Long before HBO’s Watchmen series took shape, devout fans of the original graphic novel were speculating about the identity of Hooded Justice, the man who, in the comics, started the wave of costumed crime-fighting. The general consensus was that the man under the hood was an “East German circus strongman” named Rolf Müller, found dead shortly after Hooded Justice disappeared from the public eye. That was that—until last night’s installment of Watchmen.
The episode, “This Extraordinary Being,” not only reveals that Hooded Justice is very much alive and well, but that he’s Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr., in the present-day timeline), the grandfather of Angela Abar (Regina King). We also get Will’s wrenching backstory in a series of violent flashbacks, in which young Will is played by Jovan Adepo, who worked with writer Damon Lindelof and King in The Leftovers.
Once a closeted black police officer in New York City, Will is lynched early in the episode, in one of the hardest-to-watch visual sequences of the year. The scene is shot from Will’s perspective: his vision perforates and blurs as he’s pulled by his neck, higher and higher on a tree branch. Then, as he drops to the ground, just before losing consciousness—cut down by his smirking colleagues. Walking home, his hands still bound by rope, and the noose still around his neck, Will comes across a back-alley mugging, rips two holes in the hood the white supremacist cops pulled over his face, and unleashes his anger on the petty criminals. “You ain’t gonna get justice with a badge, Will Reeves, you’re gonna get it with that hood,” June, his wife, tells him as he puts on his official costume for the first time. “And if you want to stay a hero, townsfolk gonna need to think one of their own’s under it.”
Thus, Hooded Justice is born, and so is his iconic costume.
Along with its game-changing reveal, “This Extraordinary Being” also deals with identity, rage, and a secret underground network of Ku Klux Klan cops hellbent on using mind control to tear black communities apart. Will becomes more and more desperate, fighting the tide of racism and America’s indifference.
GQ sat down with Adepo, who described the trust he has in Lindelof and the rest of the Watchmen writing team, and how the show is helping to tell a more personally resonant superhero story than anything you’ll find in a movie theater.
GQ: This is your first superhero role and it’s a pretty huge one. Hooded Justice isn’t a marquee superhero name as an individual, but in terms of the Watchmen universe, he’s probably one of the most important, if not the most important.
Jovan Adepo: Absolutely. I was introduced to him through Damon. He’s the epitome of the crime-fighting hero. He’s essentially the first person who decided to fight crime in a costume. This guy is before Batman, even, on the DC spectrum. There’s no roadmap. This is a guy who puts on his mask and goes “Sooo…”—laughs—”How do I go about this?” To me, it’s reminiscent of Batman Begins. He takes something he’s afraid of and makes it his symbol. There’s also a parallel with Superman. You see Will as a child escaping the Tulsa massacre, which is essentially Superman leaving Krypton. There are a lot of little cool parallel stories among the ones that connect to the actual Watchmen comics.
I was surprised by the number of people and even the number of publications that ran stories like, “Hey, the Tulsa Race Massacre was a real thing!” As if it were a fun fact.