Watchmen season 1 (and hopefully, not only)

 **SPOILERS HEREIN!**

The best praise I can bestow upon Watchmen the TV show, I think, is that I had about the same reaction watching it as I had reading the comic for the first time.

I bought it as a teenager having been told it was the greatest comic ever written, but had little idea about what to expect from it. I was all but lost for the first couple chapters, with so many different characters, subplots, and details big and tiny coming at me at once. I soldiered on. By the middle, I started to grasp what was happening, and could tell I was reading something special. By the end, I was riveted, and after I finished, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a while (I think just about every budding comics fan who discovers Watchmen has this reaction, or something close to it).

Even though I wasn’t coming to the show as unknowing, I still had little idea what to expect, between the creators setting it in the (albeit alternate) present, my ambivalence and skepticism after previous adaptations and follow-ups, and the love-it-or-hate-it reaction to the work of creator-showrunner Damon Lindelof (I haven’t seen his last acclaimed HBO show The Leftovers, was no big fan of Prometheus, but liked Lost). And for the first few episodes, I was at a near-total loss about what was happening. However, each episode was well-done enough—impeccably shot, paced, and acted, while offering a heaping helping of in-jokes and Easter eggs and tipping just enough of its mysteries—to keep me coming back each week.

And then we found out that Louis Gossett Jr. was Hooded Justice, a genuinely shocking twist and brilliant jolt to the universe’s canon (without technically altering or contradicting it), as well as one of the best superhero stories ever filmed (and easily the best episode of the season). Whether it was the jolt of such an “Oh my god!” moment, or if it just so happened to coincide with the other arcs finally becoming clearer, that was the point things started to come together and make sense. I went from intrigued enough to keep watching to once again riveted.

And now, the season’s over, and even after sleeping on last night’s finale, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s probably going to take some time and at least one rewatch for me to catch everything and fully form my feelings and interpretation of what I watched, just like the comic book took multiple readings to do the same (and to this day, every reread adds a little something more). But my initial gut reaction, which has not changed after stewing on it for a day: the show was a masterpiece, and the first continuation of the comic worthy of the Watchmen name.

It’s the first supplemental media that feels like the comic. The look of the show is just right, a perfect mix of the comic’s not-quite-the-world-you-know color scheme and new millennium sleekness (having artist Dave Gibbons aboard as a consultant probably helped). Alan Moore may have stayed away from the project, but its weirder touches and moments felt very much like the drifts into surrealism and existentialism characteristic of his work. The narrative structure and events often felt like reflections of the comic (a side-by-side look at the show and the comic could imaginably reveal some mind-blowing symmetry).

And yet, these callbacks were subtle enough that the show always yielded surprise each week. Not just mind-blowing plot twists, of which there were plenty, but also totally unexpected changes in tone and storytelling. Like the Hooded Justice revelation that was almost an interlude to the main plot (like some of the chapters of the comic focusing on one hero’s story), or making the reveal about the godlike Dr. Manhattan’s (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) whereabouts a beautiful and heartfelt romance right when the show was approaching its climax and things were getting tense. Last night’s finale may have been a bit exposition-heavy, but hey, I’ll admit I didn’t guess Lady Trieu’s (Hong Chau) master plan until the dialogue spelled it out. And that last scene was just perfect.

I’ll even go this far: the show may have actually improved on the comic in some ways.

Firstly, the political stuff added so much weight to the narrative. Yes, Watchmen the comic was heavily political. But while those critiques of American imperialism were mainly glancing blows in the background (save for the pervading Cold War nuclear fears and frequent shots at the Nixon Administration), the show’s exploration of race was front and center. The white power villains brought a stinging immediacy (side note: James Wolk’s closet racist Senator was an effectively off-putting slimeball, all the more so because he reminded me of some real-world Republicans who I’ll decline to name). Connecting the Watchmen continuity’s alternate history to America’s real racial past was ingenious, bringing a greater layer of both myth and realism to the characters and exploring the wounds of history (the opening sequence of the 1921 Greenwood massacre was harrowing, and brought some media attention to a real historical event the public seemed to know little about).

Regina King was absolutely fantastic in the lead. She was convincing and effortless roughing up bad guys as Sister Night, and had a rich, emotional character history as Angela. But she was disconnected enough from the main mystery that she was a perfect vessel for the viewer, an everywoman that the comic never really had (frequent comic narrator Rorschach was most definitely not a likeable everyman, despite some readers pegging an obvious psychopath as a cool badass). She was also the first hero in this universe that’s actually likeable. Some (possibly Moore among them) might argue that making a hero meant to be liked is antithetical to the point of Watchmen, but the show was no less rich or compelling for it, and King was refreshingly real and full of deep pathos without being oppressively dark and gritty.

Other new characters were similarly strong. Tim Blake Nelson was terrific as Looking Glass, showing that the tough, laconic hardass cop/hero archetype is just a shell for life-altering trauma. Chau’s Lady Trieu was a bit of a cypher (though after her lineage was revealed, I think that was kind of the point), but walked a fine line, never revealing whether she was on the side of good or evil until the very end (if we got a definitive answer at all). I already spoke for Wolk, Don Johnson was interesting enough to make us lament his small amount of screen time, and cameos and bit roles from HBO regulars were strong as ever. The show also enriched returning characters from the comic. Gossett was good at playing coy trickster and wise mentor, and Jovan Adepo was palpably seething and empathetic as the younger Hooded Justice. Abdul-Mateen was a wonderfully understated Dr. Manhattan, pulling off the achievement of the comic in imbuing the least human character’s arc with the most emotion. And Jean Smart finally gave the former second Silk Spectre Laurie Blake her due (her story in the comic serves less as a moment about her than an epiphany for Dr. Manhattan), implicitly giving her character her own identity and subtly hinting at substantial offscreen evolution. Also, frankly, she was sexy as hell in the role.

And then there was Jeremy Irons as the aging, stir crazy ex-Ozymandias Adrian Veidt. Veidt was a bit of the cypher in the comic, his story only revealed quickly before his master plan is revealed. Here, we finally saw a bit inside the character’s head. If the fact that his ruse which killed millions in the comic worked made for any ambiguity about his soul, these scenes made it clear he was not a good guy, but a cold, restless, self-righteous megalomaniac. And yet, his scenes were never dark or (too) disturbing, but strange and goofy. The Europa subplot with Veidt imprisoned in Dr. Manhattan’s new utopia, ruling over the blue man’s creations (Tom Mison and Sarah Vickers, both excellently deadpan), was probably the most out there and imaginative element of the show. And it totally worked, giving the show canvas to explore what makes Veidt tick while also instilling some surrealism and humor (of which there was little to break the dead serious realism and brutality in the comic book).

For a show so acclaimed, it’s astounding that there seems to be doubts about further seasons. This single season offered so many starting points for further stories: a police procedural starring Tulsa’s costumed finest (maybe get fellow HBO maestro David Simon involved and do Watchmen The Wire?); the fate of the clones on Europa (perhaps with Veidt turning out to be the serpent to corrupt this Garden of Eden?); potential spinoff opportunities for Agent Laurie Blake or younger Hooded Justice; just a regular sequel to the events of these nine episodes, or a prequel depicting the events between the comic and the show; or something completely different, making the series an anthology set in the Watchmen universe with a different tale every season. Hell, after the glimpse of Ozymandias’ 1985 squid plot we got this season, I’d be on board with the same crew and cast (with digital de-aging like The Irishman) doing a proper adaptation of the comic as a miniseries (sorry, but Zack Snyder’s 2009 film adaptation is awful). It would be a pity if, like the comic until decades later, Watchmen the series gets no follow-up when it offers so many potential stories to be told.

Whether or not we ever see those stories, though, this story was a great one, a worthy successor to the most acclaimed of superhero comics, and the best show of the year.