Our first look at HBO's Watchmen is this weird-ass clip of a cop with a yellow mask
Not counting casting announcements, the only thing we’ve seen from HBO’s “alternative reality” version of Watchmen were some leaked set photos that featured references to the “squid” that destroys New York at the end of the comic and a newspaper headline about the death of Adrian Veidt (the original story’s secret villain), but now the premium cable network has released an explosive new look at the Damon Lindelof’s pilot that answers every question we have about the timeline of the new sequel.
Nah, just kidding. It’s super weird and we have no idea what it means. It’s just a cop wearing some kind of yellow mask over the bottom half of their face, which—as far as we can tell—doesn’t match up with any of the Watchmen characters or the old Charlton Comics heroes they’re all based on. It’s a little Rorschach-esque, and it could be some kind of CG placeholder, but that still seems like an odd choice for the very first thing that HBO has shown from this project.
Here’s our take: Given the “Who Watches The Watchmen?” caption included on the Instagram post, we’re going to assume this is a new character who is actually named Watchman. Maybe his mask moves around like Rorschach’s inkblot face, but it’s just a red streak on a yellow background as a nod to all of Watchmen’s iconography? We’re not saying it’s a good idea, we’re just putting it out there so HBO knows that it has to think of something better.