HBO’s Watchmen provided some of the most compelling television of 2019, delivering a pertinent look at the relationship between race and a broken criminal justice system through one of DC Comic’s biggest properties. For nine episodes Regina King wore the role of Angela Abar—otherwise known as Sister Night—like a glove, leading a near-infallible cast that included Jean Smart, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Irons, Louis Gossett Jr., Hong Chau, and a host of other heavy-hitters. The end of the first season opened the door for a maelstrom of possibilities, leaving a very vocal, dedicated fan base to wonder whether or not Angela had inherited the powers of her lover, Mateen’s Cal Abar. And as the theorizing commenced, few considered the possibility of one of HBO’s most popular, critically beloved shows not returning. Because seriously, why on earth would you let this go?
Well, according to a report from USA Today, much of the prestigious network’s continued interest in the comic book drama—you know, aside from a killer story—lies in series creator Damon Lindelof. Per HBO programming chief Casey Bloys: “It’s really in Damon’s thinking about what he wants to do. If there’s an idea that excited him about another season, another installment, maybe like a Fargo, True Detective [anthology] take on it, or if he wants to do something different altogether. We’re very proud of Watchmen, but what I’m most interested in what Damon wants to do.”
And herein lies the potential impasse: USA Today states Lindelof already feels that he has told the story he wants to tell. However, he has “given [his] blessing” to the network to pursue another season with a different writer-producer at the helm. Bloys’ response: “It would be hard to imagine doing it without Damon involved in some way.”
To be clear: HBO has not issue an official cancellation of the unique drama, and “involved in some way” leaves the door open for Lindelof to retain some sort of involvement that could satisfy all involved. While his vision was undoubtedly a reigning element of Watchmen’s success, the show could continue to flourish in the right hands (think Killing Eve, a juggernaut that has maintained its quality despite a carousel of showrunners). Which is why it’s frustrating to see a network hinge so much of its faith on one person despite the many available avenues at its disposal. Also, we’re just really curious to see if Angela is able to walk on that damn pool.
90 Comments
“I have done a unique thing.”“DO IT AGAIN!!1!”
Unless some new showrunner steps in with a dirt cheap idea the show is over. The viewership was apparently dismally low, and it’d be hard to justify that kind of expense again. Maybe if it gets Emmy love next year.
Uhhh“Watchmen is averaging better than 7 million viewers per episode across all platforms to date, per HBO. Its initial audience for the season is 759,000, meaning it has gathered almost 90 percent of its viewership after the initial airing”
I hadn’t actually heard that, so its great news. I was only going off the viewer numbers that I read while it was on the air.
Not saying that they’re being 100% honest, but HBO claims that it’s one of their most viewed new series in years. Live-viewing numbers are also increasingly irrelevant to networks, especially ones like HBO that also stream their own content. The first episode supposedly had less than 1M live viewers but now has over 10M thanks to DVR and streaming. Throw in the universal critical acclaim and all but certain awards it’ll take home, and there’s no way that HBO walks away if they think they have a viable story and the right person to tell it for a second season.
This is especially relevant considering that HBO and Warner will be creating a large streaming platform.
I don’t know where you read those numbers from, but Regina King won 2 Emmys for 2 shows that had already been canceled before she won those statues.
also if you look at Game of Thrones and Succession, which are both expensive shows, it took more than a season for their viewership to climb.
It doesn’t need a sequel series though. It ended perfectly. Could there be more story? Sure. Does it need more story? No.
Maybe HBO should call Zack Snyder.
What should they call him?
Anything, but late for breakfast.Or Martha.
The directors cut of his adaptation is actually superb – but it’s an exact adaptation and not nearly as creative as the show, no room for new wrinkles or ideas.
“So, Zack, what are you thinking?”“Well, I have an idea where Ozymandias is raped in prison-”“You’re fired.”
Nope…Alan Moore
I feel like they can’t make a second season without highlighting some of the things that didn’t, to me, work in the end of the first. I feel like Angela’s character is in an entirely uncreatively interesting place unless they just say the last shot was a misdirection.
But I’m in the minority who thought the whole endeavor was ultimately so-so.
They really can’t win continuing Angela’s story. But they also can’t do more seasons without addressing the new God in the room.Making it a misdirection kills any hope viewers had that maybe she’d do something different with those powers. And continuing on with her having those powers forces her to act in ways that are necessary simply to move the story along.I’m happy to discuss how I think the world would progress now. But I don’t want the show to answer those questions for me.It’d be like if Inception did a sequel that answered if Cobb was dreaming in the end or not.
Inception answered that itself if you paid attention.
The answer is, “He drank some bad grappa and fell asleep during The Spy Who Loved Me. And then… Shit. Got. Real.”
I don’t think the ambiguity over whether Angela is a god is really all that important to the story, or even particularly ambiguous. The answer is obviously “yes, she’s a god with all of Dr. Manhattan’s powers.” It’s the only ending that works on a thematic level.If the answer is “no, Dr. Manhattan made up all that egg business just to mess with her,” then it adds zero dimension to the story. It would render moot the questions about whether Osterman was the right person to wield his power, and whether someone with a more active personality and sense of justice could do more. The story just becomes a bunch of stuff that happened.
If the answer is “no, Dr. Manhattan made up all that egg business just to mess with her,” then it adds zero dimension to the story.
Go back and watch “A God Walks into Abar.”Jon’s view of the world causes him to see lots of thing in abstract. When he’s taking about taking his powers, placing it in an egg….etc…stop taking him literally.Because he’s also describing the process of impregnating a woman.To him, it wouldn’t be any different. And so, again, that’s why having it ambiguous is such a great ending. Because maybe she *doesn’t* have the powers of a God. Because, as Adrian says, anyone who *wants* that power shouldn’t have it.But maybe she’s pregnant with a child who has the powers, who didn’t want the power or seek it out…but has it now.Or maybe she *does* have the powers, and something about her past will help her avoid the same traps Trieu fell into, while being a better person than Jon.But who knows, and that’s the beauty of the ambiguity.
Inception pretty clearly answered that Cobb was dreaming in the end I thought? Either that or his kids didn’t age over however many years it was since he’d seen them…
I’m with you in the so-so boat. I thought it was fine while it was going, but the whole turned out to be less interesting than it seemed as it was going by.
…might just be that the ending made a lot of the ideas seem ultimately less interesting than they looked at first glance.
…and there were some things that just turned out to be fucking dumb.
Exactly. I enjoyed the ride a lot (a few episodes and scenes were spectacular) but I can’t imagine ever revisiting the whole package. I admire it as an ambitious swing though.
It’s not bad but for some reason I can quite finish it.
I don’t think I trust another season without Lindelof’s involvement either.
This reminds me that I never got around to finishing this show. Eh maybe next year
Where did you stop? The show started slow, but kicked into high gear with episodes 5,6 and 8 being straight up masterpieces. The show never got bad, but yeah the start was a little slow.
Couldnt even tell you. Think the episode when Jean Smart showed up so like 3? I enjoyed what I did see mind you but like most tv I’m like “ok get to the point already”. I also never finished the mandalorian.
I wouldn’t want a continuation of Angela’s story, for one. I don’t want to see her learning to use her abilities or struggling with the weight of being a god. I don’t think that would be very interesting from her point of view, frankly, unless they went straight Red Son about it. I’d prefer to learn more about the world at large, so an anthology approach would be preferable to a direct story. Don’t get hamstrung by what Lindelof created. That was why he succeeded, for the most part, even if I found the narrative resolution of it all to be less interesting than the character-study episodes.
Where do you set an anthology series in a universe that may (or may not) have a new God figure? Leaving Angela’s story open-ended (does she have the powers of a God…what would she do with them?) are much better than a show-runner having to create an arc for her that ruins the ending.
Not where but when. If they have to continue this show because money, it’d only work as an anthology – and thankfully they’ve got pretty much all of the twentieth century up through now to set it in, if they wanted.
Honestly, I’d be happy for them to ruin the ending, because for me the ending damn near ruined the season. After the series spent nine episodes extending Alan Moore’s original argument that superheroism is inherently damaging and dangerous, it was bizarre for it to land on the notion that this one character becoming a superhero was a good thing, the capstone to her development as a character.
Especially since it never required her to repudiate any of the negative traits of superheroism it had previously seemed to condemn. Right up to the end, she’s still deploying authoritarian tactics like casual torture, and she never really reckons with the fact that she got a friend lynched based on nothing but her word. Indeed, the finale ultimately validates these qualities, since torture is what leads her to the bad guys’ lair, and the friend she got killed turns out to be an unambiguous villain who was only pretending to be her friend and, oh yeah, was complicit in mass murder.So the one reason I’m a little disappointed that we’re not getting a second season is because, if it were to follow up on Angela’s story at all, it would almost certainly have to complicate the finale’s pat notion that her ascension to godhood was a “Yay for the one good superhero!” moment.
it was bizarre for it to land on the notion that this one character
becoming a superhero was a good thing, the capstone to her development
as a character.
*Will* it be a good thing? Wasn’t it Ozymandius that talks about how no one who seeks the power of a God should have it?She ate the egg, assuming it would give her his power. So you could argue she’s demonstrating the same flaw (for different reasons) as Trieu.That’s why being open ended is great. You can argue that maybe she’ll be benevolent, but maybe not.
DC has done decades of stories in a world with multiple Superman-level figures out there, and a lot of them brilliant and weird and gritty. I don’t think it’s quite the impasse you think it is
I don’t want Watchmen to turn into a show about all of these “supermen” flying around doing supermen stuff.It’d quickly turn into Dragonball or Heroes where only the Sayain/Petrelli matter.
Nor am I saying you should want that. Watchmen, and stuff like the Wildstorm imprint at DC, has always been relatively more grounded while also having larger than life super powers in the background.It doesn’t mean the focus shifts into DBZ shit
I think they could do an anthology type show focusing on different areas of the world without necessarily following the continuing stories of the characters from this season that closely. For instance, they could do a season set in Vietnam and have Ozymandias’s trial every once in a while pop up on some TV news program in the background, but not have anyone too interested in it.
That’s all I want answered. She is gaining his powers in a completely different fashion. He was basically destroyed then comes back together. Is that her fate? Or is the egg customized to ease her suffering? Will she live in all times simultaneously?
I wouldn’t want a continuation of the series, full stop. ‘You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette’ is a shitty line that saw eggs and cartons of eggs shoehorned in to the plot. Poorly done. The billionaire megalomaniac daughter of Ozymandias was miscast. The racist governor struggled with his southern accent at times – embarrassing to watch. Ozymandias was well cast, an actual narcissist. And now the God figure is a black woman.. coming from a white screenwriter… nope. I won’t order the omelette next time.
Unless she isn’t actually gaining any powers. The whole egg thing was a red herring. But if she thinks she is it might be interesting.
I mean, it was a great season. The stuff it did with the universe was compelling, and the ending was a nice meaningful spot that leaves a lot of potential.Even if the questions are unanswered, we’re allowed to enjoy the discussion about what would happen next…and anything that they actually make (especially without the original show-runner) would only be in the name of “extending the series” and thus step all over what we already got.I am fine with a one-off prestige series.
yep. the writer seems to be forgetting about the rating-forced creation of season 2 of big little lies, which was ultimately a forgettable waste of time and talent.i think it might be a better idea to steer in the New Pope direction. take time off to eventually come up with a compelling (hopefully) new story when ready, without forcing a second season on a shoehorned staff.
One of the things that initially sold me on the show was the insistence that it was a 9 episode story with a beginning and end. It was refreshing in the age of “We have a 5 year plan to make this show complete!”. Also in keeping with how Moore and Gibbons originally intended for Watchmen to be a self-contained narrative.
All of this. I was under the impression this series had exactly the number of episodes they needed to tell their story. It was a perfectly contained project realized in Damon’s vision. Let it end and lets all move on.
Same.
If I promise not to watch the new Game of Thrones whatever crap they’re making, will that be enough to convince HBO this is a bad idea?
Pretty cool that you didn’t mention Alan Moore or Dave Gibbons, or the fact that this series was made against Moore’s express wishes! Good job x
“think Killing Eve, a juggernaut that has maintained its quality despite a carousel of showrunners”Did it? I thought S2 was a step down without Phoebe, and we don’t know what the next showrunner for S3 will bring.
I agree, I think Jodie Comer is holding that show together right now.
Season 2 of Killing Eve knew the words but not the music. It tried to evoke the same feelings as the first season, but without really seeming to understand how to get there. I’m not super optimistic for season 3.
I was gonna say
The show was incredibly thoughtful in all its parts. How long had Lindelof thought about it? Could that be replicated on a shorter time scale? I don’t think so. Let it end. TV shows don’t really have to continue; we’re just so used to them running for years because we think that’s the nature of the commercial medium. But there are always new shows coming out that people watch.
Based on several major Lost episodes (most notably Desmond’s entire arc), Lindelof was definitely a giant Watchmen fan for years before he got the gig.
Yeah, that letter he wrote when the series was commissioned clearly laid out how important Watchment was on his whole creative output. But I’d never thought back to those Desmond episodes, especially The Constant, of course that’s where that feel comes from.
Great spot
Which is partly why I was willing to trust him from the first announcement. The Leftovers definitely helped, but Lost proved he actually was a huge fan. The way Dr Manhattan was treated with such respect but actually given new material showed how much the makers cared.
God I hope it’s done. Perfect season, with a narrative that gave us full thematic closure. It doesn’t *need* to be serialized. Just like the book it sprang from, this story was a perfect closed loop. Lindelof understands that. I wish nerd culture could ever let things go, because most stories are better with an ending.Also, that ending wasn’t a cliffhanger. It was ambiguous. It was similar to the ending of Inception (love it or hate it). It wasn’t an invitation “to be continued.”
I wish nerd culture could ever let things go
Kind of an odd thing to say about a sequel to Watchmen. I mean yes, I agree, but…
Damon Lindelof creating something fantastic, sticking the landing and then just walking away on that high note is absolutely the last thing I could have expected when this project was announced.
The Killing Eve comparison works on zero levels. That show, as great as it is, is based on obscure series of novels.
Watchmen was a sequel to, well Watchmen.
And a worthy one at that. HBO should take the win, move on and by all means throw all their money at whatever Lindelof wants to do next.
There is a lot he left open and setup for that could be shown in the second season, namely Ozymandias arrest and trial for the Squid attack and the sociopolitical fallout of that being exposed as a fraud; what Night Owl has been up to; Lube Man, the fate of Manhattan’s colony on Europa, but would those be interesting stories worth telling?
Lube man was Petey. Probably. The extra material delved into the fictional novel Fogdancing (which featured lube men as characters) and even showed that Petey was such a huge fan that he wrote an essay on the novel. Add that to Lube Man showing up exactly when Petey and Laurie first arrived and it all lines up.
I’m aware of that. What im saying and meant is Lube Man in action as an actual superhero in action. Or something. I’d watch that.
I don’t understand why it’s even a question whether or not she got his powers. Of course she did! He said it was important for her to see him walking on the pool. He then immediately went to make the waffles, which led to the single unbroken egg which she later found. Not to mention the egg conversation in the bar when they first met, and her grandfather giving her the omlette line that “Cal” told him was important for her to hear. It would make no sense at all of she DIDN’T end up inheriting his powers.
I think the final episode was just Dr. Manhattan’s elaborate way to break up with Angela, since he knew everything that would happen. He could’ve stopped it. He chose to “die.” I’m sure he’s still alive and will put himself back together again and move on to a newer, younger woman.
He co-wrote a lot of the episodes. Many times with women. There were also a surprising amount of female directors. I say HBO seek out them to see if they would want to continue. I mean, the most compelling characters on the show were female characters. But that’s not the only reason they should be considered. He could be a more active EP and consult in the beginning of development or something, and then maybe the executives would be more willing to take a chance. It’s such a rich world that poses many complex questions. It would be a shame to lose out just because HBO execs think only Lindelof could pull this off.
Wow, I truly don’t understand the comments about how Angela’s story ended weirdly or concretely to suggest she not even be in the 2nd season. Nothing wrong with expanding the world, but I thought she was the most compelling character. Especially considering she was POV character, which can often make the character uninteresting.
It occurred to me that one of the reasons I was a little cool on the finale was because it’s all about Angela, but I don’t actually know Angela.The meet-cute episode between her and Jon was great…except that at the end of it I had no idea why she actually fell in love with him. Is it just because he’s a god? I really don’t know.And bigger than that, she’s our point-of-view character, but then it turns out that she’s been hiding a massive secret from us the whole time.And so then we get to the ambiguous ending, and I have no idea what god-Angela actually means. My brain wants to play through possible scenarios for what comes next, but her character is such a blank slate. I guess that she’s into social-justice? Beyond that…?And so obviously that’s where good writers could come in to continue the story. But since I don’t really know Angela, it turns out that I don’t particularly care if it continues or not.
Before Angela met Jon, everyone she ever loved or started to trust would die in front of her. She became a cop and obsessed with justice because she knew the world wouldn’t give her justice unless she did it herself. She never wanted to see anyone suffer the heartache she felt when her parents died, so she performs heroics like heading straight for a bomb-strapped corpse to toss it into a grave and then shove a coffin on top of it.She fell in love with Jon, because he made her feel safe for the first time in her life. Not only was she certain he couldn’t die (or at least, not at the time she fell in love with him), but he knew everything they would ever go through and that they would make it through it together.
But that same security eventually threatened to tear them apart since he could never truly be only in the present with her, so they had to suppress his powers. This wasn’t a massive secret she was keeping from us, but a secret she could never tell a single soul, even the man she loved and trusted who was the subject of said secret. That Angela could keep such a massive secret is just another aspect of her being a hero. It’s the only way to keep Jon safe on Earth and still with her.
Then Angela takes her grandfather’s nostalgia pills. Now, not only does she have her own trauma informing her, she also has her grandfather’s through both the fact that trauma is passed genetically and directly through the pills. She has literal generations of both trauma and the desire to enact justice coursing through her.When she finally has to bring Jon back out of Cal, the shit hits the fan. Another member of her family is going to die and there is nothing she can do about it. Jon knows this to be true, that he will die. And yet, she still tries to save him. He falls in love with her at this moment and knows that she can use the powers he has to actually help. Jon was never strong enough or in touch with his trauma to do anything other than fold in on himself. So throughout their entire relationship, he establishes the idea of the egg and transferring his powers. He provides little hints along the way to inform her that the egg will give her the powers without ever saying it directly. Then he shows her that he can walk on water, a rather simple miracle, but an easy way to indicate the presence of power with little consequence.
So in the end, Angela is not just Angela, but the combination of her trauma, her grandfather’s trauma, and the power and life-force of her lover who just so happened to be a god.The ending is not ambiguous. She gets the powers and she will do good. We don’t need to see it. She’s a god; we just need faith in her.
Of course she walked on water. The show practically wrote in the sky with fire. And that’s enough. The next thing could never be as satisfying for us to watch as it is for us to imagine. Better to let it lie.
Okay, I never watched the movie, and while I have the comic collection, I still haven’t read it yet, but I have to ask about the flag they showed- is it 51 stars or what?
Yeah, Vietnam’s a state in this universe
Yeah, the flag looked more like the Ohio yacht club pennant then the Ohio yacht pennant does.
It could be like Killing Eve!…or like True Detective.Or the Terror. Or…
or the 4th season of Community!
Don’t do it without him. It’d be like second season of American Gods (maybe a bit better, but you know what I mean). The first one was perfect. Leave it be.
S2: A prison drama featuring Dan Drieberg in federal prison. Some of the tension could be “supervillains” busted by Nite Owl and Rorschach. If they want to maintain the time frame of S1 have it be Drieberg as a prison veteran asked by a new fish to help him escape.Mostly I want to see a Nite Owl story.
On the one hand, the Season was pretty much a perfect story, beginning, middle, and end, and I see no reason why or even how another season could be good. On the other hand I felt the same way about the Graphic Novel and I couldn’t see how the show could be good. So…
Anyone arguing over whether or not Angela got the powers is wasting their time. She got the powers. There is nothing in the show to suggest otherwise and not getting them would undercut everything that came before. Just because they don’t show her walking on water doesn’t mean it’s ambiguous. The show simply wouldn’t make sense if she just fell in the water.
Thank you, came here to say this. Lindelof doesn’t seem to think it’s ambiguous either. Plus Manhattan walking on water and saying it would be important later makes no sense if he just wanted to make her fall into the pool. But then I didn’t think the ending of The Leftovers was ambiguous either.
THE A.V. Club wants to know why HBO isn’t exploiting its goodwill to churn out something subpar sequels?
I hope Lindelof keeps working with HBO, they seem like a good pair. If not a second Watchmen season give Damon and crew a blank check and let them make whatever.
HBO’s Watchmen provided some of the most compelling television of 2019, delivering a pertinent look at the relationship between race and a broken criminal justice system through one of DC Comic’s biggest properties. DC Comics’
Good, not every show needs to go on forever, just let some things end.
For a good idea of what this series could possibly do, check out Miracleman: The Golden Age. Miracleman (called Marvelman in the UK) was rebooted by Alan Moore from a 1950’s original comic and, in many ways, looks like a dry run for the Watchmen. Deconstructing superhero mythology, godlike powers changing society, etc.For the fourth volume, Neil Gaiman took on the writing duties, and the story took a breath. The stories of Golden Age are small stories of (mostly) normal people caught up in the massive social upheaval (and near-Utopia) brought about by the nearly-omnipotent titular hero.This works so well for Watchmen, too. The characters and setting of Watchmen were created by Moore in ‘85, and then rebooted by Lindelof in 2019. Bring in a new showrunner to tell stories of people living in the world of a new god (Angela) who is a lot more active and involved than the old god. True Detective is also a good model, as mentioned in the article above, but Watchmen makes more sense because of the shared universe – i.e. presumably the TD universe is identical to the one we live, making the connections between stories more tenuous.
Ask Alan Moore…what’s the worst he could say?
I don’t see any need for or point to a second season of Watchmen, but I didn’t see any need for or point to the first season when it was announced and look how that turned out.
They should just bring Dan Harmon back. #sixseasonsandamovie
I feel like Damon Lindelof has learned better than anyone (along with Carlton Cuse), in the most cruel, public way possible that if you don’t know how to continue or finish the story, don’t keep at it just because a Network wants you to.
I like this type of stories because i also write this type of stories gkhindinews