HBO Is Making WATCHMEN Available to Watch for Free This Weekend
If you don’t subscribe to HBO and you haven’t had a chance to watch Damon Lindelof’s incredible Watchmen series yet, you’ll have the opportunity to check it out this weekend!
HBO has announced that they will make the series available to watch for free from June 19th at 1pm to June 21st. All nine episodes will be unlocked for everyone to watch through HBO.com or VOD. They are doing this in honor of Juneteenth. The cable network says they are doing this “as an extension of the network’s content offering highlighting Black experiences, voices and storytellers.”
June 19 is designated as Juneteenth in commemoration of June 19, 1865, when a federal order was delivered in Galveston, Texas that proclaimed all slaves as free in the state of Texas. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was passed on January 1, 1863. However, the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. But, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
This Watchmen series is set years after the events in the original graphic novel story in an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws. It embraced the nostalgia of the original graphic novel while also breaking new ground of its own. This series is one of the best things that Lindelof has created, and if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for something special.
Lindelof’s Watchmen also addresses issues of race, power, and police corruption, and it opens up with a nightmarish flashback sequence chronicling the real-life event of the Tulsa race massacre. There’s a lot of heavy subject matter in the series, and it’s brilliantly woven into a great and heartbreaking story with great characters.
The cast includes Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Jean Smart, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Hong Chau, Andrew Howard, Tom Mison, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, and James Wolk.