HBO's options for Watchmen Season 2+ (minor spoilers)

'The left hook that floored Captain Axis' publicity still from Watchmen (2009)

How does HBO follow up a hit show that wraps up so well after 1 season that even the creators are unsure if it should continue?










If you've seen Damon Lindelof's Watchmen you'll know it's a dense and brilliant piece of storytelling, comparable with Moore's original graphic novel. Lindelof himself has said HBO's tv version may be a one-off, in that he really doesn't have the material to extend what is a well contained storyline that compliments the source material so well.

One-off series? That's probably not what HBO wants to hear.
After decades of producing classic grown up tv, making Home Box Office such a successful brand we could almost call it Disney for Grown Ups, the increasingly mass market HBO needs a long running follow up to Game of Thrones. That should have been Jonathan Nolan's Westworld, but after an incredible first season, the follow up second season of Westworld looked to be seriously running out of steam.
HBO's Watchmen has been a critical and ratings smash hit. Can they extend that? What are their options?

Lindelof's Watchmen Season 2+ options

As mentioned above, Damon Lindelof and team are unsure they have enough material to do a 2nd Season, which makes a 3rd quite unlikely. They pointedly haven't touched on Nite Owl and the other members of the Minutemen in the 1940s seemed suspiciously blurred out in their appearance so perhaps that is a direction they could go and I would hope they do - but their doubt's suggest that for them this is a short term gig they are taking very seriously.

Based on Lindelof's teams enthusiasm for including representing minorities, The Silhouette, aka Ursula Zandt is a character who could easily be expanded upon. Her story is featured prominently in the opening credits of the Snyder movie without further elaboration.

Perhaps they could concentrate on the 'villains' faced by the Minutemen of the 1940's 50s and the Watchmen of the 1960s-70s? Villains is an odd concept in Moore's world as the 'heroes' pretty much fill that role as well, but we hear from Captain Metropolis in the HBO show that the Minutemen are being formed to face threats such as Mobster/King Mob(?), Captain Axis and of course Moloch The Mystic. Moloch's sad fate is briefly covered in Moore's original and slightly fleshed out in the Before Watchmen prequel comics (see below) but the other two are unseen outside a flashback in the extended cut of Zack Snyder's much maligned 2009 movie.

'Captain Axis' is an intriguing one, especially as background newspaper headlines in the HBO shows flashbacks to 1940s Tulsa show Prime Minister Chamberlain doing a deal with Hitler over Poland, suggesting a very different Second War War. What is the 'Axis' when there is no WW2?
Interestingly Pennyworth, set in post war DC universe Britain, also seems to be a world were Britain declined to go to war over Poland. Is Appeasement Britain now a standard alternate history template for DC?

Adapt DC's Before Watchmen

DC's first attempt to expand beyond Moore's world was a series of limited edition prequel comics. Though some are excellent, I particularly like Silk Spectre thread by by Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, with a teenage Laurie on the run in hippy era  Haight Ashbury San Francisco, Beyond Watchmen is patchy at best and HBO's series has covered some of
this ground already.

Adapt DC's Doomsday Clock

Though wholly owned by DC comics (unfortunately) Watchmen of course is entirely separate from the main DC universe of Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman/The Flash.
Or it was.
Doomsday Clock, DC's formal sequel to Watchmen, links both, implicating Dr Manhattan in a DC universe reboot and crossing over characters from both realities.
When Doomsday Clock was announced there was a collective grown from 90% of comic fans, knowing that this would further alienate Moore and further dilute the original material.
With one issue still left to publish in the Doomsday Clock series it says alot about the execution of Doomsday Clock that there is a little disappointment that the new characters created for the Watchmen reality, particularly The Mime and the Marionette, are not featuring in the HBO series. When Doomsday Clock is good it's approaching Lindelof HBO level in terms of Watchmen content and on a DC character level as good as anything I've read or seen.
Warner Brothers owns HBO and DC and Watchmen. With the mass market success of Lindelof's show expect this to happen in some form some day.
Yes it might be painful seeing Batman and Rorschach in the same scene. Pray it's as good as the
comic.

Adapt another Moore property

Arguably Moore's real classic, Swamp Thing, has been done to death.

If HBO is looking for another Game of Thrones, with epic scope, Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would seem to be the next obvious choice. It has a million characters, some already very well known  along with a story that spans centuries but (as of 2013) this is still an ongoing project as a tv series at FOX. We have to assume with Lindelof's success this, along with many other Moore properties, is about get into a higher gear. Please god HBO buy this up and stop it happening before FOX screws it up again.

• V for Vendetta has similar brand recognition to Watchmen but might look too similar to Handmaids Tale today and it's claustrophobic noir is hardly epic
• From Hell has also been done to death in Ripper Street, Whitechapel and any number of similar Victorian set serial killer tales.

which leaves previously un-adapted Moore properties, of which the following seem to me most appropriate as a Moore fan and avid HBO watcher

• MiracleMan/MarvelMan was Moore's first deconstruction of superheroes before Watchmen, and if looking for a fresh perspective, is arguably the definitively British take on the genre
• Halo Jones, a space opera for girls, was pretty unique in the 1980s and seem's pretty fresh for tv now
• Brought to Light could be a short shock horror history documentary series along the lines of The Untold History of the United States
• Top 10 is police procedural and superheroes, It's odd that American tv hasn't got to that already
• If the hugely anticipated Wonder Woman sequel continues that characters upward trajectory, expect Moore's occult take on that character, Promethea, to get some attention

Final thought
Disney/Marvel is sitting on a pile of Moore written material in his Captain Britain comics, which are referenced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe every time you hear or see mention of 'Earth 616'.
Earth-616, the primary reality/universe of Marvel's heroes was created by Moore when writing Captain Britain for Marvel UK. If Marvel's next phase of movies runs a little flat, just as HBO wins a zillian Emmy's for Watchmen how long are stories like Jasper's Warp going to sit on Kevin Feige's shelf?

Final Final thought

Really pining for Watchmen S2? 

See Lindelof's previous storytelling box of marvels - The Leftovers, it's as good as they say. 

The 186-minute director's cut of the  movie is. for me, a big improvement.