Watchmen Post Episode 6 Hooded Justice
Episode 6. Wow. Hooded Justice is the character I’ve wanted for decades and never, ever seen. Superman may have fought the klan, and Captain America fought the Nazis; but no superhero I can think of has ever taken on real, non-cartoon evil in their own society quite so directly. Indeed that’s the fundamental flaw of all the godlike beings like Superman, Captain Marvel, and Green Lantern. For all their power, they never turn it toward building a better world. The Joker is a psychopathic serial killer, but he doesn’t have a body count anywhere near a run-of-the-mill U.S. president.
There’ve been any number of storylines trying to justify why Superman/Captain America/etc. don’t save the world. However they’re never anything but flimsy rationalizations because ongoing series won’t let the fictional world diverge too far from the real world we live in. That might be one reason why characters like Batman and now Hooded Justice are more satisfying. They’re not demigods and they can’t fix everything. That’s why their stories have more heart.
This story also goes into my very short list of greatest retcons of all time, up there with Affliction/Divergence on Star Trek Enterprise. It expands and develops our understanding of the story, without actually changing anything we already know to have happened, or resorting to magic plot devices like time travel and wishing rings. Before Watchmen wasn’t bad, but ultimately it didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know about the world and characters. This episode in particular, and indeed the whole series, very much does.
