Regina King Has One Condition To Return For Watchmen Season 2
One of the best things to come out of 2019 was HBO's "Watchmen," a nine-part miniseries that put its own special spin on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1986 comic. The normal, expected thing for a show like this to do was to adapt the original story, but showrunner Damon Lindelof chose to give us something completely new. The show is not quite a sequel, nor is it a spin-off; the best way to describe it is probably as a "Watchmen" remix.
The results were pretty stunning. Unlike the Zack Snyder film adaptation, the show understood that Alan Moore's radical political commentary was a crucial element of the comics' enduring success, and that any follow-up story set in the universe should also try to seriously critique the world around it. The 2019 show explores racism and reparations in a version of America that had been run for 25 years by liberal president Robert Redford; it's not something Alan Moore himself would've written, but it's ambitious and compelling in a way that Moore should hopefully respect, in the unlikely occasion that he ever bothers to watch the show.
(Warning: Spoilers for the TV show below.)
The show's bold take on race in America led to a compelling arc for Regina King's character Angela Abar, AKA Sister Night. Angela has to fight against an insurgent white supremacist group, all while confronting generational trauma that traces its roots to the real-life Tulsa massacre of 1920. Oh, and she turns out to be married to Dr. Manhattan, and in the season's final moments we learn she may or may not have been given Manhattan's powers. The show cuts to the end credits right before we're about to find out if she can walk on water, leaving us with a question that won't be answered unless Damon Lindelof ever decides to make a second season.
But will there ever be a second season? For Regina King at least, it seems unlikely. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2020 interview,
"I can see myself being involved in a season two if it was really smart. I would need to know the beginning and the endgame, unlike how this season was. I did not know what the endgame was. I just totally trust [creator] Damon [Lindelof]. There's a part of me that feels like ... it's just really hard to think we could top season one, you know?"
Why a second season could be fun, even if it's unlikely
Unfortunately it doesn't sound like Lindelof has any plans to top season 1, as he made clear back in 2019 that he and the other writers had basically used up all the ideas for the series. Not only that, but in the fives years that have passed since the season finished airing, he hasn't said anything to imply he's developed any new ideas for the story.
On one hand, this makes sense, because a second season would require the show to make its ambiguous first season finale no longer ambiguous. If Angela really did acquire Dr. Manhattan's abilities, that's the sort of thing that will radically change the world all of these characters live in. The miniseries had an ongoing thread where characters kept expressing frustration at Dr. Manhattan's inaction, wondering why someone who could achieve so much chose to do so little with his godlike powers. If Angela had Dr. Manhattan's abilities, hopefully she'd use it to be the savior he never was, ending white supremacism for good and allowing a better world to truly be built. Well, either that or she'll fall down the same trap of apathy; whatever happens with Angela, it might be best to leave that up to the audience's imagination.
But on the other hand, one of the first season's best qualities is how it boldly followed up on the comic's ambiguous closing notes. The comic left the audience to decide if Ozymandias' squid gambit was truly worth the trouble, while the miniseries tells you exactly what all the pros and cons were. The comics lets you imagine what happened after that right-wing newspaper published Rorschach's journal, while the miniseries tells you exactly how that all played out.
"What would it look like if Angela got the unrivaled power to change the world to her whims?" is a very difficult question for any show to answer, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'd be bad if it did. If Lindelof ever does decide to make a season 2, messy as the creative process for it may be, I definitely know I'll be watching.