Watchmen: 7 Ups And 0 Downs From 'It's Summer And We're Running Out Of Ice'

4. It Opens Up A Fascinating New Relationship Between The Police And Vigilantism

Watchmen HBO Sister Night Red Scare
HBO

Watchmen takes a key focus on the history of race relations in the United States, but it also explores power dynamics when it comes to law enforcement too.

Lindelof's series takes place parallel to our timeline in that it's also set in 2019, and one of the biggest issues currently governing public discourse is law enforcement, or specifically how law enforcement is deployed in the United States. Police brutality is a historic issue, and it's one that's only been exposed further with the help of video evidence.

Likewise, the increasing militarisation of police forces across the globe but particularly in the U.S. has also made headlines over the last decade. It feels like now, more than ever, are people feeling most anxious about law enforcement - and it's here where Watchmen next endeavours to provide commentary.

In Watchmen's alt-history, the police all wear masks and they're forbidden from revealing their identity to each other or the public. They also live in a post-Cold War era governed by a liberal president, whereby they're obligated to contact a key officer to use lethal force before they can unholster their weapon, which actually leads to the death of one officer by a member of Rorschach's cult - the Seventh Cavalry - at the beginning of the episode.

The police here wear masks because of an event called the White Night, whereby members of the Cavalry targeted specific officers and their families. They're protected by anonymity, while at the same time hindered by the prohibition of immediate access to deadly force; they're both limited by what they can engage and unaccountable by virtue of their secret identities, a puzzling and contradictory set of quandaries both the force and public have to overcome.

At the same time, the enemy is clear. Regina King's Sister Night - the leading figure of Watchmen - is an ex-officer who now works as a vigilante who liaises with the force, and their main enemy are a rabid group of white supremacist terrorists. They dismantle the Cavalry with extreme prejudice, but it'll be interesting to see how the show explores this new power dynamic as it continues.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.