Damon Lindelof's Watchmen series, much like the comic that inspired it, tackles several real-world issues. The most prominent of those issues was race and how it shaped the lives of several heroes and villains. Chief among those heroes was Will Reeves, the masked vigilante known as Hooded Justice.
In an interview with ComicBook, Lindelof spoke about how he came up with the origins of Hooded Justice. The idea to make him an African-American man sprung into being when Lindelof learned about the 1921 Tulsa massacre. To him, that moment in history had "the parlance of comic book language," and ran parallel to the destruction of Superman's homeworld Krypton.
"You're referring to the Hooded Justice documentary, very specifically Krypton, that a superhero story starts with becoming an orphan with the destruction of their world as they know it. I suddenly wondered if there was a way for Tulsa to be the inciting, most pivotal story point in this entire season to essentially say, Tulsa is what creates Hooded Justice." Lindelof said. "Hooded Justice is what creates justification for masking in America. Now here we are almost a century later and it's time for that debt to be paid. Those were all the kind of fundamental building blocks that were swirling around when we started to put the show together."
The history of Hooded Justice was revealed slowly over the course of the series, especially during the episode "This Extraordinary Being." He was also revealed to be the grandfather of Angela Abar, aka Sister Night.
Developed by Damon Lindelof, HBO's Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jean Smart, 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.