Image via HBO
Well—SPOILERS FOR WATCHMEN SEASON 1 OBVIOUSLY FOLLOW—it's all over. The mustache-twirling MAGA bad guys are vapor (or, in Not Great Bob's case, ooze) but so is Doctor Manhattan. All relationships end in tragedy, after all. Will Reeves got his revenge, Adrian Veidt got his comeuppance. And what did Angela Abar get? Well, the finale inevitably cuts to black before we can see. Damon Lindelof's HBO-adaptation of Alan Moore's beloved superhero deconstruction has come to an end, and—though it's a belabored phrase/way of thinking—yes, he did nail the ending, stick the landing, etc. Some things, reflexively, weren't flawless: we could've probably benefited from seeing a bit more of Lady Trieu. And while Jeremy Irons as Adrian Veidt is fantastic (boy, was he having a blast) the more the curtain drew back on his Europa adventures the sillier they became.
Those are quibbles, though. Hats off to Damon Lindelof, Nick Cuse, Jeff Jensen, Cord Jefferson, Regina King, Jean Smart, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kassell, Stephen Williams...the list is endless, truly. Everyone came together and clipped up to tell a story of remarkable relevance and stunning execution. And now, the age-old question of the Peak TV era: is there more? Or rather, should there be? Would continuing with another season deepen and enrich this story, or does what we got tonight feel too complete to risk touching again? Complex's Pop Culture team debates if Watchmen is better off ending here or if nothing ever ends.
Should we get a Season 2?: Let’s do that shit
Before I get into why I feel OK with the idea of a second season of Watchmen, let me be clear: I normally err on the side of “if it’s dope and done in a season, I’m here for it.” I was content with Barry being a fire one-and-one season; I’d rather not sacrifice a continuation of a story if the natural progression of said story within one season is perfect. Why fuck up a good thing, you know? That said, after Angela found those eggs, realized what Dr. Calhattan was saying, and took that step onto the pool, I was intrigued about the future of Damon and company’s series.
See, Watchmen is brilliant. It’d be the #1 best show on television for 2019 if Succession hadn’t fired on all cylinders throughout Season 2. Even if Watchmen’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is being corrupted by the SnyderHive and other nefarious collectives, I’d say that the impact and importance of the stories being told in Watchmen are fire as fuck, especially when you consider how the last decade of film and television exploded with superhero tales while the real world collided with race issues on a weekly basis. Lindelof found a way to revitalize this franchise in a way that not only (should have) satisfied fans of the acclaimed graphic novel (and decent film adaptation) while remixing it for the fucked up world we’re living in today. As a lifelong comic book fan who’s also a black person searching for entertainment to suit me, Watchmen’s first season felt like it was for me, on many levels. And while I’d be OK if its first season was its only season, I can’t help it; I want to know if Angela has absorbed Dr. Manhattan’s powers.
Imagine if Season 2 of Watchmen opens with Angela walking on water! She gets a blue, Kaytranada cover art tinge of blue in her eyes, and starts floating, or communicating with her past and future selves...that’s heavyweight. And could take us into a totally new and unique chapter of this story. Maybe Angelahattan embarks on a journey to further eliminate the fuckery of the world. Or...maybe she just falls into the pool, and the latent abilities that Topher displayed early on could be the real rub here. We still wanna know what Ozymandias has in store, especially now that he’s been released and is on Earth. How does Silk Spectre II feel about Angela shacking up with her old flame for a decade? What happens to the rest of Trieu’s plans? WIll someone else try and harness the power of Dr. Manhattan and use it for evil? There are hella avenues to travel down in this story.
Ultimately, I have faith in Damon. I was a Lost devotee early on—dare I say that series helped introduce me to the life that series can inhabit online via Reddit, fan forums, and alternate-reality games. Damon also surprised me with The Leftovers—ask anyone, I was a fan from Season 1, Episode 1, but saw a lot of my peers fall off before the Season 1 finale, only to fall back into the groove when the superior second season blew everything else out of the water. I know he can do it. And if he wants to do it, and make Regina King a God amongst mortals, this is what I’ve been praying for forever. I’ll be first in line of the queue, waiting for what Watchmen Season 2 has in store. I just hope I don’t get fucked. —khal
Should we get a Season 2?: Nah, we're good
Not unlike Doctor Manhattan himself, Watchmen feels like a Thermodynamic miracle. As a true successor—literally and thematically—to the comic series, it feels heretical just by existing. And, yet, here it stands. Now that we’re at the end of it all, I feel comfortable in saying that at the very least HBO’s Watchmen matches the original in terms of scope and ambition. And, having finished this specific tale in a spectacularly elegant and wonderful way, it’s a perfect place to end. HBO’s Watchmen should go no further.
Despite a creative blank check from HBO to do whatever he wanted with the property, Lindelof readily admits that adapting this series was far more difficult than he imagined. The fanatic devotion that this property commands within the world of fan culture is largely unparalleled, a near cult-like status worthy of Cyclops itself. Yet Watchmen under Damon Lindelof became a powerful tool to examine our world as it is now; a tale never limited in ambition or scope, diving deep into the heart of racism, white supremacy, generational trauma, politics, the meaning of superheroes, legacy, and ultimately (in a move true to many of Lindelof’s stories) love. Few shows this decade were capable of bearing the weight that Watchmen did and even fewer were able to pull it off in such an elegant and impactful fashion. Anyone taking even a cursory glance at Twitter the night after the premiere aired would have seen hundreds of tweets (from presumably white users) explaining that they had no prior context or awareness of the Tulsa Riots. What show in recent memory was capable of driving conversations as meaningful and as important as this, presented in this way?
From its onset, Lindelof talked about how this show was going to remaster and reimagine things (in retrospect, also tipping his hand in a major way about the Manhattan and Angela love story to come) while still staying true to what’s come before. This tension gave way to some of the most daring and compelling twists, creating something magical along the way. It feels like Lindelof and his collaborators got away with a heist. Perhaps, we should instead look to another beloved Lindelof series and just let the mystery be. Trying to capture lightning in a bottle, or a Doctor Manhattan in a cage, is a tricky proposition once, let alone for a second time. I would not be surprised if Lindelof decided to sunset off to a Mars or Europa of his own making for a while.
In the end, it may not matter. Despite a slow start, Watchmen has become a certified ratings hit for HBO and the network may decide it wants more of something that’s a proven hit. Whether or not Damon wants to return, however, is an entirely different story. Watchmen started with tragedy and ended in triumph. Let’s not spend time ligating whether or not the chicken or the egg came first, but rather just admiring that such a thing exists to begin with. Regardless, we may not have a choice. The content machine marches on. And, after all, a wise man once said that nothing ever ends.—William Goodman
Should there be a season 2? Can lightning strike twice? Probably not.
This is a tough one. On one end of the spectrum, this creative team—from Regina and the rest of the cast, to Damon and his co-writers, to directors like Nicole Kassell—are like the 2015 Warriors. A bunch of elite professionals working at their arguable peak to deliver results both undeniable and unprecedented. Why wouldn't we want to see more of them? What's more, while the finale doesn't leave much unresolved, there's still plenty more in the universe to explore. We never did check in on Nite Owl, for instance, whom Senator Joe Richard Spencer Keene alluded to briefly in episode 3 as incarcerated. And as great as Jean Smart was, ultimately this wasn't Laurie Blake's story but I'm sure that's a rich vein waiting to be explored. To that end, the mere existence of PeteyPedia proves that Watchmen nerds Lindelof, Jeff Jensen and co. didn't just think within the confines of this story when exploring what the universe Alan Moore created would look like now. Even if Lindelof doesn't want to continue, there's likely plenty of blueprints left to hand over. Perhaps the series goes anthology-ish, with seasons that explore different corners of the Watch-verse apart from Angela Abar and Tulsa?
And yet...something about that just doesn't feel right. Meanwhile, everything about this season has. The recontextualization of the Minutemen in line with America's ugly history with race, the origins of Hooded Justice, the exploration of intergenerational trauma, it all clicked so beautifully. Couple that with Lindelof's deeply personal connection to the source material, the ways in which it informed his past works and how in turn, this feels like his masterwork. It feels like the inevitable summation of ideas, themes and tropes he's toyed with before and the project he's always been building to. He poured everything into making this complete, not something that could feed the syndication machine. I guess I'm saying, I only want Watchmen to continue if Damon Lindelof thinks of a Season 2 that evokes the same feelings in him as this clearly did. —Frazier Tharpe