Many corners of the internet have viewed HBO’s Watchmen with skepticism, and not without reason. I’m interested in the way it interacts with the original work.
Because of that, I’ve decided to note some small connections, callbacks, &c., and to offer some provisional interpretations of them, along with some speculation. I’m trying to avoid the obvious connections that will be picked up by clickbait content-regurgitators on YouTube and fan media, or anyone with two wiki tabs open.
I’m assuming that anyone who is reading this has read Watchmen and seen the first episode of the TV show, although I provide some background in case you haven’t read Watchmen in a while. I’m going to leave some spaces between this paragraph and the next to give your eyes room to dart away if you haven’t read it at all. Close the tab!
Hooded Justice
Okay, now. I’ve already tweeted about Hooded Justice and the role he may play in the story, and it’s worth noting that Hooded Justice appears in the episode as part of advertisements for the TV show American Hero Story. If any of my speculation is correct, the re-contextualizing of Hooded Justice’s noose symbolism is, I think, a good sign of the kind of textual interaction we can expect, for better or worse. (I’m more optimistic than a lot of people, but I have reservations, which I will get to by the end of this post.) Since writing that tweet, I think it’s more unlikely that the man in the wheelchair is Hooded Justice himself, given the latter’s Nazi sympathies and the racist things said by his partner, Captain Metropolis. But I think he may be related to him in some way, given the color of his outfits. Then again, Hooded Justice is already on record as being somewhat… cold to his own identity in his allegiances: he, along with his partner Captain Metropolis, voted to kick The Silhouette out of the Minutemen upon the press’s discovery of her lesbian relationship. If it turns out that he is Hooded Justice, do I trust the show to handle that well?
No. It’s only been an episode. But I don’t distrust it, either.
The Dreamland Theatre
The Dreamland is showing the silent film Trust in the Law!, a fictional work by the real director Oscar Micheaux, at the beginning of the episode. The film is about Bass Reeves, and supplemental material notes that the real Bass Reeves was “recruited into the marshal service by ‘Hanging Judge’ Isaac C. Parker,” perhaps mentioned as another evocation of Hooded Justice, who is the first real costumed vigilante of note in the world of Watchmen, inspiring figures such as the original Nite Owl.
We see the Dreamland Theatre in present-day Tulsa, too: as part of a mural and as a building. We see its interior during the production of Oklahoma!, although this is not clear until later.
The name suggests, of course, the hope of “Black Wall Street,” destroyed in the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, but it also has a parallel in the original Watchmen: Utopia, a theater that shows thematically-relevant movies. It’s across the street from the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, which became the epicenter of the psychic bomb blast that destroyed half of NYC.
The Seventh Kavalry
The Seventh Cavalry was Custer’s regiment. Interestingly, it also makes an appearance in an interview Veidt gave to the Nova Express….
I’ll have more to say about the Seventh Kavalry and Rorschach later. I’ve stayed up all night writing this and I’m tired.
“Pirate Jenny”
Pirate Jenny is one of the named costumed police officers (as opposed to regular officers), and she first appears in the briefing scene. The name “Pirate Jenny” comes from a character in The Threepenny Opera, which is also the source of the name “The Black Freighter,” seen in a significant pirate comic book within the original Watchmen.
Dollar Bill
Dollar Bill was an original member of the Minutemen, and bizarrely, he was actually employed by a bank. Here’s what Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl, writes about him in Under the Hood:
This means that, to an extent, all the Minutemen are implicated in whatever it was that he did. The TV show connects the dots with this poster, shown for a moment at the ranch.
Yes, of course part of Dollar Bill’s job would have included enforcing racial barriers. This is not mentioned anywhere in the original Watchmen—part of the graphic novel’s tendency to place racial issues at the fringe. It is unclear if this is just a bit of particularly buried storytelling on the part of Moore and Gibbons, or if they themselves did not notice it, or if they intentionally included it in the story, but did not consider it worth fleshing out thematically to the degree they explored, for instance, psychosexual urges as they relate to masked vigilantism. More about this later.
The Lord of a Country Manor; Servants; Cloning; Nazism
We are supposed to think that Irons’s character is Veidt. Maybe he is. There’s nothing in the original graphic novel to suggest that Veidt would have an English accent. Maybe he is Dr. Manhattan in disguise. Veidt and Manhattan are both similar, in a way: they like to play God. At the end of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan muses that he may travel to another galaxy and create life. We see what appears to be Dr. Manhattan on Mars during a news broadcast, where he has constructed a castle out of the Martian sand—a castle which appears to be similar to the country manor.
Speaking of which, these servants Mr. Country Manor has don’t appear to be entirely human, with one offering him a horseshoe with which to cut his cake. Additionally, the person who made the cake does not seem to have achieved a good taste in any way. Upon presenting the watch, Mr. Philips says he “wanted to surprise you, sir.” With the watch, or with his capabilities?
I suspect that the servants may be clones of some kind. Veidt is already canonically capable of cloning.
In fact, one of the more subtle ideas in Watchmen is the (possible) implication that in this timeline, 1980s mainstream America is not so averse to certain elements of Nazi ideology. America entering World War II after masked vigilantes appeared in real life, followed by the subsequent existence of Dr. Manhattan—the American ubermensch—starting circa 1960, may have made the country less willing to publicly discard eugenics altogether (“The superman exists and he is American”). For instance, New Frontiersman references the disappearance of Dr. Whittaker Furnesse (perhaps it is no coincidence that his surname sounds similar to “furnace”), describing him as “a brilliant eugenics specialist.” While the paper is a right-wing hate rag, the way it describes him suggests that this is not their own controversial assessment: the entire country apparently regards him as an expert in this presumably “normal” field.
Laurie even uses the term without any hint of distaste when seeing Bubastis. In this scene, it’s implied to be a perfectly ordinary field of study.
Additionally, the band “Krystalnacht” makes a few appearances. Notably, they are the supporting act for Pale Horse on the night of the psychic bombing.
Returning to the cloning, the supplemental materials on HBO’s website include this detail, which appears to be a tired, throwaway gag about Elvis, who is mentioned quite a few times in Watchmen:
But what if it was, instead, a clone?
The Watchmaker’s Son
Since Mr. Country Manor was doodling schematics for a watch, we’re probably meant to assume that the “watchmaker” refers to him. But Dr. Manhattan’s father may have been a watchmaker. He says that his father “repaired watches,” but in a flashback, his father may refer to himself as a watchmaker, although it is more likely that he is saying that society no longer needs watchmakers, and thus it no longer needs watch repairers. Dr. Manhattan could also be called a “watchmaker,” as he constructed the fantastical clockwork mechanism on Mars. However, it’s doubtful that anyone apart from Dr. Manhattan and Laurie knew about this. It is possible that Dr. Manhattan had a biological son, but if “The Watchmaker’s Son” refers to him, it is more likely that this “son” is metaphorical.
President Truman
Truman is the first president we hear mentioned in the recitation of presidents that occurs in the Abar home, and he is the first president mentioned by name in Watchmen. Rorschach idolizes him because his mother tells him that his father admired him. This leads to him writing an essay as a child about the necessity of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima (although the essay is supposed to be about his family). This is in stark contrast to his reaction to Veidt’s plan.
Watch Batteries
In the original Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan mentions his ability to synthesize lithium. This technology was apparently abandoned after the psychic bomb in New York, specifically out of (erroneous) fears that it could cause health problems due to its association with Dr. Manhattan, but also as part of a larger reaction against technology brought about by the appearance of an “alien.” This includes electric cars, according to the supplementary documents on HBO’s website. It’s possible that climate change is, therefore, an issue.
The Picture; Hidden Racism
This picture is the subject of the end of a shot inside the chief’s house. One may assume that it is a picture of him and his father, who was also a policeman.
Given what we know of America’s history, there is no way that his father’s footsteps were down unbloodied streets. Perhaps Judd sympathizes with him. Perhaps he received a different message on his pager than the one he told his wife he received. (Additionally, the bottle in this screenshot looks rather similar to the Nostalgia aftershave in Watchmen.) Perhaps he even knew he would die.
This has parallels with the largely unspoken racism of the vigilantes in the graphic novel, some of which is addressed above in the section on Dollar Bill. At the first meeting of the Crimebusters, Captain Metropolis places cards labeled with social evils on a map of America. Blake sets fire to it shortly thereafter.
A later flashback reveals what one can guess the card said:
Furthermore, Veidt muses on the “pre-technological culture” of Jamaica in the aforementioned Nova Express interview.
In the same interview, Veidt refers to “breakaway extremist factions within the Pentagon” as a way of countering criticism that he was a tool of the establishment, but it’s likely that he is intentionally obscuring things: at least in our timeline, similar things were done on American soil, and they were not carried out by “extremist factions” of our government.
Senator Keene
While Judd is driving his truck, he listens to the radio, which favorably compares Senator Keene to Robert Redford. This Senator Keene is the son of the Senator Keene whose name adorns the Keene Act, which outlawed vigilantism.
From the “Weeks Ahead” preview:
The Palisades
In the graphic novel, the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey is the site of Dr. Manhattan’s fateful trip to the fair with Janey Slater. A similar fair appears in the preview. Some reviewer let slip that Looking Glass, Tim Blake Nelson’s character, is a survivor of the psychic bomb (or perhaps this was mentioned in promotional material). It is possible that he was at the Palisades Amusement Park when the “alien” appeared.
Hooded Justice, Again
The brief glimpse of Hooded Justice leaping through the glass window of a supermarket is probably a clip from American Hero Story, recounting his (assumed) second outing (described in Under the Hood).
I mentioned way back at the start of this that I still have some reservations about the project. Those can be explained by this excerpt from the background materials on HBO’s website.
We shall see.
After this was published, I made a few changes to some of the phrasing, mainly to correct errors in editing. I'm very tired and I may have made things worse. If I haven't, I don't anticipate making any further changes; I'll address any potential corrigenda in the next one.