“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” The Roman poet Juvenal never could have known what his question would mean to future generations, but Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel gave that existential quandary an all-new life. “Who watches the watchmen?” Based on the official trailer for Damon Lindelof’s upcoming sequel series on HBO, one answer certainly appears to be us. What we’ll see when we tune in to the new Watchmen is a world on the edge of war, as a terrorists group fighting a police and superhero force who are no more beholden to the law than their masked counterparts. And at the heart of it all is a secret that could undo the peace Ozymandias killed so many to create.
This latest look at the show, which will be a sequel to the comic book and not Zack Snyder’s big screen adaptation, focuses on the threat of war being raised by the terrorist group the Seventh Kalvary, whose have their attacks on the police. Years earlier the white nationalist group killed large score of law enforcement officers, which led police to don masks themselves. But as Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake, the former superhero known as Silk Spectre II, tells Regina King’s modern day vigilante, “People who wear masks are driven by trauma, they’re obsessed with justice, because of some injustice they suffered.”
What trauma are the Rorschach-masked Seventh Kalvary claiming as their trauma? This trailer reveals the group’s trying to instigate a war in an effort to reveal a conspiracy, one Louis Gossett Jr.’s character says will “make your head explode.” It seems likely it’s related to the truth about what Ozymandias did when he faked an alien attack, killing millions, all to unite the world. In the decades since, it appears two different stories have emerged. Each has produced two groups of masked vigilantes who are not bound by the law.
How much longer can the lie be maintained? And is that what will draw Dr. Manhattan back?
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” We will to find out.
Featured Image: HBO