'Watchmen' (2019): Should More Historical Dramas Center Black Protagonists?

2 March, 2026 Siobhan Marie Day 0 Comments 4 categories

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

When HBO’s Watchmen premiered in 2019, it did something that most prestige “historical” dramas still hesitate to do: it centered Black history not as background, not as a subplot, not as a trauma flashback for white redemption — but as the narrative engine itself.

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 Burning of Black Wall Street (1921 Tulsa Race Massacre) in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

The series, created by Damon Lindelof and inspired by the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, begins not in a dystopian New York but in 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Tulsa Race Massacre — long erased from mainstream textbooks — becomes the origin story. Not metaphorically. Literally.

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)

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)

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

For a series about masked vigilantes and godlike beings, Watchmen insists that America’s real supervillain has always been white supremacy.

Tom Rice’s book focuses on the KKK’s history with cinema, but addresses other media from print to radio to theatre. Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images

That insistence raises a larger question: Should more historical dramas center Black protagonists? If Watchmen is the case study, the answer is not just yes — it’s necessary.

Why Fiction Sometimes Tells More Truth Than Documentaries: 'Watchmen' (2019), the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the Power of Narrative Memory -

Angela Abar: A New Kind of Superhero

At the center of this alternate-history epic stands Angela Abar, played with layered intensity by Regina King. Angela is a Tulsa police officer. She is also the masked vigilante Sister Night. She is a wife, a mother, a survivor, and — crucially — a descendant of racial terror.

Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Regina King and Louis Gossett Jr. in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Unlike traditional superhero protagonists, Angela’s power does not come from wealth, alien biology, or scientific accident. It comes from historical inheritance.

Her grandfather, Will Reeves — played by Louis Gossett Jr. (and Jovan Adepo in flashbacks) — is revealed to have survived the Tulsa massacre as a child. He grows up to become Hooded Justice, the first masked vigilante in the Watchmen universe. In Lindelof’s reimagining, the myth of the first superhero is rewritten: behind the noose around his neck is a Black man shaped by lynching culture and systemic violence.

Louis Gossett Jr. as Will Reeves/Hooded Justice in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

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

Dajour Ashwood as Will Reeves in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Jovan Adepo as Will Reeves/Hooded Justice in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Angela inherits that legacy.

This is what makes her revolutionary. Not just that she is Black. Not just that she is female. But that her heroism is inseparable from generational trauma. The show doesn’t “add diversity” to the superhero template; it dismantles the template and rebuilds it around historical truth.

Reframing the Superhero Myth

For decades, mainstream superhero cinema has centered white male saviors whose personal pain rarely intersects with structural oppression. Their enemies are alien invasions, rogue AIs, or supervillains. Angela’s enemy is a white supremacist organization — the Seventh Kavalry — that echoes real-world extremism.

In Watchmen, vigilantism is not fantasy escapism. It is political commentary.

Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) Photo Credit: Disney/Marvel

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

Seventh Kavalry in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

Tim Blake Nelson and Regina King in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

The Tulsa police wear masks not to protect their secret identities for personal glory, but because white supremacists have targeted their families. Masks are institutionalized by law. Identity becomes both shield and burden.

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

Angela’s alter ego, Sister Night, is visually striking — black leather, nun-inspired silhouette, concealed face — but symbolically loaded. She embodies both religious iconography and righteous fury. She moves through Tulsa as an avenging force against racist terror, yet the series never frames her violence as simple catharsis. It is exhausting. It costs her.

This is a fundamentally different kind of superhero narrative: one where historical trauma is not aestheticized but interrogated.

The Tulsa Race Massacre as Narrative Foundation

Believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, the bloody 1921 outbreak in Tulsa has continued to haunt Oklahomans. During the course of eighteen terrible hours on May 31 and June 1, 1921, more than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, while credible estimates of deaths range from fifty to three hundred. By the time the violence ended, the city had been placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held under armed guard, and the state's second-largest African American community had been burned to the ground. One of a number of similar episodes nationwide, the outbreak occurred during an era of acute racial tensions, characterized by the birth and rapid growth of the so-called second Ku Klux Klan and by the determined efforts of African Americans to resist attacks upon their communities, particularly in the matter of lynching. Such trends were mirrored both statewide and in Tulsa. By early 1921 Tulsa was a modern city with a population of more than one hundred thousand. Most of the city's ten thousand African American residents lived in the Greenwood District, a vibrant neighborhood that was home to two newspapers, several churches, a library branch, and scores of Black-owned businesses. However, Tulsa was also a deeply troubled town. Crime rates were extremely high, and the city had been plagued by vigilantism, including the August 1920 lynching, by a white mob, of a white teenager accused of murder. Newspaper reports confirmed that the Tulsa police had done little to protect the lynching victim, who had been taken from his jail cell at the county courthouse. Eight months later an incident involving Dick Rowland, an African American shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, would set the stage for tragedy. While it is still uncertain as to precisely what happened in the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921, the most common explanation is that Rowland stepped on Page's foot as he entered the elevator, causing her to scream. The next day, however, the Tulsa Tribune, the city's afternoon daily newspaper, reported that Rowland, who had been picked up by police, had attempted to rape Page. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, the Tribune also published a now-lost editorial about the incident, titled "To Lynch Negro Tonight." By early evening there was, once again, lynch talk on the streets of Tulsa. Talk soon turned to action. By 7:30 p.m. hundreds of whites had gathered outside the Tulsa County Courthouse, demanding that the authorities hand over Dick Rowland, but the sheriff refused. At about 9 p.m., after reports of the dire conditions downtown reached Greenwood, a group of approximately twenty-five armed African American men, many of them World War I veterans, went down to the courthouse and offered their services to the authorities to help protect Rowland. The sheriff, however, turned them down, and the men returned to Greenwood. Stunned, and then enraged, members of the white mob then tried to break into the National Guard armory but were turned away by a handful of local guardsmen. At about 10 p.m. a false rumor hit Greenwood that whites were storming the courthouse. This time, a second contingent of African American men, perhaps seventy-five in number, went back to the courthouse and offered their services to the authorities. Once again, they were turned down. As they were leaving, a white man tried to disarm a Black veteran, and a shot was fired. The riot began. Over the next six hours Tulsa was plunged into chaos as angry whites, frustrated over the failed lynching, began to vent their rage at African Americans in general. Furious fighting erupted along the Frisco railroad tracks, where Black defenders were able to hold off members of the white mob. An unarmed African American man was murdered inside a downtown movie theater, while carloads of armed whites began making "drive-by" shootings in Black residential neighborhoods. By midnight fires had been set along the edge of the African American commercial district. In some of the city's all-night cafes, whites began to organize for a dawn invasion of Greenwood. During the early hours of the conflict local authorities did little to stem the growing crisis. Indeed, shortly after the outbreak of gunfire at the courthouse, Tulsa police officers deputized former members of the lynch mob and, according to an eyewitness, instructed them to "get a gun and get a nigger." Local units of the National Guard were mobilized, but they spent most of the night protecting a white neighborhood from a feared, but nonexistent, Black counterattack. Shortly before dawn on June 1, thousands of armed whites had gathered along the fringes of Greenwood. When daybreak came, they poured into the African American district, looting homes and businesses and setting them on fire. Numerous atrocities occurred, including the murder of A. C. Jackson, a renowned Black surgeon, who was shot after he surrendered to a group of whites. At least one machine gun was utilized by the invading whites, and some participants have claimed that airplanes were also used in the attack. Black Tulsans fought hard to protect their homes and businesses, with particularly sharp fighting occurring off of Standpipe Hill. In the end, they were simply outgunned and outnumbered. By the time that additional National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa at approximately 9:15 a.m. on the morning of June 1, most of Greenwood had already been put to the torch. A brief period of martial law was followed by recriminations and legal maneuvering. Even though Dick Rowland was exonerated, an all-white grand jury blamed Black Tulsans for the lawlessness. Despite overwhelming evidence, no whites were ever sent to prison for the murders and arson that occurred. The vast majority of Tulsa's African American population had been made homeless by the event. Yet, despite efforts by the white establishment to force the relocation of the Black community, within days of the violence Black Tulsans had already begun the long and arduous process of rebuilding Greenwood. Thousands, however, were forced to spend the winter of 1921–22 living in tents. The deep scars left by the tragedy remained visible for years. While Greenwood was eventually rebuilt, many families never truly recovered from the disaster. Moreover, for many years the violence became something of a taboo subject, particularly in Tulsa. A state commission was formed in 1997 to investigate. The report recommended that reparations be paid to the remaining Black survivors. A team of scientists and historians uncovered evidence supporting long-held beliefs that unidentified victims had been buried in unmarked grave sites. One of the great tragedies of Oklahoma history, this eruption of bloodshed and destruction in Tulsa has lived on as a potent symbol of the ongoing struggle of Black and white Oklahomans to forge a common destiny out of an often troubled past. Scott Ellsworth

MT. ZION BAPTIST CHURCH ON FIRE DURING THE 1921 TULSA RACE RIOT/MASSACRE.

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.

Smoke billowing over Tulsa, Oklahoma during 1921 race riots

The pilot episode’s depiction of the 1921 massacre is harrowing. Homes burn. Planes drop explosives. Families flee. A child survives.

For many viewers in 2019, this was their first exposure to the event. That fact alone is an indictment of American historical education.

Steven G. Norfleet, Dajour Ashwood, and Alexis Louder in the limited series "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO Networks

By anchoring its mythology in real racial violence, Watchmen challenges the traditional hierarchy of “important” history. It suggests that the true American origin story is not just the Revolution or World War II, but Greenwood in flames.

When historical dramas center Black protagonists, they inevitably disrupt the conventional narrative arc of American heroism. They force audiences to confront systemic injustice as foundational, not incidental.

Angela’s arc is therefore inseparable from the massacre. She literally ingests her grandfather’s memories in the series — a surreal device that functions as a metaphor for generational trauma. History is not something she studies. It lives in her bloodstream.

Should More Historical Dramas Center Black Protagonists?

From a media-ethics standpoint — something we frequently interrogate on MoviesToHistory.com — the answer must be evaluated beyond representation optics.

Centering Black protagonists does three critical things:

It is not accidental that Watchmen operates within the superhero genre. Speculative fiction has historically provided marginalized communities with a framework to explore historical trauma without being confined to realism. Consider how: Superheroes externalize internal struggle. Masks symbolize hidden identity. Alternate histories reveal suppressed realities. In Watchmen, the mask becomes metaphor. Black identity in America has often required protective concealment — navigating violence, prejudice, and systemic inequality. By literalizing masks within law enforcement and vigilantism, the show transforms racial history into symbolic architecture.

1. It Corrects Archival Erasure

Events like the Tulsa Race Massacre were suppressed for decades. Dramas that foreground Black perspectives act as cultural counter-archives.

2. It Reorients Moral Framing

When Black characters are protagonists rather than side figures, systemic racism becomes central conflict — not background texture.

Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman in a scene from the film, "Black Panther". Photo Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (2018)

3. It Expands Genre Possibility

Watchmen proves that historical reckoning can exist inside genre television — superheroes, alternate history, sci-fi — without sacrificing rigor.

Historically, prestige dramas have often placed Black characters at the periphery of white-led narratives: the loyal aide, the suffering witness, the moral compass. Angela Abar is none of these. She drives the plot. She makes catastrophic decisions. She carries the thematic weight.

That shift matters.

Regina King in "Watchmen" (2019) Photo Credit: HBO

Angela Abar vs. Traditional Hero Archetypes

Angela differs from conventional heroes in several key ways:

Traditional Superhero	Angela Abar
Trauma is personal and individualized	Trauma is historical and generational
Villain is externalized evil	Villain is systemic racism
Secret identity protects ego	Mask protects survival
Hero narrative centers destiny	Hero narrative centers inheritance

Her journey is not about discovering latent power; it is about confronting inherited pain.

And yet, she is not reduced to trauma. Regina King plays Angela with steel and vulnerability, maternal warmth and simmering rage. She is fully human — flawed, impulsive, emotionally guarded.

That complexity is precisely what more historical dramas need. Not sainted victims. Not symbolic martyrs. But protagonists allowed moral ambiguity and narrative authority.

The Political Resonance of 2019

When Watchmen aired in 2019, America was already grappling with rising white nationalist visibility. The show’s depiction of masked extremists embedded within institutions felt uncomfortably prescient.

Neo Nazis, Alt-Right, and White Supremacists encircle and chant at counter protestors at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., USA on August 11, 2017. Samuel Corum | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

By centering Angela, the series reframes the question of who gets to be the protector of American ideals. Not the billionaire. Not the godlike being. But a Black woman descended from survivors.

That inversion is radical.

A New Kind of Legacy

Will Reeves as Hooded Justice retroactively rewrites the mythology of heroism within the Watchmen universe. The first masked vigilante was not a circus strongman (as originally suggested in the comics) but a Black man confronting lynching culture.

The episode “This Extraordinary Being” functions as a thesis statement: the superhero genre itself is born from the inability of institutions to protect Black citizens.

Angela becomes the second generation of that myth.

The symbolism is clear: Black resistance is foundational to American justice, even if history has refused to credit it. By making Angela the narrative center, the series argues that Black protagonists are not niche stories — they are American stories.

Final Verdict: More Than Representation

Watchmen (2019) is not merely a superhero show with a Black lead. It is a historical reckoning disguised as genre television.

It demonstrates that when Black protagonists anchor historical narratives:

The stakes deepen.
The moral framework shifts.
The genre evolves.
The audience learns history that institutions failed to teach.

Angela Abar is a new kind of superhero because she is rooted in truth. Her power is not spectacle — it is survival, memory, and defiance.

For historical dramas, the question should no longer be whether to center Black protagonists. The question should be: What histories remain distorted until they do?

If Watchmen is the blueprint, the future of historical storytelling — whether courtroom drama, war epic, or political thriller — must recognize that the margins have always contained the real story.

And once centered, they transform the genre itself.