What Damon Lindelof & Regina King Have Said About ‘Watchmen’ Season 2

Watchmen was a critical and commercial hit for HBO, so the network probably wants a second season of this “limited series” as much as fans do. But showrunner Damon Lindelof has been tempering expectations since even before Watchmen’s October 2019 debut, saying that he only envisioned one season of the dystopian superhero saga.

More recently, Lindelof has endorsed HBO’s view that Watchmen should continue, and he said he’d pass the torch to another writer-producer. But Regina King, who won a Critic’s Choice Television Award for her performance as Angela Abar/Sister Night, might not appear in future installments if Lindelof isn’t involved.

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While we wait for more news about the future of the series, scroll down to read what Lindelof and King have said about a second Watchmen season.

Damon Lindelof: “We wanted to feel like there was a sense of completeness.”

When Deadline asked in October 2019 how many seasons Lindelof’s version of Watchmen would entail, his answer was definitive: just one. “Does that mean that there isn’t going to be any more Watchmen? Not necessarily,” he added. “Does that mean that I will be working on subsequent seasons of Watchmen? I don’t know the answer to that question. We designed these nine episodes to be as self-contained as the original 12 issues. We wanted to feel like there was a sense of completeness, to resolve the essential mystery at hand.”

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Regina King: “I would love nothing more than to be part of it.”

King told Digital Spy in October 2019 that she would do anything — including a second Watchmen season — if Lindelof were involved. “I don’t know that Damon even has started yet [on a second season] or where he would enter. We’re all seeing where this goes, and how it’s received. And we’ll go from there. But yes, if there is a season two, then I don’t care where we’re shooting — I would love nothing more than to be a part of it.”

Damon Lindelof: “I’m content with just letting this one sit out there for a while”

Lindelof told Metro.co.uk in November 2019 that he wasn’t giving much thought to a second season. “I think there’s a fair amount of hubris in planning multiple seasons of a television show in this day and age,” he said. “Every single idea we had is represented in these nine episodes, there was no time where we were like, ‘Let’s save that for later.’”

He went on: “We wanted the audience to have a complete experience of a story with a beginning, middle and end. … If people are like, ‘That was a pretty good meal, I’m good,’ then there doesn’t necessarily need to be anymore. … But more importantly, I haven’t had any ideas of what subsequent series of Watchmen would be. Until those ideas come, I’m content with just letting this one sit out there for a while.”

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Regina King: “It’s just really hard to think we could top Season 1.”

That December, King told The Hollywood Reporter that she would do a second season if it was “really smart.”

“I would need to know the beginning and the endgame, unlike how this season was,” she added. “I don’t know. There’s a part of me that feels like … it’s just really hard to think we could top Season 1, you know? There’s that part of me, probably the ego side, that thinks, ‘Yeah, I want to see what I can do with all those powers.’ But the storytelling lover in me, the side that loves watching and reading a good story, wouldn’t want it to [happen] unless it was so smart, with a possibility of hiding Easter eggs, creating new places to go, that it made sense and still connected to the world that was created in the first season. That would have to happen. I don’t know. It seems kind of hard to accomplish that.”

Damon Lindelof: “Every idea that I had went into this season of Watchmen.”

Lindelof mused at length about a potential Season 2 in a December 2019 Variety interview. “Right now the space that HBO is in and that I’m in is we’re asking the question, should there be another season of Watchmen? And if there should be another season, what would it be?” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t want to do it, or it shouldn’t exist. I’m just saying, ‘Boy, every idea that I had went into this season of Watchmen.’ I’m going to put up my antenna, see if it’s receiving anything. If it’s not receiving anything in a reasonable period of time — and I’ll just say off the top of my head, it feels completely and totally arbitrary, but like a couple of months doesn’t feel unreasonable, you know, January, February, maybe March — then I think we move on to your question, which is, if not me, then who?

He continued: “Because I actually do agree with HBO that this should be a continuing series. Maybe it’ll continue in a year or two, maybe they’ll continue it in four years or whatever, but I want to see more Watchmen. I always said to them, I do see Watchmen as Fargo, as True Detective. They were ongoing anthology shows, but each season had a design with a beginning, middle, and end that allowed subsequent seasons to feature entirely different characters, or even be set in entirely different time periods.”

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Damon Lindelof “has told the story he wants to tell”

Lindelof asserted in January 2020 he has “told the [Watchmen] story he wants to tell,” per USA Today, and he has “given [his] blessing” for HBO to continue the show with another writer-producer.

Damon Lindelof: The door is “barely ajar”

“I never wanna close the door completely because if two, three years from now I say, ‘I just had another idea,’ it will be that much harder to open,” Lindelof told Deadline in February. “But I would say it’s barely ajar. I think that there are no current plans to make any more Watchmen. If the idea comes, I would be enthusiastic about it. The idea may not come from me. I would be super excited about it coming from someone else. So my position hasn’t changed.”

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Regina King: “The second season she’s going to fall in the water.”

In an interview with us here at TV Insider in May, King joked about how the season finale — in which her character contemplates walking on water after presumably inheriting Dr. Manhattan’s superpower — could set up a second season. “It’s so funny for me. I totally thought that, ‘The second season she’s going to fall in the water,’” she said. “To me, I just was like, it’s a love story, how can she get closer to feeling the love of her life again? If there’s a shot in feeling him again, then she’s going to take it even though it’s ridiculous. If anyone had the opportunity to have a moment with a love of their life [they’d take that chance]. You can even relate to it at the level of it’s a favorite family member that’s passed away. If you had that opportunity to be with them again, you would.”

Regina King: “If Damon Lindelof doesn’t see it, then it’s going to be a no for me.”

In a Variety Actors on Actors interview last month, King said she didn’t know if there would be a second season. “Honestly, I feel like, um, I think HBO would want it back in a heartbeat. … I think that the possibilities are infinite, but I feel that if Damon Lindelof doesn’t see it, then it’s going to be a no for me.”