Esquire USA - 11.2019

the Big Bite

In his adaptation—which is not a strict sequel but

more of an expansion of the Watchmen universe almost

four decades later—Robert Redford has been president

for about 20 years and the Supreme Court is stacked

with Left-leaning judges. And yet, even in a liberal-

controlled country, bigotry remains: A white-supremacist

group known as the 7th Kalvary has co-opted the idea of

Rorschach. Whereas nuclear war was the root of all evil in

the comic, the HBO series positions racism as the great-

est evil—one that

reaches back many

generations be-

fore the invention

of atomic weapons.

“In order for this

to be Watchmen,

we have to start

with an unsolvable

problem, a prob-

lem that the most

well-intentioned

superheroes and

cannot solve,”

Lindelof says. “And

now we’re in 2019 instead of the ’80s, where it feels like

you can’t tell a story about America in any kind of real,

historical context that doesn’t talk about race.”

Like the original Watchmen, Lindelof ’s interpretation

operates with a subversive attitude that says no side is

right and there are no simple answers—which isn’t an

easy balance to achieve in an era when bothsiderism is

a bad word. Lindelof says he does this “very carefully

and wildly irresponsibly at the same time. You can’t be

Complex sci-fi and fantasy stories are exactly

what Lindelof does best. Along with J. J. Abrams

and Jeffrey Lieber, he cocreated the ground-

breaking ABC drama Lost, which took massive

risks for a network television show, with fearless

narrative twists. More recently, his three-season

HBO drama The Leftovers was a masterpiece of

fantastical surrealism—a twisting journey into

“I don’t want to be an imitator,” he says, referring

48 November 2019_Esquire

BUILDING

CHARACTER

Lindelof and King on the

set of “Watchmen.”

Above right: Rorschach in

the original comic.

Watchmen proved

that the superhero genre

could be as political,

controversial, challeng-

ing, thought-

provoking, and deeply

human as any work

of dramatic literature.

out to make his own series, he knew he had to do some-
thing entirely new—to evoke the feeling he experienced
at 13. And that meant not worrying about whether he
angered people.
Make no mistake, people will be angry. With its equal
critiques of liberals and conservatives, Watchmen is shap-
ing up to be the most controversial TV debut of the fall—
and one of the most polarizing superhero stories ever
told. That’s in keeping with the spirit of the original text,
according to Lindelof. “It’s essentially saying we have dis-
dain for people at the center, because they’re not choos-
ing a side, but we also have disdain for people who are in
the extremes, because you can’t live in the extremes. And
so let’s just take the piss out of everyone and ourselves in
the process,” he says.
For nearly 35 years, scholars and fans alike have debated
the political and social nuances of Watchmen, which
partly follows a sociopath with an inkblot mask named
Rorschach, who is investigating the murder of a fellow
vigilante in a time after masked heroes have been made
illegal. Back when Lindelof first read the comic, he con-
sidered Rorschach the good guy, but now he believes
“good guys and bad guys are not really even part of the
vernacular here.”
He mentions how in recent months Ted Cruz and
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have each referenced
Rorschach to defend points on opposite sides of the po-
litical spectrum. “There is a sliver of the Venn diagram
where Ted Cruz and AOC basically both have their arms
linked in excitement, and that sliver is called Rorschach,”
Lindelof says. “You look at him, and you describe what
you see in the inkblots. But that’s a reflection of your own
personality, or your own psychological profile, or, more
specifically, your own trauma.”