Race protests, insurrection and fear: decoding the prophecies of ‘Watchmen’
Welcome to the Weekend Binge. Every Friday, we’ll suggest a binge-able title designed to keep you from getting too stir crazy.
Check back throughout the weekend for even more gloriously queer entertainment.HBO took a huge gamble in 2019 with the release of Watchmen, a limited series that functions as something of an adaptation and a sequel to Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel, and to Zack Snyder’s 2009 film.
Though the show earned rave reviews (including from us) and scored a boatload of Emmys, nobody in 2019 could have predicted just how much the show would foreshadow the years to come.Watchmen explores an alternate universe in which superheroes walk the Earth, including the Godlike Dr.
Manhattan. 34 years before the events of the show, an alien invasion destroyed New York City. At the same time, Dr. Manhattan retreated to live on Mars, which eased a global arms race and helped end the Cold War between the USA and USSR.Flash forward to Tulsa, 2019: a crime-fighting costumed cop named Angela Abar/Sister Night (Regina King, who won an Emmy for her performance) investigates the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremacist connected to the massacre of the Tulsa police department.
