and Heisenberg and Lucifer left after watching its rebellion begin.
• Mogo told Heisenberg that people in the divine kingdom had been confused or asleep, and Heisenberg restored them while attributing the trouble to memory-related power.
• Heisenberg decided to upgrade Mogo, expanded her fate and body with matter from surrounding worlds, and left her vastly larger than before.
• Martha woke and found that the divine kingdom’s expanded scale had left her unable to get out of the kitchen.

Heisenberg expanded Mogo and discovered that he could perceive and control the fates of everyone in his divine kingdom. The system then appeared as Odin, who revealed how he had passed it to Heisenberg and urged him to trust it as the final shield against his doubts.

• Heisenberg released dangerous beasts across the expanded Mogo, while Bach began organizing the displaced residents and planning the planet's new layout.
• Heisenberg returned to Infinity Tower and saw the shifting threads of fate surrounding Martha and the other lives in his divine kingdom.
• The system spoke for the first time and took the form of Odin, who explained that his brief omnipotence had let him see Aurorag's control over fate.
• Odin recounted how Heisenberg's actions in the Norse world had helped him gain freedom, and how he had used fragmented fate to place the system in Heisenberg's hands.
• Odin explained that he had sent Heisenberg into the Norse world with Gungnir to complete a closed loop of fate and exact revenge on Aurorag.
• Odin told Heisenberg that he had appeared to give him a final shield and urged him to trust the system without fear or distrust.

Heisenberg learned that Odin had engineered the system’s five-minute invincibility reward to help ensure Heisenberg could kill him, then accepted Odin’s challenge to fight for the Nine Realms. After spending immense time reliving the Norse world’s cycles, Heisenberg approached omnipotence but feared losing himself, so he entered another world seeking a way to suppress his breakthrough.

• Odin explained that his hidden fate required Heisenberg to kill him and revealed that the system’s five-minute invincibility reward was meant to help Heisenberg do so.
• Odin declared war and asked Heisenberg to kill him at the source; Heisenberg promised to defeat him and claim the Nine Realms.
• Heisenberg and Lucifer retreated into chaotic temporal rifts to absorb the experience of more than eighty million world simulations.
• After reliving the Norse world’s cycles from an outsider’s and creator’s perspectives, Heisenberg reached the threshold of omnipotence but feared becoming someone other than himself.
• Heisenberg entered another world to seek an Almighty God who could suppress his breakthrough, where he saw a naked Blue Giant.

Heisenberg entered Doctor Manhattan’s hidden Watchmen world to explore the moral conflicts that had troubled Manhattan, beginning with the impending death of Joker. He arrived in 1983 New York and confronted Joker, who mistook him for someone sent to kill him.

• Doctor Manhattan welcomed Heisenberg, agreed to help him pursue transcendence, and showed him a world preserving his mortal past and regrets over killing Rorschach.
• Heisenberg offered to enter Manhattan’s world and try to change its outcome, and Manhattan sent him into the Watchmen universe.
• Heisenberg arrived in New York in 1983 and recognized that Joker’s death that night marked the beginning of the story and Manhattan’s inner conflict.
• Heisenberg decided he disliked Joker despite understanding Manhattan’s reasons for valuing him, then appeared in Joker’s room to talk.
• Joker punched Heisenberg, realized he was vastly outmatched, and asked whether Heisenberg had come to kill him on Manhattan’s behalf.

Heisenberg listened as Joker explained his loyalty to the United States and his belief in national justice, then condemned him for killing a Vietnamese woman and her unborn child. Heisenberg let Pharaoh King kill Joker, and Rorschach arrived afterward to take Joker’s badge and declare that he would follow him in death.

• Joker told Heisenberg about his violent service to the United States, including assassinations, and defended his actions as loyalty to his country.
• Heisenberg acknowledged Joker’s devotion to national justice but condemned him for killing a pregnant Vietnamese woman and refused to forgive him.
• Pharaoh King burst in and beat Joker while Heisenberg spoke with Manhattan, who accepted Heisenberg’s decision not to let him save Joker.
• Joker fell through the thirtieth-floor window and died on the ground, where his smiley-face badge landed in his blood.
• Rorschach came to the scene, picked up Joker’s badge, and said that Joker had died and Rorschach would follow in his wake.

Rorschach investigated Joker’s death, identified Pharaoh King as a likely suspect, and left before the police arrived. Heisenberg watched him and reflected on the different forms of justice in the Watchmen universe, ending with Doctor Manhattan’s cosmic justice and Pharaoh King’s justice for Earth.

• Rorschach entered Joker’s room, sensed an unseen presence nearby, and investigated the shattered door and wrecked room.
• Rorschach found pig trotters and wine, deduced that Joker had hosted a third person, and considered Pharaoh King among the likeliest suspects.
• Rorschach mourned Joker, rejected the police’s ability to deliver justice, and quietly left the room.
• Heisenberg revealed his admiration for Rorschach and considered the uncompromising black-and-white morality represented by Rorschach’s mask.
• Heisenberg described Doctor Manhattan’s commitment to the universe’s continuation and Pharaoh King’s plan to end the Cold War by destroying Washington and Moscow.

Heisenberg recounts the Watchmen’s history through the different kinds of justice represented by its members, focusing on Joker’s lifelong service to the nation and Rorschach’s uncompromising fight against crime. He leaves Rorschach as the ordinary person whose relentless justice Heisenberg admires most.

• Joker stayed committed to serving the United States after the first-generation Watchmen declined, carrying out secret government work and later joining Pharaoh King’s plan.
• The Keene Act outlawed superheroes, prompting Pharaoh King to enter business, Doctor Manhattan and the second Silk Spectre to pursue their relationship, the second Owlman to return to civilian life, and Rorschach to keep fighting criminals.
• Joker died after a life devoted to the nation, having fought Pharaoh King to a standstill despite his age.
• Heisenberg described the second Owlman and second Silk Spectre as representing social justice through their ordinary desires and occasional crime-fighting.
• Rorschach continued pursuing justice after the government revoked his heroic status, and Heisenberg identified him as the truest representative of ordinary, uncompromising justice.

Rorschach recounted the childhood tragedy that transformed his belief in justice, then tried to convince Doctor Manhattan and Owlman that Joker’s death was part of a conspiracy. Both dismissed his suspicions, leaving Rorschach determined to investigate alone as Heisenberg watched.

• Rorschach remembered how finding an eight-year-old girl murdered by a man who fed her to his dogs made him abandon his no-killing rule and embrace absolute justice.
• After learning of Joker’s death, Rorschach warned Doctor Manhattan that someone was targeting the former Watchmen, but Manhattan teleported him away and returned to his research.
• Rorschach told Owlman about Joker’s death and urged him to use his abilities again, but Owlman dismissed the suspected conspiracy and warned him about the coming world war.
• Rorschach left Owlman’s home disappointed, reflected on the importance of punishing evil even as the world neared catastrophe, and vowed to find out who had killed Joker.

Owlman attended Joker’s funeral and mourned the hero he had once despised, while Rorschach confronted the former villain Death about visiting Joker’s grave. Death revealed that Joker had appeared at his bedside shortly before dying, crying and repeating that everything was a joke.

• Owlman dressed for Joker’s funeral and remembered how Joker’s brutal actions during the 1963 anti-war riots had shaped his view of him.
• Owlman joined the mourners as Joker’s coffin was buried, feeling sorrow despite his longstanding dislike of Joker.
• A homeless man watched as a florist left flowers at Joker’s grave and hurried away.
• Rorschach broke into the florist’s home and identified him as Death, then demanded to know why he had visited Joker’s funeral.
• Death explained that Joker had visited him around half a month earlier, crying and saying, “It’s all a joke. It’s all a fucking goddamn joke!”

Rorschach questioned Death about Joker’s final visit and learned that Joker had confessed to terrible crimes and mentioned a list containing Rorschach and others. After visiting Joker’s grave, Rorschach confronted Heisenberg, who defeated him and began to speak with him.

• Rorschach punched Death and demanded that he explain what Joker had told him before dying.
• Death recounted Joker’s confession to harming children, raping women, and killing civilians, then said Joker had named Rorschach, Edward Blake, and Jane as people on a mysterious list.
• Rorschach took Death’s prohibited pain medication but left it behind after learning Death had incurable cancer.
• Rorschach visited Joker’s grave and wondered what had frightened him, then noticed a vagrant holding a sign that asked what he was afraid of.
• Rorschach recognized the vagrant as Heisenberg, who revealed his true appearance and offered to introduce himself.
• Rorschach attacked Heisenberg, shattered his own limbs against him, and finally collapsed; Heisenberg said Rorschach should have listened to him.

Heisenberg healed Rorschach and challenged him to explain his solitary resolve, then transported him to a torture chamber where seven women had been murdered. Rorschach recognized the crimes, trapped the perpetrators, and began killing them, declaring that he had gone mad again.

• Rorschach questioned Heisenberg about his power and motives, and Heisenberg healed all his injuries and longstanding ailments.
• Rorschach accused Heisenberg of being a more emotional and dangerous version of Doctor Manhattan, while Heisenberg described Rorschach as someone who resisted the tide of popular thought.
• Heisenberg transported Rorschach to a concealed basement filled with abused women, including seven dead victims, one of them a thirteen-year-old child.
• Rorschach blocked the exit, identified the victims' causes of death, and told Heisenberg that he understood why he had been brought there.
• Rorschach attacked the gathered perpetrators with a hammer, killing several, and said that he had gone mad again.

After confronting Rorschach about the rage behind his brutal killings, Heisenberg took him to Mars and left him there, where Rorschach accepted the possibility of dying before falling asleep. When Rorschach woke, Heisenberg asked him to help with his pursuit of greater power, and Rorschach demanded the truth about the conspiracy behind Joker’s death.

• Rorschach admitted that although his victims deserved death, his rage had made him kill them in a way that stripped away their dignity, and Heisenberg agreed that this had turned justice into a personal execution.
• Heisenberg analyzed the tension between Rorschach and the man beneath his mask, then transported them to Mars and argued that Rorschach had little choice but to talk with him.
• Rorschach refused to sit, saying that even dying alone on Mars would show Heisenberg that some people did not fear death; Heisenberg vanished, and Rorschach lay down, sang, and fell asleep.
• After watching Rorschach sleep for half an hour, Heisenberg sat beside him and waited twenty hours for him to wake.
• Heisenberg told Rorschach that he wanted to rise from the supermultiverse to true omnipotence and asked him to be himself; Rorschach then demanded to know whose plan Joker’s death served and whether it had been worth it.

On Mars, Heisenberg explained how Pharaoh King used Doctor Manhattan’s desire for human acceptance to draw him into an energy project while secretly plotting to turn the public against him. Rorschach learned how Joker helped arrange the conspiracy but was still waiting to hear why Joker had to die.

• Rorschach demanded that Heisenberg explain the process behind the deaths and how the dead had served Pharaoh King’s plan.
• Heisenberg said Manhattan’s power had helped keep the first Watchmen together, while his later inaction disappointed Pharaoh King and others.
• Heisenberg explained that Pharaoh King built wealth and influence, then persuaded a disoriented Manhattan to spend a year pursuing an energy source meant to replace both fuel and food and water.
• Pharaoh King recruited Joker by promising to use Manhattan’s power against the Soviet Union, and Joker secretly contacted people who had known Manhattan, including Jenny.
• Heisenberg revealed that Pharaoh King and Joker arranged for those people to develop cancer so they could falsely blame Manhattan and turn public opinion against him.
• Rorschach asked why Joker had died despite serving Pharaoh King, insisting that Heisenberg had not yet addressed the conspiracy’s most important crime.

Heisenberg sent Rorschach back to confront Pharaoh King, who confessed that he planned to destroy several major cities and kill fifteen million people to unite humanity against Doctor Manhattan and avert nuclear war. Rorschach rejected Veidt’s justification and vowed to judge his crime, leaving them poised to continue their fight.

• Heisenberg explained that Pharaoh King planned to destroy Moscow, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Hong Kong, killing fifteen million people to end the Cold War by making humanity blame Doctor Manhattan.
• Rorschach demanded to return to Earth, and Heisenberg sent him to Pharaoh King’s room in New York.
• Rorschach attacked Veidt and accused him of murdering Eddie Brock, while Veidt demanded that he explain the plan he intended to stop.
• Veidt revealed that he planned to sacrifice millions to prevent nuclear war, insisting that the suffering would unite nations and secure lasting peace.
• Rorschach acknowledged that Veidt’s plan might save many, but condemned its lies and the sacrifice of people without their knowledge, and vowed to judge Veidt’s crime.

Heisenberg intervened in Rorschach and Pharaoh King's confrontation, removed Doctor Manhattan from control of the world, and lent Rorschach some of his power. Rorschach killed Veidt for the people he had already murdered, while refusing to convict him for crimes he had only planned to commit.

• Heisenberg argued that no one should be sacrificed for a greater plan and revealed himself and Doctor Manhattan to Rorschach and Veidt.
• Rorschach recognized that Manhattan was a different version from the one he had met and asked Heisenberg to stop the Manhattan who had allowed Veidt's plan.
• Heisenberg tore Manhattan out of the world, then told Rorschach to face Veidt and lent him a portion of his power.
• Rorschach discovered he could see and control the sun, time, and people's fates, while Veidt welcomed the prospect of Rorschach becoming feared.
• Veidt urged Rorschach to kill him and create a world without crime, but Rorschach killed him only for the people he had already murdered.