Watchmen: Damon Lindelof Says It Would Be a “Betrayal” to Make New Season After Emmy Win

HBO’s Watchmen won big at this year’s Emmy Awards with the series, bringing home 10 awards including Outstanding Writing, Outstanding Limited Series, and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for Regina King and Outstanding Supporting Actor for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. But while the awards haul simply confirm what fans have been saying since it’s run last year, fans might not want to point to these accolades as a reason there needs to be a second season. Series creator Damon Lindelof says doing a second season now would feel like a “huge betrayal”.

Following Watchmen‘s Emmy wins on Sunday night, Lindelof told Deadline that because the series won as a limited series, coming back to do more would be a little disingenuous.

“It would feel like a huge betrayal of winning limited series to come back and say, ‘it was only a limited series’,” Lindelof said.

But he also didn’t shoot down the idea of someone else trying to continue Watchmen, especially since he was also just working with what someone else created.

“Watchmen is something I’ve loved since I was 13 years old,” he said. “Someone else created it, and this was my run on it. I’ve invited any other artist who wants to take the baton.”

Damon has said similar before. Earlier this year, even, he said that he considered his time on with the world of Watchmen to be done and that it was someone else’s turn if they wanted to “dance”.

“It’s not even about being tapped out, it’s more about me wanting to honor what Watchmen was before I became a part of it,” Lindelof said. “The legacy of Watchmen is Alan [Moore] and Dave [Gibbons] created it and it sat for 30 years, obviously Zack [Snyder] made his movie which was a pretty canonical adaptation of the 12 issues, and then we made our season of television. That was my turn. I got in the middle of the dance floor for a minute and got to do my move, but then you retreat to the edge of the circle and it’s someone else’s turn to dance.”

And while Lindelof said it’s someone else’s “turn to dance” as it were, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up that Regina King will take her turn. King, whose feature directorial debut One Night in Miami debuted at the Venice Film Festival, said she’s not interested without Lindelof.

“If I would do it again, it would be with Damon. So, there’s no conversation about a future of Watchmen just right now. It’s just about settling and enjoying this strange moment,” King said. “We’re coming to a close on this chapter of the Watchmen series. It’s bittersweet and emotional.”

Watchmen is now streaming on HBO Max.

Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for WGAW