WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Doomsday Clock #11 by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh and Amie Brockway-Metcalf, on sale now.
The heroes of the Watchmen Universe have stepped into the spotlight, as several heroes and villains from that world have stepped into the DC Universe in Doomsday Clock. They've all traveled to the DCU as part of Ozymandias' scheme to get Doctor Manhattan to return to their Earth and save it from the nuclear fallout he failed to prevent at the end of the '80s epic from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Along the way, Oz hired two goons, Mime (Marcos Maez) and Marionette (Erika Manson), for some mysterious reason to aid his quest. Early on, we found out that Doctor Manhattan led to their incarceration by stopping one of their sadistic crime robberies, because rather than kill them, he stopped since Marionette was pregnant, a rare act of mercy Oz is now trying to exploit. Now, Doomsday Clock #11 finally reveals the truth about this baby.
When Lex Luthor meets Lois Lane, he sheds insight to how he's been tracking Manhattan and the incursions from Moore's comic. All of this is happening while the metahuman arms race has reached new heights, with the world on the brink of war and villains rampaging across the world, thanks to Manhattan's interference. It's all building to a massive showdown between Superman and Manhattan himself, but as Oz reveals to an imprisoned Saturn Girl while he goes off on his own villainous exposition, there's something more to Marionette's kid and it's what he wants to use to lure Manhattan back home.
He reveals Manhattan saved Marionette's life, not because she was pregnant or because he saw Comedian kill a pregnant lady on a mission in Watchmen, but because he saw the future and figured out how important her son was going to be. Oz reveals that Jon told him this baby, born in prison while Mime was in a cell, was taken from his mom and placed into a foster system which later resulted in adoption by Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) and Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk) -- both second generation heroes.
As Watchmen #12 revealed, they took on the names of Sam and Sandra Hollis, a reference to the first Nite Owl, Hollis Mason. They left behind their crime-fighting days and retired after faking their deaths during Oz's squid attack that killed millions in the name of world peace. Oz's words are obscure, though, because the boy being "important" could simply mean his being important to Laurie, his neglected wife who left him for Dan.
This kid could simply have brought her the joy and fulfillment that Manhattan could never give her, or the blonde-haired boy might well have a key role to play in the overall crossing over of two universes. In an earlier issue, Manhattan also told Marionette that she was pregnant again, which threw her and Mime's world into further disarray, and he hinted that this child too is set for something grand.
As for the first child, he could grow up to become Oz himself, while he could also be a version of Lex Luthor on another Earth. while latest theory suggests it could be Manhattan as a boy who eventually falls into the Osterman family. Seeing as time has been manipulated and dimensions are crossing over, the kid could simply end up moving through portals in space and time to become any one of these individuals, so displacement -- as Oz and Lex have indicated prior -- are no problem at all in this book. This is all s a lot to take in, but with only one issue left, the true identity and the destiny of this child may very well be revealed before too long.