Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen was exactly what people expected: a complicated meditation on Alan Moore’s original characters and a few of his own, with multiple tangents and diversions into backstories and subplots. What else are you going to get from the man behind Lost and The Leftovers? Fans watched as Angela Abar (Regina King), aka Sister Night, tracked down a right-wing conspiracy group and realized the most powerful being in the universe, Dr. Manhattan, was living incognito as her husband.
But the eight episodes that meandered through this story were building up to a final test. With so many themes and plotlines in the air, the finale needed to tie up all these loose ends so fans could say goodbye to these characters in a way that felt complete. It took some finagling, but five years ago today, Watchmen managed just that.
