Who watches the Watchmen?
After releasing the first trailer for the upcoming Watchmen television series weeks ago, followed by several shorter teases, HBO debuts a new trio of promo videos on Instagram teasing the rise of a new masked character.
All of the Watchmen Instagram account's posts come in threes, each offering one third of a full glimpse at whatever mystery the secretive series is teasing. These latest promos lean heavily into Rorshach's mytholology, with the caption accompanying the second post being "The Abyss Gazes Also," a direct callback to the title of Watchmen #6, which featured the origin story of Walter Kovacs.
But while the character featured in the promos might look like Rorschach at a glance, he's clearly not the same character. The mask may have a similar type of fluidity to it, but as the first video shows, this one is made entirely of a reflective material. Looking over the character breakdowns of the new series, it's likely this is the new character known as Looking Glass, who we saw in the trailer in footage re-presented in the second and third promos below.
HBO's Watchmen series will not be a direct adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal graphic novel. Instead, it has been described as a remix by series creator Damon Lindelof, and a sort of sequel set years later.
Developed by Lindelof, HBO's adaptation of Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tom Mison, James Wolk, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith and Adelynn Spoon. The series will premiere in the fall of 2019.