How Damon Lindelof steered HBO’s TV adaptation of Watchmen to its incredible conclusion

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy “Now: we have a god to kill.” It is a bold statement that Lady Trieu makes in the finale of HBO’s Watchmen – boldness being part of the job description for a comic-book mad genius. Reinventing Watchmen by making its subject white supremacy rather than the Cold War – not to mention making its hero Angela Abar, an avenging black police-ninja – also meshes with Moore’s critique of the superhero genre, as he put it in a 2016 interview. The history and present of American racism figure directly in Watchmen: the use of nostalgia as a literal drug; the Seventh Kavalry’s resentment at being expected to “say sorry” for the “alleged” sins of the past; the circled-thumb-and-finger-to-forehead gesture of the racist secret society Cyclops, which resembles the real-life white-power appropriation of the “OK” symbol. open image in gallery Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Dr Manhattan in ‘Watchmen’ Now the show was asking: what does it mean to give god a black man’s face?