Damon Lindelof drops new details on HBO’s Watchmen series

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

While it may seem somewhat sacrilegious to develop a new take on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, that's exactly what Damon Lindelof has done with the upcoming HBO series, but rather than serving as a straight-up reboot, the series will serve as a continuation of the comic-series which takes place three decades later. Most of the characters from the original story are apparently dead or in hiding, but others, such as Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan, may still have a role to play.

The Watchmen series focuses on Angela Abar (Regina King), an Oklahoma police detective with the secret superhero identity of Sister Night. Abar finds herself investigating the reemergence of a white supremacist terrorist group who have been inspired by Roschach. Entertainment Weekly has a few new details on Watchmen, including a short explanation of the alternate history which has developed over the decades.

Robert Redford has been president for 28 years. Cell phones and the internet are outlawed. Fossil fuels are a thing of the past. Costumed heroes were popular, then banned. Police wear masks to protect their identities and cannot use their guns without a dispatcher unlocking them first. Reparations were issued for racial injustice, and our country remains ever divided.

Entertainment Weekly also spoke with Watchmen showrunner Damon Lindelof, who explained why he wanted to take on the difficult job of adapting Watchmen. "I ask my therapist that question on a weekly basis now. “Why, why Watchmen?” First and foremost this is something I love and something that made a very profound impression on me when I read it when I was 13 years old," Lindelof explained. "In the same way, I wanted to work on a Star Trek movie [Star Trek Into Darkness] and an Alien movie [Prometheus] this is something from my childhood that I carry a tremendous amount of nostalgia for. The fantasy I indulged as a young man was maybe one day I can tell Watchmen stories." Lindelof added that he turned down the opportunity several times before he decided that he could build upon the original story rather than simply rebooting it. "We treat the original 12 issues as canon. They all happened. We haven’t done any revisionist history, but we can maneuver in between the cracks and crevices and find new stories there," Lindelof said. "We wanted to make sure our first episode felt like the beginning of a new story rather than a continuation of an old story. That’s what I think a sequel is — the continuation of an old story."

Damon Lindelof also dived into the state of America in this alternate history where fossil fuels have been eliminated, Robert Redford is President, and police hide their faces behind masks.

We’re living in a world where fossil fuels have been eliminated as a power source. All the cars are zero emissions and run on electricity or fuel cells — largely thanks to the innovations of Dr. Mahattan decades earlier. There’s also this legislation that’s passed, Victims OF Racial Violence Legislation, which is a form of reparations that are colloquially known as “Redford-ations.” It’s a lifetime tax exemption for victims of, and the direct descendants of, designated areas of racial injustice throughout America’s history, the most important of which, as it relates to our show, is the Tulsa massacre of 1921. That legislation had a ripple effect into another piece of legalization, DoPA, the Defense of Police Act, which allows police to hide their face behind masks because they were being targeted by terrorist organizations for protecting the victims of the initial act.

In regards to Robert Redford, sorry, President Robert Redford, Lindelof was asked whether he had any concerns about turning a real person into a fictional president whose ideology leads to a totalitarian society. "The short answer is yes. I’ve had a lot of reservations about a lot of the creative choices made in the show. I don’t think any of the choices were made without reservations and conversations and ultimately a decision. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to defend every decision I made, but I’ll be able to explain why I made it. We had that conversation you’re suggesting," Lindelof explained. "But the world of Watchmen is so heightened and so clearly it’s an alternate history that it will be clear to everyone we’re not talking about the real Robert Redford. More importantly, the way we handle this story, you can’t blame Robert Redford for everything that’s happened in the world. The show says Redford has a liberal ideology, much like the actual Robert Redford, and he was incredibly well-intentioned in terms of the legislation he passed and the America that he wanted to create. But that doesn’t mean it worked out the way he wanted it to. And that’s not on him, that’s on us."

Watchmen will debut on HBO on October 20, 2019.