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The fourth episode of Watchmen opens with a chilling and incredibly intense introduction to a character who we've only heard mentioned before: Lady Trieu. After a quick Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton-scored scene introducing us to a happy farming family, this mysterious trillionaire enters the picture, and shakes everything up for good.
Much like the man whose company she bought Petey revealed last week that Lady Trieu purchased Adrian Veidt 's companyLady Trieu clearly is someone who makes things happen with her immense wealth of not only money, but resources. She doesn't offer this family money for their housethought she eventually still gives them somebut rather an already-birthed genetic child. She's bought a fertility clinic. Like Veidt in the comics (and perhaps in the show as well) she's concerned, primarily, with playing god.
We don't know what her larger plan is, but at the conclusion of this opening scene, something flies from the sky. "It's mine," she says, smiling. A whole lot of land, and some object flying from the skynope, doesn't sound like she's cooking anything up at all.
It's also worth mentioning that the name 'Lady Trieu' doesn't come from nowhere. Sometimes called the 'Vietnamese Joan of Arc,' Lady Trieu (Vietnamese name Triu Th Trinh, though it doesn't perfectly translate to English) is said to have led one of the many Vietnamese rebellions against the rule of the Chinese Han Dynasty.
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A famous quote of hers is said to be I will not resign myself to the lot of women who bow their heads and become concubines. I wish to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I have no desire to take abuse. This history is tricky to track down, as it only exists in books coming from the Vietnamese end of things; the Chinese history has tended to erase her existence, as well as her rebellion.
Despite resisting for a while with her 1000-person army, her rebellion couldn't hold up forever, and eventually she suffered defeat in the year 248. Following her loss, it's said that she committed suicide, throwing herself in a river. Despite this, her tales of bravery and inspiration make her still regarded as a hero today in Vietnam.
This background makes you wonder if perhaps the show's Lady Trieu could be following a similar path; does she have a larger rebellion ahead of her? Is that what she bought Veidt's company, and is collecting resources for?
You'd think that to play a character with such intensity, a performer would have to be a seasoned veteran, and in the past decade and change, that's what Hong Chau has become. She knows just the right energy to bring to the table in Watchmen, probably, because she's been around this rodeo before.
In last year's Amazon Prime series Homecoming, Chau played the mysterious Audrey, a colleague of Bobby Cannavale's nefarious corporate head. Helmed by Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail, that show was stylistically brilliant with twists and turns coming at any given moment. Sound familiar? She's also expected to turn up in that show's second season.
Chau also appeared in shows like David Simon 's Treme and the first season of Big Little Lies, so it's fair to say she's been around a prestige television set before. But her resum doesn't stop there. She's also shown up in a number of heralded movies, including Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice and Alexander Payne's Downsizing. While the latter film received very mixed reviews , the praise of her performance was universally positive; many argued that she deserved an Oscar nomination .
We're very excited to see how this character plays out within the larger storyChau has proven she can take on a big character, and this show, well, we've seen how out there they can get with storytelling already. This should be a treat.