The more HBO reveals about its upcoming Watchmen series, the more creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof’s next project is beginning to sound like something that has very little to do with Alan Moore’s original graphic novel. Or, as star Don Johnson put it in an interview over the summer, this show will be “beyond comics” in many, many ways. Of course, since Watchmen — which isn’t set to debut until mid-October — has revealed very little from behind its many masks, nobody really has any idea what this means.
Thanks to a new featurette, however, we know at least a little bit more about what HBO and Lindelof’s take on Watchmen will entail. According to the show’s creator, it “examines how we, as a society, feel about heroes. Most notably people who wear masks and fight crime.” And, despite Moore’s public misgivings and Lindelof’s equally public response, the latter feels that the show “honors the graphic novel without making it necessary to have read it in order to understand this new story.”
The two-and-a-half-minute featurette includes plenty of footage that those who’ve seen the Comic-Con trailer will already know about. But it’s also peppered with plenty of new shots of Regina King’s Angela Abar, a police detective whose hooded alter-ego feels like an homage to Hooded Justice; her family; Johnson’s police chief; a smarmy politician played by James Wolk; Tim Blake Nelson’s Looking Glass, both with and without the mask; and more. It also digs into the so-called Seventh Cavalry, an extremist group that adopts Rorschach’s visage and commits atrocities against law enforcement figures.
Of course, we cannot forget Jeremy Irons’ aged Adrian Veidt, who seems to be playing a particularly influential role in the various events that will transpire throughout Watchmen‘s first season.
