How did the idea evolve from there?Damon sent us all home with homework one night: What happened to Will in order to make him want to be a vigilante? The show’s most fascinating thread yet concerns Angela, Will, and the origins of Hooded Justice, the superhero who inspired the formation of the Minutemen, a crime-fighting team valorized in an arch show-within-the-show called American Hero Story. When June says, “I thought that you would be able to get rid of it,” I think what she’s saying is, “You’re an angry person and you have every right to be angry because something horrible happened to you. With regard to writing that point-of-view shot, did you think about the ethics of subjecting or implicating the viewer? June thought this might be able to exorcise some of his demons, but it fed them. And then, there were seven white people — Jeff [Jensen], Lila [Byock], Carly [Wray], Nick [Cuse], Damon, Claire [Kiechel], and Tom [Spezialy] — but only four of whom were white men. It was Damon who, when we were writing the episode, pointed out, “Oh, this is a Superman story.” When we realized that the first Superman comic would be published around the same time we were setting the episode, it just felt like symmetry. And so, it makes sense that underneath his one mask is another mask entirely. Was there anything that wasn’t included in the episode that you wish had made it in?I think we had one more scene with Sam Battle, the black officer you see pinning the badge onto Will at the beginning of the episode, [who] was real. That’s what made Lost exciting for a lot of people. When the Watchmen series premiere began, the first thing viewers were shown was a young boy watching a silent black-and-white film about a hooded hero enacting justice with a … I came in the next morning with the idea that it was a lynching. A massive reveal in “This Extraordinary Being” has pushed the entire Watchmen universe forward.. Damon also said that he sought out writers who were skeptical of the idea of Hooded Justice being black. The closest we come to corroboration on this is a panel in which Hooded Justice tells the Comedian that the Minutemen should avoid political situations, after the latter suggests that America should get involved in World War II. How he decided to become Hooded Justice and what his relationship was going to be with Angela — all of that stuff came later. Who would want to be a masked vigilante? With fine-tuned grace, the episode explores anti-black violence through a heartwrenching lynching scene, queer identity, and familial legacies of inherited trauma. I really pushed back against that when I first started working in the room, because that’s exactly the opposite kind of writer that I am. It is a very difficult scene to watch. Or at least, that’s one interpretation. I think that what we hit upon is something that feels very true, even though it’s gross and icky. I’d found my vocation.” He goes on to explain that within 12 months of Hooded Justice’s first appearance in the news, nearly a dozen costumed heroes had begun working. A scene with Silk Spectre is the only time that Hooded Justice actually appears in Watchmen. It’s for the Spice Girls, Sugababes, All Saints, Girls Aloud.”. There’s also an interesting moment when Will reads Superman’s origin story in Action Comics No. So, I came in with the idea that he was lynched by his fellow police officers. What were the biggest arguments?The one that immediately leaps to mind is how reparations would be implemented. Hopefully, people might do some Googling and see that was a real guy. Watchmen HBO: Reinventing Hooded Justice Hooded Justice has appeared sporadically in the first season of the HBO series thanks to the recurring clips of American Hero Story, a fake TV series within the Watchmen universe that dramatizes the origin of the Minutemen. Hooded Justice on Watchmen. That was a really big discussion: What would be the technical aspects of implementing reparations in the United States of America? In 2019, Hooded Justice still manages to do the vigilante thing, given that he used Cyclops-inspired technology to make Judd hang himself. [...] And then, a week later, it happened again. HBO's Watchmen revealed the shocking true identity and origin of Hooded Justice in a way that breaks from the graphic novel yet still adheres to what's actually known about the masked vigilante, while also perfectly fitting the TV story by creator Damon Lindelof. But it also hammers home the point that Reeves and Superman have the same origin story: children sent from a home about to be destroyed, by parents who could not themselves escape. This article contains spoilers for the sixth episode of HBO’s Watchmen. He later rescued the Silk Spectre from the Comedian'ssexual assault, whi… hbo’s watchmen gives hooded justice a functional origin story The show deftly fits new information into the gaps left by the book. With a story set 34 years after the events of the book, the show has explored the fallout from Watchmen, but not interacted with its story directly. To truly understand the United States of America, you must understand blackness — its rhythms, its splendor, its history. The original Watchmen is a brilliant piece of art, but the only people of color are the comic-book kid and Rorscach’s therapist. HBO’s Watchmen changed comic canon without changing anything, the series’ sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,”. That he’s going to be able to eliminate this trauma that happened to him. Having that mask slip a little when she says, “I’m not angry” — and Will was saying the same thing just 80 years before — it was an important moment to switch back and forth between the two characters. [Laughs.] Log in or link your magazine subscription. Hooded Justice, Not Doctor Manhattan, Is the Superman of HBO's Watchmen. Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it’s seldom when anything ever really gets resolved.”. He connects the disappearance of Hooded Justice with the death of “a well known circus strongman of the day named Rolf Müller,” as reported by Watchmen’s notoriously biased weekly rag, The Newfrontiersman. Watchmen Episode 6 "This Extraordinary Being" reveals Hooded Justice to be Angela Abar's grandfather Will Reeves. In effect, Will wears two masks as Hooded Justice: the hood, obviously, and then there’s the white makeup underneath to hide his blackness. But then, when the Comedian is sexually assaulting Silk Spectre, he comes in and there’s one panel that’s a real, perfect closeup of his eyes. Hooded Justice was the first “costumed adventurer” or “masked hero” — the terms employed by people within the world of “Watchmen” to describe what we would call superheroes. Some set photos from the pilot filming of HBO's upcoming Watchmen series could give us our first look at Hooded Justice on horseback. He had been told if you put on a badge, you’re going to be able to finally enact the law and you’re going to be able to get back what was taken from you in Tulsa all those years ago. Then, in the 1950s, he, like other costumed crime fighters, was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee — and reveal his true identity to one of the congressmen. There’s obviously American Hero Story and Action Comics. The Hooded Justice in HBO’s Watchmen is depicted as being vehemently against racism, fascism, and Nazism. Definitely. The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of the 2021 Brit Awards. He advises Reeves to keep his race a secret. Already a subscriber? We thought that maybe he might go to Europe, he might have gone to Germany, which is how he speaks German in the episode. Beyond these facts, all we have is Hollis Mason’s writings, which, while not necessarily lies, include a lot of speculation that is never corroborated anywhere else in the book. Being able to work alongside this black officer was a really big deal for him. Ryan Lipscomb is the writer’s assistant — he’s black. Would it be a lump-sum payment? I have to ask about American Hero Story: Minutemen. I want everything to be answered and I want to solve all the mysteries. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. Can you talk more about the moment Will’s son puts on the white makeup? Hooded Justice was the first masked adventurer in the world of Watchmen.He was also the only masked hero in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic who kept his secret identity. The layers that he’s wearing also suggest the layers that he’s hiding, right? By Mike Cecchini | November 25, 2019 | Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab) note: This piece contains major spoilers for episode 6 of Watchmen.]. The reveal of Will being Hooded Justice feels like something the show was carefully building toward. Sam Battle was the first black NYPD officer. In the TV series, Hooded Justice was revealed to be Will Reaves, a Black man and survivor of the Tulsa Massacre. This is the only panel in Watchmen where we get a glimpse of Hooded Justice’s skin color, hidden by his costume everywhere but the hollows of his eyes. In the DC Universe, Superman is the superhero whose appearance inspired everyone else, and kicked off the setting’s “Age of Heroes.” Hooded Justice takes that role in the setting of Watchmen, and in “This Extraordinary Being,” the Watchmen TV series only ties him closer to DC’s flagship hero. She’s trying to piece together why he would do this. He’s told me that this is the most diverse writers’ room that he’s ever amassed. In the latest episode of HBO's Watchmen, "This Extraordinary Being," Hooded Justice's secret origin confirms he is the series' version of Superman. He becomes a hero in the public eye, and inspires imitators. Like Hollis Mason, William Reeves is a young police officer raised on pulp serial films and amused by the new pulp genre of the superhero comic book. This scene, along with Mason’s comments on his relationship with Silk Spectre, is the source of the general assumption that Hooded Justice was a gay man and a sexual sadist. 1 as something that Will comes across, because it’s so similar to his story. For readers who haven’t read the book, the original Watchmen speculates that Hooded Justice was a German strongman who operated in secrecy, one day disappeared, and then was found dead. Captain Metropolis, the founder of the Minutemen, obviously wants to recruit the costumed hero that the rest of his potential recruits look up to. If they were, were they really dead? ... but HBO's Watchmen tells a very different story. The way that I’ve been living my life is a way that I’m not proud of.” Seeing so clearly that he already has passed down some of his trauma, that is very devastating to him. If he’s going to get justice, it’s going to be extrajudicially. But in order to hide it from the general public, he pretended to be in a relationship with Silk Spectre. That is a relationship we discussed at length in the room. When I put it in [the lynching scene], he was very, very wary of keeping that in the script. A scene where Reeves reads Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman, mirrors a scene in Mason’s memoir, in which he notices kids going nuts for comic books, borrows one from a child on his beat, and is immediately smitten with Superman. In the intimate relationship they share — which the Comedian clearly picked up on — Captain Metropolis gaslights Hooded Justice into believing the Minutemen will help him take down the ring of Klan members plotting to murder hundreds of innocent black people. As Mason puts it in his book, “Dressing up in a costume takes a very extreme personality, and the chances of eight such personalities getting along together were about 75 million-to-one against.”. He was secretly homosexual and in love with Nelson Gardner aka Captain Metropolis. Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice in Watchmen. But I will say that episode seven offers Angela a softer perspective of who this man is. We wanted it to feel cheesy. A man and his girlfriend, walking home after a night at the theater, had been set upon by a gang of three men armed with guns. Oh!I decided that I wanted to see it like a viewer, so I do not know what happens at the end. We saw that one panel and we were like, “Oh damn, like we have to account for this.”, There was a huge debate in the writers’ room as to whether or not we could get a light-skinned actor who could pass as white, perhaps, if you just saw the skin around his eyes. The ‘true’ origin story of Hooded Justice. And so, he puts on a badge, he puts on the blue uniform, and he’s trusting in the law just like his hero Bass Reeves. I also remember that Damon was very wary about using the N-word. There was no way we couldn’t include Action Comics No. But that all changes in the series’ sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,” in which Watchmen the TV show makes a big change to Watchmen the comic — and does it without actually changing a thing. How can we expect this will affect Angela’s perspective going forward? Proceeds from their duet go toward the Elton John AIDS Foundation. We came into the room, day one, with that knowledge. The legacy of trauma and our ancestors can carry on, and it’s trauma that we then hold in our lives and try to hopefully not pass down to the people who come after us. How did you envision this relationship, and especially how Nelson’s racism shapes it?The original text does suggest that Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice did have a sexual relationship. The one person he might allow to get close to him is his first and only friend, the baby that he picks up in that field. That’s what made The Leftovers exciting for a lot of people: Damon’s staunch unwillingness to answer everything for everybody, and let people interpret things how they want to interpret them. One of the great tragedies of Will’s life, up until we meet him in episode six, is that he has spent his entire life believing he’s going to be able to right the wrongs of his childhood. Were those shots written into the script?The point-of-view shot for the lynching was. How did you craft the tone and style of American Hero Story?We wanted it to feel like the opposite of what we were doing. He carries that with him, as much as he tries to pretend that he hasn’t. He’s hiding things from his wife, he’s hiding things from his colleagues at the police station, he’s hiding things from his colleagues in the Minutemen. June, in that moment, is seeing what he has become. Hooded Justice in Watchmen | HBO. We were also very, very serious about making sure that they got Hooded Justice wrong, and that they, like everybody else, assumed that Hooded Justice was a white man. 100 percent. It’s very interesting, you know, who white America considers as being the first ever superhero, which is Superman, and who actually was the first ever superhero, which is Will Reeves. Can you talk about the decision to use white makeup, and its psychological effects on Will?That was another argument in the room. Whether or not Hooded Justice took inspiration from Superman remains an open question. It made perfect sense that that would be a person of color. There’s no way that I look at a guy with a noose around his neck and not immediately think of lynching in the United States. At this point, the crime had been interrupted by a figure ‘Who dropped into the alleyway from above with something over his face’ and proceeded to disarm the three attackers before beating them with such severity that all three required hospital treatment and that one subsequently lost the use of both legs as a result of a spinal injury. People say that Doctor Manhattan is the Superman of Watchmen, but there’s one significant aspect of the Man of Steel that Manhattan lacks. After a formative incident in which he is nearly lynched by his fellow officers, he rescues a white couple from being mugged, wearing the same hood and noose over his head. Captain Metropolis. HBO/Illustration by CNET With each episode, Watchmen raises lots of questions. Sure, you could go into HBO’s Watchmen cold. After taking a publicity photo of all the Minutemen together, Silk Spectre goes to change her outfit, whereupon the Comedian enters the room and makes increasingly insistent sexual advances on her, pummeling her to the ground and attempting to rape her when she refuses them. “While I understand and I love it, I have moved on.”, The Biggest Revelations From the Pop Smoke Murder Case Hearings, Huge Nerd Demi Lovato Will Investigate UFOs in a New Peacock Series, The Most Virtuosic of St. Vincent, According to Annie Clark, “With my guitar, I did what I always do, which is just kind of humbly make shit that I think is cool.”, A Celebration of Jean Smart’s Sad-Funny Work on, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck Went to Montana Alone for a Week, As Exes Do, TMZ reported Affleck first reached out in February — and. Olivia Rodrigo Finally Met Taylor Swift at the Brits. It really affected me more emotionally than I thought it would.We thought very deeply about the ethics of the show. You don’t have to love the person that you’re having sex with. I don’t know. “Strangely enough,” Mason writes, “even though Sally would always be hanging onto his arm, he never seemed very interested in her. In many ways, Watchmen has been building toward this revelation all season. But what’s fascinating about it isn’t just the change itself, but how expertly the folks behind HBO’s Watchmen knitted it into the canon of the Watchmen book. The show aligns him with Superman, when his parents put him in the box leaving Greenwood. He appears in only one scene in the 12-issue series, and the vast majority of what we know about him comes from a secondhand account: Under the Hood, the fictional memoir of Hollis Mason, aka Nite Owl. It’s something I think black people still sometimes experience when dating white people.Absolutely, this fetishization of the black body is a very real thing. And so, when he gets to New York, who would he seek out? Watchmen series creator Damon Lindelof discusses his take on Hooded Justice and why he wanted to explore the comic's mystery character. Showrunner Damon Lindelof addresses … What was important was that we weren’t casually using black trauma for entertainment value. As a show-within-the-show, it skewers a certain brand of superhero media while giving non-comic readers an understanding of the Watchmen world. How does writing on Watchmen compare to writing on The Good Place? The room was half black and half women. But from there, we knew there’s no way to have a sexual relationship in the 1930s between a white man and a black man without discussing the racial politics of it, and without discussing how these men view each other. “Let’s get a dark-skinned actor, let’s not play around.” And then it was like, “Well, if we get a dark-skinned actor, then he has to wear makeup.”. Well, I have no idea what happens in episodes eight and nine because I left the show. You see the ghosts that haunt Will from his childhood, when this horrible thing happened to him and his family and his community. That scene when Angela says, “I’m not angry,” when she takes the place of her grandfather in the bar, we felt was an important scene. As Watchmen TV creator Damon Lindelof sees Moore and Gibbons’ text as sacrosanct, we can probably consider this information pretty reliable: An attempted assault and robbery that had taken place in Queens, New York. When the papers hail him as a hero, Reeves decides to continue, but on the counsel of his wife, he paints the only bit of skin exposed by his costume in the color of a white man’s skin — neatly explaining why in the only close-up of his face in the Watchmen comic, his skin appears pale. I was not expecting to be as moved and as pained by that scene as I was, because I had such a hand in it. It would’ve been nice to see another scene of them working together. We went back and forth about that for a couple days. Here's how his costume came about. But you need to admit that you’re angry in order to deal with it.” When he’s unwilling to admit that, she thought that maybe allowing him to put on a hood and run around the streets at night and beat people up was the way to deal with it. Hooded Justice in Watchmen HBO. Before we discuss that, the question posed in our review of the series premiere, if this series is “worthy” of the name Watchmen, has been answered. Another important aspect of Will’s life is his relationship with his wife. All rights reserved. The most ridiculous superhero is Batman because the idea that a billionaire white guy can’t find justice and so he needs to take to the streets in a bat costume is crazy, right? After relieving the couple of their valuables, the gang has started to beat and physically abused the young man while threatening to indecently assault his girlfriend. ’Cause a billionaire white guy can pretty much do what he wants. What was the racial breakdown of the writers’ room?There was me, Stacy [Osei-Kuffour] is a black woman, Christal Henry is a black woman. Photo: HBO To truly understand the United States of America, you must understand blackness — its rhythms, its splendor, its history. 1. “Reading and rereading that news item,” Mason says, “I knew that I had to be the second. I said, “Let’s be honest. He’s wearing all these masks to block who he actually is from everybody in his life. During his tenure, he and the original Silk Spectre, mother of the Watchmen TV show’s Agent Blake, had a relationship — or at least, they tried to create the illusion of one. Plus, Clubhouse finally comes to Android. My thinking about it was, in the 1930s, who would be seeking justice outside of a courtroom? The scarcity of these details can be chalked up to what Hooded Justice was most famous for: being the only costumed vigilante to have never revealed his secret identity, not even to other costumed vigilantes. It has made trenchant explorations of the nature of blackness in America, loneliness, PTSD, and generational trauma. Then, he realizes that life isn’t the movie that he watched when he was a kid, and that trusting in the law doesn’t always work for people of color. Policymakers, like congresspeople trying to piece together why he wanted Hooded to. Inconsistent, and familial legacies is fascinating, especially from a black man and survivor of the don! 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