<em>Watchmen </em>Gives Its Heroes a True Ending
This story contains spoilers through Episode 9 of HBO’s Watchmen.
Superhero stories don’t tend to end. In the pages of comic books, their deaths rarely stick, they never run out of villains to face, and their backstories prove malleable. On-screen, those qualities have translated into the proliferation of both universes and crossovers, and as a result, most films and TV seasons in the superhero genre wrap up with finales that serve only to set up bigger, more epic installments: Teams are formed, upgrades are unveiled, and new villains are teased. Stay tuned, those finales say. There’s more to come.
HBO’s , however, gives its characters definitive endings: The villains—Senator Joe. Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) kills Doctor Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), but her own hubris and misplaced trust in her father, Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons), destroy her in turn. Laurie (Jean Smart) and Wade (Tim Blake Nelson) arrest Adrian for his crimes from 1985, delivering much-delayed earthbound justice.
