Watchmen was originally going to have another episode

Watchmen wrapped up its banner premiere season this past Sunday, and it was…pretty good. I know the internet is falling over itself to praise the series, and I certainly enjoyed it, but I thought it kind of petered out at the end there.

One of the issues I had was that while lots of the characters were explored in depth — Angela Abar, Laurie Blake, Looking Glass, William Reeves — the villains of the piece (the white supremacist senator Joe Keene and the megalomaniacal Lady Trieu) kind of came off as mustache-twirling cliches in the end. Maybe an extra episode could have helped with that?

As it ends up, the show was supposed to have another episode. “The original plan was to do 10,” showrunner Damon Lindelof told Collider. “And then, I think around the time that we had written the scripts for four and five, and understanding what episode six was going to be – and six needed to happen exactly when it happened in the season, in our opinion – that we felt like once six ended, that we were closer to the ending than we were to the beginning. Six didn’t feel like a mid point. It felt like, we now know everything that we need to know to move into the endgame.”

Episode Six, “This Extraordinary Being,” explored William Reeve’s past as Hooded Justice, the first-ever superhero. It did feel like a turning point, which is why it was disappointing that Reeves didn’t really play a role in the climax. “I was like, ‘We’re just not doing the filler episode,'” Lindelof continued. “‘We know exactly what we need to do in our endgame. It’s time to start doing it. I don’t want to stall.'”

Watchmen 109. Lady Trieu. Mark Hill/HBO

But enough complaining. The show was still more than good enough to warrant a second season. But while Lindelof remains open to the idea, he doesn’t have anything in the pipeline, and only wants to do it if the right idea comes along. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, star Regina King (Angela Abar) sounds like she agrees with him:

"I can see myself being involved in a season two if it was really smart. I would need to know the beginning and the endgame, unlike how this season was. I did not know what the endgame was. I just totally trust Damon. I don’t know. There’s a part of me that feels like…it’s just really hard to think we could top season one, you know? There’s that part of me, probably the ego side, that thinks, “Yeah, I want to see what I can do with all those powers.” But the storytelling lover in me, the side that loves watching and reading a good story, wouldn’t want it to [happen] unless it was so smart, with a possibility of hiding Easter eggs, creating new places to go, that it made sense and still connected to the world that was created in the first season. That would have to happen. I don’t know. It seems kind of hard to accomplish that."

“All I can say is if season two came back, I would want it to be comparable to season one,” she finished. “That sounds like a tall hill to climb!”

If the show did come back, it would have an obvious starting point: at the end of the first season, Angela ate an egg that may or may not contain the powers of her now-dead husband, Doctor Manhattan (or “Calhattan,” as they called him on set). Did she inherit his powers? We cut away before we found out.

“Initially, my interpretation of eating the egg was more wrapped up in the love story of it all,” King recalled.” I kept looking at it as more of Angela seeing this as one last hope of being able to feel Doctor Manhattan again. That was my thought of it. It wasn’t until I was having a conversation with Chris Cuevas, our A-camera operator, and he was like, ‘You’re going to be Doctor Manhattan!’ And I was like, ‘No!’ I didn’t even realize that was the ending. He said, ‘What do you think is going to happen, if we come back?’ And I said, ‘She’s going to fall in the pool!'”

God, if season 2 happens and opens with Angela just belly flopping in the pool, I will laugh very hard, Still, after a cryptic conversation with Lindelof, King changed her mind on the final scene. “But no, she’s totally inheriting his powers. (Laughs)”

Whether or not King saw the ending coming, it ends up that the poster — which showed Angela bathed in blue light set against an egg yoke-colored circle — was teasing it all along:

Image: Watchmen/HBO

Whoa.

Something else the second season could do is bring back Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl, a superhero from Alan Moore’s original comic who was mentioned but not seen. “[O]ne of the things that we [were] constantly trying to solve for, was the ratio between old and new,” Lindelof said. “And, I felt very strongly that Laurie needed to be in this show. And, I felt very strongly that Manhattan needed to be in the show. And, I felt very strongly that Veidt needed to be in the show. And, we knew that the central character of the show was Hooded Justice and his granddaughter. It felt like, if we added Dan into the mix, that the balance tipped too much towards the old, and not enough towards the new. But, we did discuss multiple versions of what it would look like for him to appear.”

I wonder how many people will watch Watchmen over the holiday break, and I wonder if HBO will pay attention to the numbers…

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h/t Digital Spy, Collider