Watchmen just won the Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series. In fact, it won the most Emmys of any show last night! Will this inspire HBO to make more episodes?
Last night, HBO took home several top awards at the Emmys, including Outstanding Variety Talk Series (Last Week Tonight With John Oliver), Outstanding TV Movie (Bad Education), Outstanding Drama Series (Succession), Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Zendaya, for Euphoria) and Outstanding Limited Series (Watchmen).
First off, this proves that HBO is still an awards juggernaut even with Game of Thrones, long an Emmy darling, now off the air. “I am thrilled,” HBO president Casey Bloys told Deadline. “It’s especially nice because there was a question how HBO would do. This is a pretty good way to answer that question.”
In fact, with 30 wins, the network won more hardware than anyone else, although Netflix (which got 21 wins) had more nominations. “Because of the volume game, they may beat us in total nominations. But that won’t change the kind of shows we do,” Bloys said.
The win for Watchmen is especially significant, because it’s the first comic book adaptation (or remix, or sequel, or whatever it was) to win this big of an award. Taking inspiration from Alan Moore’s seminal 1986 graphic novel, the new show was set years later and used the superhero framework Moore created to explore issues of race in America.
“I’m proud of the show; it really did open a lot of people’s eyes to the Tulsa riot,” Bloys said, alluding to the depiction of the Tulsa race massacre that opened the show. “It is unfortunate that it has become relevant because of what happened in the country, but I’m glad that and the writers did something that made people talk, think and understand what that was all about.”
It’s also renewed interest in the question of whether Watchmen might ever have a second season. The original run did leave room for other things to happen, but Lindelof has thus far been non-committal at best, and wasn’t any more firm last night. “It would feel like a huge betrayal of winning limited series to come back and say ‘it was only a limited series’,” he said.
At minimum, it sounds like Lindelof has said whatever he wants to say with the show, but he’s still leaving the door open for others. “Watchmen is something I’ve loved since I was 13 years old. Someone else created it, and this was my run on it. I’ve invited any other artist who wants to take the baton.”
Bloys weighed in, too. “There are no plans to do anything,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine doing it without Damon. It seems unlikely, he told a pretty complete story. Never say never but there are no plans for another installment.”
If there is a second sequel, I want it to start with Angela Abar falling into that pool. If you saw it you know what I’m talking about.
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