Watchmen is primed to be one of the standout attractions at New York Comic-Con next month. But in the meantime, HBO has debuted a new inside look at the upcoming series to hold fans over. This latest featurette includes new footage as well as interviews with the cast and crew. Specifically, it sheds new light on the show’s masked characters and their motivations, which might be harder to pin down than we thought.
Showrunner Damon Lindelof has previously discussed how the series will channel the “punk rock spirit” of Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore. And although it deviates from Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic story, it continues to explore the public’s relationship with vigilantism.
“Watchmen examines how we as a society feel about heroes,” said Lindelof. “Most notably people who wear masks and fight crime. Our Watchmen honors the graphic novel without making it necessary to have read it in order to understand this new story.”
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Not surprisingly, masks play an important role in setting up the series’ main conflict. The featurette finally reveals that the team of Rorschach copycats is actually a terrorist organization called the Seventh Cavalry. We see a new shot of Don Johnson’s character lying in a hospital bed, remarking that the group attacked 40 police officers’ houses. Regina King, who plays Angela Abar, explains that this prompts officers to don masks of their own. However, as Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake notes, this makes it hard to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys because “they’re all hiding their faces.”
It sounds like the characters on the show won’t be the only ones having trouble figuring out where allegiances lie. Some of the actors pointed out that viewers will continue to have their expectations subverted as the season progresses. But according to Jeremy Irons, who stars as an older Adrian Veidt (a.k.a. Ozymandias), they’ll have to be patient.
“Like all good stories, the truth unwraps itself slowly,” said Irons.
“I like watching a TV show where it’s very hard to identify it’s genre,” added Lindelof. “That’s something that I want to replicate for people who are coming to Watchmen for the first time.”
Watchmen premieres on HBO on October 20. You can watch the new featurette below, then tell us what you think in the comment section!
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