Watchmen · Season 1 · HBO
Watchmen Season 1
Watchmen Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 9.1/10. 9 episodes on HBO from 20 October 2019.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Airing October-December 2019, Lindelof's Watchmen is a sequel, not an adaptation - it builds from Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novel but plants its story in Tulsa, Oklahoma, centering the 1921 Greenwood District massacre as the foundation for its superhero mythology. Critics gave it 96% from 398 reviews, making it one of the most critically approved limited series in HBO history. The show won 11 Emmy Awards in 2020, more than any other program that year. Regina King's Angela Abar became one of television's defining heroes. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes split at 57%, reflecting a vocal faction who resisted the political framing - the critic-audience gap itself became a cultural talking point.
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The Room
“Bold and bristling, Watchmen isn't always easy viewing, but by adding new layers of cultural context it expertly builds on its source material.”
Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus“King is nothing short of amazing - she puts even more range on display in a turn that effortlessly pivots between invulnerable and vulnerable.”
Rotten Tomatoes editorial
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about — premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice9.0
The premiere opens with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre before cutting to 2019, where police wear masks and Angela Abar works undercover. It is one of the most disorienting and accomplished series premieres in HBO's history - establishing tone, mythology, and moral stakes in under an hour.
The moment: The pre-credits Tulsa 1921 sequence - a piece of suppressed American history introduced as the show's entire foundation.
“Watchmen is a stunner. Gorgeous, provocative, and ferociously relevant.” — Gold Derby
- E6This Extraordinary Being9.8
Shot almost entirely in black and white, this episode unfolds Angela's grandfather's history as the original Hooded Justice in a formal experiment that stops the season's plot cold in order to deliver a devastatingly personal origin story. Critics widely called it the finest hour of 2019 television.
The moment: The reveal of Hooded Justice's true identity - recontextualizing an entire strand of the Watchmen mythology through the lens of Black American history.