'Watchmen's Ending Was An Awe-Inspiring Mic Drop, Which Is Why There Shouldn't Be A 2nd Season

“Who watches the Watchmen?” That phrase, so essential to the original comic book series, is noticeably absent from HBOs adaptation/sequel/“remix” of Alan Moore’s “Watchmen.” Once, the idea was that history’s most powerful superheroes should demand the attention of the nation. Citizens should seek to expose their secrets and not let those who would police us move beyond accountability for their actions. In the inverted, reimagined world that Damon Lindelof and his writing team created, however, these superheroes are swept up in the unyielding systems that shape the world.

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In other words? Men and women in masks, even the ones with ungodly amounts of money, were never the most significant threats humanity faced.

**Spoilers ahead for Season 1 of HBO’s “Watchmen”**

There are any number of reasons why the first season of HBO’s “Watchmen” deserves to also be its last. For one, despite the world-threatening stakes of the final few episodes, the series narrative is neatly constructed around Will Reeves’s (Louis Gossett, Jr) fight against Cyclops and the 7th Calvary. While some storylines may have ambiguous endings, this one does not: every senior member of Cyclops is obliterated in the blink of any eye. Reeves 1, white supremacists 0. The also does right by several other characters, allowing them to seize control of their emotional trauma. Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson) puts the shock of New York behind him; after a life spent chasing masks, Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) finally has an opportunity to bring justice to the one vigilante who deserves it the most. “Watchmen” offers closure for characters both old and new, and there’s something to be said for leaving the table when you’re ahead.

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But perhaps the most compelling argument against more “Watchmen” is the way the show handles history. In many ways, HBO’s “Watchmen” acts as the historiography of the events from the original comic. The destruction of New York City was a tragedy perpetrated by one powerful white man and co-opted by groups of other powerful white men. The same could be said for the Tulsa Race Massacre – in this adaptation, the tragic origin story of Will Reeves’s Hooded Justice – and the White Night, the Tulsa-wide act of violence that ensured the anonymity of a generation of police officers. One of the ideas raised by “Watchmen” is that history is a weapon, and anyone powerful enough to twist history to their benefit is truly dangerous.

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This is what “Watchmen” asks us to do: interrogate these histories, explore the transmutation of dates, names, and places into something darker and more at odds with our own personal experiences. Often, this message is anything but subtle. When Angela Abar (Regina King) struggles through her Nostalgia-induced hallucinations, she literally engages in the act of rewriting her family history with herself at the center. The same can be said of Cal Abar (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who only loses his power as Doctor Manhattan when he becomes disconnected from his own history. “Watchmen” is a show about reclaiming your power by reclaiming your past, suggesting that the old adage about knowing or repeating our history is wrong. Those who do not learn history, the show suggests, will never be able to balance the scales of justice.

And if we accept this as one of the most significant points that “Watchmen” has to offer, then why continue the story past this point? We as a country are still grappling with our own histories; much like Reeves and the Abars, countless people are trying to reclaim their past so that they can take control of their future. This is not an easy process. Still, the radical notion here is to try, not that history should be wrested in one direction or another. When watching the first season of “Watchmen,” I was struck by the sense that the show had taken these characters as far as they were able to go. If we’ve learned anything from the much-needed destruction of Confederate monuments across the country, it’s that historical rewrites require time and generational changes, and skipping forward yet-again in the history of the “Watchmen” universe may be a tough pill for audiences to swallow.

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From a narrative and historical perspective, no more “Watchmen” is a no-brainer. But there are also restrictions placed on “Watchmen” by the mediums that inspire it: comic books and cinema. Comic books, by their design, require a hard reset with each new episodic event. This means that how characters rebuild what was broken has never been part of the superhero narrative. We never follow the contractors who repair Metropolis, or the grief counselors who help the citizens of Gotham unpack the trauma of the mass shootings that occur regularly. We never duck into the political science courses that grapple with the ever-changing morality of someone like Lex Luthor. Even grounded in trauma and anger, “Watchmen” is still an offshoot of storytelling devices from a comic book series, not an escape from the logic of comic books themselves. You can only nudge a narrative so far in a new direction before you start to lose the thread.

The cinematic case is even stronger. The visual impact of cutting away from Angela Abar’s foot as it hovers inches above the water carries the same satisfaction as, say, the spinning top in Christopher Nolan’s Inception.” Filmmakers have always been able to pull the rug out from under their audiences because the ambiguity of these endings is matched by the time people spend with a story. Even major Hollywood studios are comfortable asking audiences to accept an ambiguous ending after only a 90-minute commitment. Similarly, television miniseries like “Watchmen” carry with them an unspoken understanding that things may end in a place of uncertainty. The farther you prolong that commitment, though, the more audiences will come to expect closure across the board. So it was with “Lost,” so it was with “Battlestar Galactica,” and so it would be with “Watchmen” if the story continues beyond this point.

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In other words, acts of closure have never been essential for comic books or short-form storytelling, and “Watchmen” – for all its narrative strengths – is even less prepared to move beyond its climactic final events. The central question of the show has been one of reclamation: how are these characters, disenfranchised by the loss of their own personal and cultural histories, able to reclaim their power? Maybe the answer doesn’t belong in a television show. Perhaps it belongs in the real world.