And It Ended Last Night
The first season of the HBO “reimagining” of Watchmen, ended last night, apparently with a bang, and now the speculation has begun around the role of showrunner Damon Lindelof and his thoughts on returning to the show for a second season.
He has some thoughts of his own, as you would imagine.
From the trades:
“Right now, I don’t have any more ideas. Whether you call something a limited series or an ongoing series, that’s fodder for awards consideration. I’m not comfortable calling this anything other than nine complete episodes with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is no promise of a continuation. Although others may disagree.”
And…
“Every single idea that we had is onscreen and presented in these nine episodes. And there isn’t anything that occurred to us that was like, ‘Oh, that would be a good Season Two. We should save that.” Everything that we wanted to do, we did. So I feel like the plate is empty. There’s nothing rattling around in my brain right now that feels like a compulsion to do more.”
And…
“This is a love letter and an examination of the original Watchmen. I wanted everyone to know this is not the middle of the trilogy, this is not the beginning of a seven-season run. In my opinion, the best iteration of any season of Watchmen would mirror the original [graphic novel] in that it would be a self-contained story with the resolution of a fundamental mystery.”
Sounds like Lindelof learned something about storytelling from the ham-handed handling of the ending of Lost.
Watchmen Season 2 Brought to You By?
But, shows that generate this much talk and hand clapping in the film shill site world don’t usually get put on the shelf after one season, so, as you would imagine, HBO has its own position on Lindelof, but more importantly, on the future of Watchmen itself.
From the trades:
Lindelof even adds that he would “be thrilled” if HBO brought in a new showrunner to take over and taking the series in another direction.
Well, there you go. That’s a ringing endorsement for continuation if I ever read one.
What Are We To Make of All of This?
There’s not a lot here but one thing is for sure: Lindelof is probably out the door on Watchmen unless HBO drops a boatload of cash or control in his pocket, and it appears as though they already did that with the direction of the show.
Who knows where the source material for a future iteration of Watchmen would come from?
However, it can be a sure bet that future showrunners, influenced by other Progressive writers and cultural commentators like Ta-Nehisi Coates, will be given full reign on the property to mold it in their own culturally Progressive image, now that the source material has proven to be malleable enough in Lindelof’s hands.
