‘Nostalgia’ Was a Cologne in the Watchmen Graphic Novel. Now It’s a Drug
In HBO's Watchmen episode 5, Looking Glass learns that Angela's pill bottle is something called "Nostalgia."
In the graphic novel, "Nostalgia" was a cosmetic line created by Adrian Veidt.
Here's how "Nostalgia" impacted the Watchmen comics.
Just after Watchmen’s Wade (Looking Glass) watches his ex-wife incinerate a cloned puppy in a dish washer chamber, he learns about some pills. The pills, given to Angela Abar by her grandfather, Will, turn out to be “nostalgia,” pills containing memories that had been banned in the Watchmen universe for leading to “psychosis.” It is recommended that Wade’s “lady friend” not take those pills.
Oh well. Before she's apprehended, Angela (the 'lady friend') swallows the entire bottle.
What are these pills?
In the Watchmen graphic novel, “nostalgia” is the name of a cosmetics line produced by Adrian Veidt. (Veidt also has his hand in several other industries including wellness, and at the start of the episode you can see a boy reading a magazine with an ad for the “Veidt Method,” a kind of fitness routine.) In a letter to a director of a cosmetics company, Veidt talks about the line, explaining how “the success of the campaign is directly linked to the state of global uncertainty.” (The name of the cosmetics director to whom Veidt writes: “Angela.”)
Veidt wants to profit off this uncertainty, and he explains why the line will be commercially successful: given the uncertainty of the present, “the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality.” Retreat into memory, apparently. Though it’s unclear how advanced this cosmetic technology was, one assumes the same principle somehow transformed into pill form in the 30 years since cosmetic “nostalgia.”
In another profit-driven move, Veidt then predicts peace (perhaps by means of the plot he was already masterminding). In that case, he suggests transitioning from nostalgia to a new line he calls “Millennium line.” (Note the name of the construction project in HBO's Watchmen, the “Millennium Clock”–yet one more similarity between the characters of Veidt and Lady Trieu.)
Nostalgia also appears in the graphic novel as a cologne, and the image of the cologne flying through space frames Chapter IX, where Silk Spectre (Laurie Blake in the show) learns of her biological father. Get it? Nostalgia. Memory. Funny joke.
What swallowing a whole bottle of Nostalgia pills does to Angela we’ll have to wait to see. Given the revelational power of Nostalgia in the graphic novel, it's bound to be transformative.
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