25 February, 2026 Siobhan Marie Day 0 Comments 4 categories

Genre Drama Dystopia Superhero Created by Damon Lindelof Based on Watchmen by Alan Moore (uncredited) Dave Gibbons Showrunner Damon Lindelof Starring Regina King Don Johnson Tim Blake Nelson Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Andrew Howard Jacob Ming-Trent Tom Mison Sara Vickers Dylan Schombing Louis Gossett Jr. Jeremy Irons Jean Smart Hong Chau Music by Trent Reznor Atticus Ross Country of origin United States Original language English No. of episodes 9 Production Executive producers Damon Lindelof Tom Spezialy Nicole Kassell Stephen Williams Joseph E. Iberti Producers Karen Wacker John Blair Production locations United States Wales Cinematography Alex Disenhof Xavier Pérez Grobet Gregory Middleton Andrij Parekh Chris Seager Editors David Eisenberg Anna Hauger Henk Van Eeghen Running time 52–67 minutes Production companies White Rabbit Paramount Television DC Entertainment Warner Bros. Television Original release Network HBO Release October 20 – December 15, 2019

The Past Is Not Past…

The official trailer for Watchmen (2019) does not open like a conventional superhero drama. It opens with fire.

In a medium historically saturated with mythic saviors and costumed spectacle, Watchmen begins by resurrecting one of the most violently suppressed chapters in American history: the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. For a series rooted in graphic novel lore, its trailer makes something immediately clear — this is not a nostalgic sequel. It is a reckoning.

The Tulsa race massacre was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist[12][13] massacre[14] that took place in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, between May 31 and June 1, 1921. Mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials,[15] attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.[16][17] The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street."[18] Part of a series on Nadir of American race relations Engraving of a large group of men rioting and fighting A French news illustration of the 1906 Atlanta race massacre Historical background Practices Lynchings Massacres and riots Reactions Related topics vte More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were interned, many of them for several days.[19][20] The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead.[21] The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 black and 13 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records.[22] The commission reported estimates ranging from 36 up to around 300 dead.[23][24] The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building.[25] He was arrested and rumors that he was to be lynched spread. The most widely reported and corroborated inciting incident occurred as the group of black men left when an elderly white man approached O. B. Mann, a black man, and demanded that he hand over his pistol. Mann refused, and the old man attempted to disarm him. A gunshot went off, and then, according to the sheriff's reports, "all hell broke loose."[26] The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men was greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood. At the end of the exchange of gunfire, 12 people were dead, 10 white and 2 black.[24] Alternatively, another eyewitness account was that the shooting began "down the street from the Courthouse" when black business owners came to the defense of a lone black man being attacked by a group of around six white men.[27] It is possible that the eyewitness did not recognize the fact that this incident was occurring as a part of a rolling gunfight that was already underway. As news of the violence spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded.[28] White rioters invaded Greenwood that night and the next morning, killing men and burning and looting stores and homes. Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law, ending the massacre.[29][30] About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and the cost of the property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $40.61 million in 2025). By the end of 1922, most of the residents' homes had been rebuilt, but the city and real estate companies refused to compensate them.[31] Many survivors left Tulsa. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for years.[32] In 1997, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized the formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.[33] The commission's final report, published in 2001, was unable to establish that the city had conspired with the racist mob; however it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants.[34] The state passed legislation to establish scholarships for the descendants of survivors and develop a park in memory of the victims, which was dedicated in 2010. Schools in Oklahoma have been required to teach students about the massacre since 2002,[35] and in 2020, the massacre officially became a part of the Oklahoma school curriculum.

Set in an alternate 2019 Tulsa, Oklahoma, the series imagines a United States where masked vigilantes have been outlawed and police officers themselves wear masks to shield their identities from a resurgent white supremacist terrorist organization known as the Seventh Kavalry. But beneath the dystopian premise lies something far more grounded: the enduring architecture of racial terror and historical amnesia.

Regina King as Angela Abar / Sister Night in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

A scene in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Tim Blake Nelson as Wade Tillman / Looking Glass in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

At the center of the trailer — and the series — is Detective Angela Abar, portrayed with steely precision by Regina King. Operating under the masked identity Sister Night, Angela moves through Tulsa as both protector and inheritor of trauma. The trailer positions her not as a traditional superhero, but as a figure navigating the intersection of personal history and national myth. In this world, masks conceal identity — but they also expose legacy.

Created and showrun by Damon Lindelof, the series expands the universe originally conceived by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons while daring to center Black American history as its narrative engine. The Tulsa Race Massacre is not incidental backdrop; it is structural. The trailer makes clear that the past is not a prologue — it is an active force shaping the present.

Show creator Damon Lindelof arrives for the Los Angeles premiere of the new HBO series "Watchmen" at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on October 14, 2019. (Photo by Chris Delmas / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

Alan Moore attends a book signing at Waterstone's, Piccadilly. (Photo by rune hellestad/Corbis via Getty Images)

Dave Gibbons, the original illustrator of The Watchmen comics in front of artwork by graffiti artist Chu which depicts a scene from Watchmen, now available on DVD and Blu-ray, at the South Bank Skate Park in London. (Photo by David Parry/PA Images via Getty Images)

Watchmen is a comic book limited series by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-volume edition in 1987. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced Moore to create original characters instead. Moore used the story as a means of reflecting contemporary anxieties, deconstructing and satirizing the superhero concept, and making political commentary. Watchmen depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. In 1985, the country is edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the protagonists' personal development and moral struggles as an investigation into the murder of a government-sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement. Gibbons uses a nine-panel grid layout throughout the series and adds recurring symbols such as a blood-stained smiley face. All but the last issue feature supplemental fictional documents that add to the series' backstory and the narrative is intertwined with that of another story, an in-story pirate comic titled Tales of the Black Freighter, which one of the characters reads. Structured at times as a nonlinear narrative, the story skips through space, time, and plot. In the same manner, entire scenes and dialogues have parallels with others through synchronicity, coincidence, and repeated imagery. A commercial success, Watchmen has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press. Watchmen was recognized in Time's List of the 100 Best Novels as one of the best English language novels published since 1923. In a retrospective review, the BBC's Nicholas Barber described it as "the moment comic books grew up".[1] Moore opposed this idea, stating, "I tend to think that, no, comics hadn't grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they'd ever been. It wasn't comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way."[2] After several attempts to adapt the series into a feature film, director Zack Snyder's Watchmen was released in 2009. An episodic video game, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh, was released to coincide with the film's release. DC Comics published Before Watchmen, a series of nine prequel miniseries, in 2012, and Doomsday Clock, a 12-issue limited series and sequel to the original Watchmen series, from 2017 to 2019 – both without Moore's or Gibbons' involvement. The second series integrated the Watchmen characters within the DC Universe. A standalone sequel, Rorschach by Tom King, was published between October 2020 and September 2021. A television continuation to the original comic, set 34 years after the comic's timeline, was broadcast on HBO from October to December 2019 with Gibbons' involvement. Moore has expressed his displeasure with adaptations and sequels of Watchmen and asked his name not to be used for future works.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Greenwood District, known as the "Black Wall Street." It was burned to the ground with many African-Americans killed in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. (Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jovan Adepo in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Legacy characters return in altered form. Jeremy Irons appears as an older Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias), exiled in aristocratic isolation. Jean Smart portrays Laurie Blake, once Silk Spectre II, now a federal agent navigating the moral debris of masked vigilantism. And Yahya Abdul-Mateen II steps into one of the most audacious narrative evolutions in contemporary television mythology. Yet the trailer’s emotional gravity does not orbit legacy heroes — it orbits the unburied.

Jeremy Irons as Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Adrian Alexander Veidt, also known as Ozymandias (/ˌɒzɪˈmændiəs/ OZ-im-AN-dee-əs), is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the graphic novel limited series Watchmen, published by DC Comics. Created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, named "Ozymandias" in the manner of Ramesses II, his name recalls the famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which takes as its theme the fleeting nature of empire and is excerpted as the epigraph of one of the chapters of Watchmen. Ozymandias is ranked number 25 on Wizard's Top 200 Comic Book Characters list and number 21 on IGN's Top 100 Villains list.[1] Veidt made his live-action debut in the 2009 film Watchmen, played by Matthew Goode. An older Adrian Veidt appeared in the 2019 limited television series Watchmen, played by Jeremy Irons.

Jean Smart as Laurie Blake in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Silk Spectre is the name of two superheroines in the graphic novel limited series Watchmen, published by DC Comics. Created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the original Silk Spectre, Sally "Jupiter" Juspeczyk, was a member of the crimefighting team the Minutemen, while the second, Sally's daughter Laurel "Laurie" Jane Juspeczyk, became a member of the vigilante team Crimebusters, also known as the titular Watchmen. In the early stages of the series' development, the characters were Charlton Comics superheroes; the female superhero was supposed to be Nightshade.[2] However, Moore did not find Nightshade particularly interesting[3] and was not even very familiar with the character.[2] After the idea of using Charlton characters was abandoned, he decided to model Silk Spectre on superheroines like Phantom Lady and Black Canary (also an alias shared by mother and daughter).[3] The Sally and Laurie Juspeczyk versions of Silk Spectre made their live-action debuts in the 2009 film Watchmen, in which they were played by Carla Gugino and Malin Åkerman, respectively. An older version of Laurie Juspeczyk, now known as Laurie Blake, appeared in the 2019 limited television Watchmen, played by Jean Smart.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Cal Abar in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Doctor Manhattan (Dr. Jonathan "Jon" Osterman) is a fictional DC Comics character created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. He debuted in the limited series graphic novel, Watchmen. After a laboratory accident, atomic physicist Jon Osterman gains the ability to observe and manipulate matter at the subatomic level. The U.S. government dubs him Doctor Manhattan due to his immense destructive potential. As he explores the extent of his powers, Jon becomes increasingly detached from his personal life and his understanding of the human experience, which dehumanizes him. Media analysts view his portrayal in the novel as a significant exploration of the tension between absolute power and its moral use, as well as a commentary on American exceptionalism in the late 20th century.[1] Manhattan later appeared in the Before Watchmen comic book prequel. In 2016, as part of DC Comics' Rebirth relaunch, Manhattan became a major character in the DC Universe. He was one of the main characters in the Doomsday Clock miniseries, published from 2017 to 2019.[2] Manhattan made his first live-action debut in the 2009 film Watchmen, played by Billy Crudup. He also appeared in the 2019 limited television series Watchmen, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, with his original form played by Darrell Snedeger.

The propulsive and unsettling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross amplifies that tension. Their industrial soundscape refuses comfort. It underscores what the trailer insists upon: this is a story about power, about who gets to wear a mask, and about who history has forced into invisibility.

When Watchmen premiered, it became one of the most critically acclaimed series of its year, earning 11 Primetime Emmy Awards — including Outstanding Limited Series — and achieving a 96% “Certified Fresh” rating from critics. Yet it was also divisive among segments of the audience, particularly those resistant to its unapologetic engagement with race and systemic injustice. That division, in many ways, reflects the very tensions the series interrogates.

The 76th Primetime Emmy Awards will honor the best in American prime time television programming from June 1, 2023, until May 31, 2024, as chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, with the 76th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards on September 7 and 8 at the Peacock Theater in Downtown Los Angeles, California.[1] The ceremony will be held on September 15, 2024, and will be broadcast in the United States on ABC.[2] This will be the second primetime Emmy ceremony to be held in 2024, the 75th Emmys delayed from September 2023 to January 15, 2024 due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.[3] The ceremony will be produced by Jesse Collins Entertainment.

As we celebrate Black History Month, revisiting the official trailer for Watchmen feels especially urgent. The series does what few superhero narratives have dared: it foregrounds the Tulsa Race Massacre not as historical footnote, but as foundational trauma. In doing so, it challenges viewers to confront a difficult truth — America’s past is not buried. It is masked, waiting to be acknowledged.

Black History Month is an annually observed commemorative month originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month.[6][7] It began as a way of remembering important people and events in African-American history, before it spread to other countries where it could celebrate black people worldwide. It initially lasted a week before becoming a month-long observation since 1970.[8] It is celebrated in February in the United States[9] and Canada,[10] where it has received official recognition from governments, and more recently has also been celebrated in Ireland and the United Kingdom where it is observed in October.

This February, our Featured Television Blog will explore how Watchmen transforms graphic novel mythology into a meditation on racial terror, generational memory, and the politics of justice. The trailer is only the beginning. Head over to MoviestoHistory.com for our deep dive into Watchmen and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre as part of the HBO series being our Featured TV Series for the month!