Damon Lindelof explains why he feels done with Watchmen -- and why he worries about reaction to the finale

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"I think it probably has more to do with the culture than it has to do with
my feelings about the episode personally," Lindelof tells Rolling Stone of
his anxiety over reaction to Sunday's finale. "Putting aside anything that
relates to my own work, the Lost finale, or The Leftovers finale, I feel like
we’ve moved into this space of, the only part of the game that matters is the
final 30 seconds of the fourth quarter. It doesn’t matter if you had an
undefeated season. If you lose in the Super Bowl on a missed field goal,
that’s all anyone cares about. I don’t think this is paranoid delusion on my
part. I’ve seen multiple pieces, people I really respect who have embraced
Watchmen, have said things like, 'If they stick the landing…' or 'I’m not
sure they can stick the landing.' For someone who has experienced a fair
amount of finale trauma, I think I would be insane to approach this final
episode of Watchmen with anything other than a high degree of trepidation and
anxiety, just on general principal. Secondary to that, I wanted to design the
season of Watchmen to feel like it had a beginning, a middle, and end, just
like the original 12 issues did." Asked if it's fair to say he's done telling
a Watchmen story, Lindelof responds: "I don’t think that’s fair. I think that
it would be foolish to say 'never.' And to say 'done.' Because every great
heist movie is borne on the back of a character who is out of the game. If
Clint Eastwood was done, then we never would have gotten Unforgiven. I know
that it’s hubris to say, 'I’m done with Watchmen,' and I wouldn’t want to
wake up two years from now with divine interv— I mean inspiration.
Interesting that I almost said 'intervention.' If that were to happen, I
would probably go for it. But I am comfortable saying, 'Every single idea
that we had is onscreen and presented in these nine episodes. And there isn’t
anything that occurred to us that was like, '"Oh, that would be a good Season
Two. We should save that."' Everything that we wanted to do, we did. So I
feel like the plate is empty. There’s nothing rattling around in my brain
right now that feels like a compulsion to do more. That said, I feel like
Watchmen is bigger than me. Of course it is. It survived without me and
endured as one of the greatest pieces of storytelling for 30 years before I
had anything to do with it. So I got my turn at the wheel — just like I had a
turn at the helm of Star Trek, and then I stepped back, and now others have
taken it. I do have a desire for there to be more Watchmen. Maybe these nine
episodes have demonstrated that the playing field is a little bit larger than
previously thought. It may inspire someone else to tell a Watchmen story. But
right now, I don’t have any more ideas."


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