Watchmen May Not Return For Season 2, Says Damon Lindelof

HBO’s adaptation of Watchmen has been a major hit for the premium cabler, with strong word-of-mouth helping with its ratings and seeing rave reviews from critics. While many are hoping to see a second season of the series, showrunner/developer Damon Lindelof says he would “need to have a really cool idea and justification for doing it,” and that he “can’t say that there will definitely not be a second season and I can’t say there definitely will be.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lindelof revealed that when he pitched the series to HBO, he used True Detective and Fargo as examples of what the show can be and how the original creator doesn’t need to be involved with future iterations and that while he can’t say a second season won’t happen, he doesn’t currently have any ideas or justification for doing a second season.

“I feel for someone who’s wildly inconsistent in general, I’ve been fairly consistent on this point,” Lindelof says. “When we first went public with the pilot at New York Comic-Con, I wanted to make sure that everybody who was going along for the ride knew what the design of the season was. Especially after what happened with Lost, and the way that a lot of serialized dramas unfolded, where the audience doesn’t know how thick the book is when they pick it up. This is a love letter and an examination of the original Watchmen… I wanted everyone to know this is not the middle of the trilogy, this is not the beginning of a seven-season run. In my opinion, the best iteration of any season of Watchmen would mirror the original [graphic novel] in that it would be a self-contained story with the resolution of a fundamental mystery. There’s always going to be space for more Watchmen. I feel like this world is so expansive — hopefully more expansive now than it was before. You could call something Watchmen and not even feature any of the characters who were in the original or in this season as long as they all occupy the same world.”

The showrunner also added that the writers have “gone on to other things” but says he has it in the back of his mind that if one day the opportunity came to develop another season, he could call them up if they were available and say, “Hey, we’re putting the gang back together for another heist.”

Set in an alternate history where “superheroes” are treated as outlaws, Watchmen embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel while attempting to break new ground of its own. Originally published as a 12-issue miniseries beginning in 1986, Watchmen quickly become one of sequential art’s most acclaimed stories. The original story centers on a murder-mystery before unfolding into a planet-altering conspiracy that ultimately asks where the fine line is drawn between heroes and villains. Check out the original comic for yourself by purchasing it here.

The series is made up of an ensemble cast that includes Jeremy Irons (Justice League) as an older Ozymandias, Regina King (The Leftovers), Don Johnson (Django Unchained), Louis Gossett Jr. (Hap and Leonard), Tim Blake Nelson (Colossal), Adelaide Clemens (Rectify), Andrew Howard (Bates Motel), Frances Fisher (Masters of Sex), Jacob Ming-Trent (White Famous), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Handmaid’s Tale), Sara Vickers (The Crown), Tom Mison (Sleepy Hollow), Jean Smart (Fargo) as a mysterious FBI agent, and James Wolk (Zoo, Tell Me a Story).

Lindelof serves as creator, writer, showrunner, and executive producer on the Watchmen series, with Tom Spezialy, Stephen Williams, and Joseph Iberti also executive producing. Nicole Kassell will executive produce and direct the pilot. The series comes from Lindelof’s White Rabbit in association with Warner Bros. Television and is based on the DC Comics characters.