2019’s ‘Watchmen’ Miniseries Serving as a Comic Book Sequel is Still Such a Cool Move

Although it hadn’t quite taken hold in 2019, superhero fatigue was still a growing concern. The sheer volume of live-action comic book adaptations hitting the big and small screens was sometimes enough to make even the best projects slip through the cracks. While all eyes were on Avengers: Endgame as the Infinity Saga drew to a close, one HBO show was unexpectedly reviving one of the most highly revered superhero stories of all time. It was an unusually cool series to get the green light, even in 2019. In 2026, I’m still wondering how the project ever got made.

Sharing a name with the 1980s comic book series and a 2009 Zack Snyder movie, 2019’s Watchmen added to the superhero franchise in a very unexpected way. Running for just nine episodes between October and December, there were some confusing and interesting reasons why it was a risky endeavor. Despite still boasting a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the Watchmen miniseries tumbled quickly into obscurity after its finale. It’s an underrated masterpiece, and those who disagree don’t fully appreciate why the HBO show was so inspired.

Why the ‘Watchmen’ Miniseries Was Such an Unconventional Miniseries

HBO

Snyder’s Watchmen movie brought the Alan Moore comic book story back to prominence in 2009. For many viewers, the feature-length adaptation was the first time they’d encountered Watchmen, and it remains one of the writer/director’s finest projects to date. So, when HBO announced its Watchmen miniseries, it stood to reason that it would serve as a sequel to the movie of the same name. However, that wasn’t the case. The miniseries intentionally ignored Snyder’s version of Watchmen and returned to the same timeline as Moore’s source material. So, the 2019 effort was actually picking up events from the decades-old comic book, rather than the movie.

Watchmen has a fan score of just 57% on Rotten Tomatoes. I remain convinced this unfair rating is due in large part to how relatively inaccessible the show is to casual fans.

Granted, Snyder did an incredibly faithful job of adapting Moore’s work, but he also made some key changes. So, it doesn’t make complete sense to watch the 2009 movie and then the miniseries as one cohesive storyline. Instead, the intention is for the audience to read, or have already read, Moore’s comic book run. Then, the miniseries picks up events over three decades later and checks in on the universe. Given that Snyder’s movie was only a decade old at the time, it would arguably have been far safer for HBO to greenlight the Watchmen miniseries as a sequel to that. Thankfully, the superior choice was made, and the nine-part epic was born.

Can I Watch the 2019 Watchmen Miniseries Without Reading the Comics First?

This question, or at least its core concept, haunted Watchmen when it premiered on HBO. Some casual viewers tuned in expecting a Snyder sequel, only to find squids falling from the sky like precipitation, which was apparently the norm in this universe. Snyder altered the comic’s original squid-based ending, so those who hadn’t read the source material were left without a proper explanation as to what was going on. There were a few other similar instances throughout the nine episodes, but the miniseries does largely make sense as an isolated project. It’s possible to watch the movie first to get a good idea of the world, but it’s important to remember they belong in different continuities.

Original Watchmen writer Alan Moore has disowned all adaptations of his comic, including the 2019 miniseries.

The Watchmen show furthers the ideas introduced in the comics, but it also establishes so many new characters that it functionally serves as a new era for the saga. It’s part of the same timeline as the comics, but it does also make a reasonable attempt to welcome in new fans. That said, reading the comics before watching the miniseries is quite clearly the best way to get the most out of the story. While newer shows like Fallout have since adopted this cross-media approach to storytelling, it wasn’t something that was quite so proven in 2019. Even now, I look back, and I’m very thankful that HBO allowed the Watchmen miniseries to happen, as it represents a rare risk taken by the industry in the 21st century.