Don Johnson’s Judd Crawford Might Be ‘Watchmen’’s Most Important Character
SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains major spoilers for the first episode of HBO's Watchmen. If you haven't watched yet and plan on watching, now is your chance to stop reading and spare yourself. You've been warned!
As Chief Judd Crawford, Don Johnson is one of the main cast members of HBO's Watchmen.
However, in a stunning twist, his character dies at the end of the show's first episode.
Despite this, he could, in fact, be the show's most important character.
After only the first episode of HBO's much-awaited Watchmen aired, there's already no shortage of drama. An action-packed thrillfest of a first episode concluded with a major twist—Chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson), who looked to be one of the series' central characters, was killed, found hung from a tree by Angela Abar (Regina King). Despite this significant twist, Crawford could still be the most important character in Damon Lindelof's version of Watchmen.
As anyone familiar with the comic (or Zack Snyder's 2009 film) knows, the event that kicked the plot of the original Watchmen into high gear was the death of The Comedian, a morally deficient superhero with a deep past. Despite The Comedian's death, he appears throughout the novel, both in spirit—characters attend his funeral—and in various flashbacks, references, etc. Despite his death in the story's real-time, his presence is constant throughout the story. With HBO's Watchmen, the Crawford character was so interesting, and seemed so significant, that it would be a shock if Johnson didn't continue to appear in a significant fashion.
The end of the first issue of the Watchmen comic reads "The Comedian is dead." The song that plays as Watchmen's pilot concludes and the credits begin to roll? "Pore Jud is Daid," a song from the Oklahoma! musical that Crawford watched earlier in the episode. The parallels are striking, and Lindelof's tribute to the opening of the comic is clear.
The showrunner made the parallel clear, speaking about how the show "kisses back to" the graphic novel in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "You say kiss back to, and I think it's pay fealty to, or kiss the ring to, or take a knee to it," Lindelof said. He's made his adoration for the comic clear, and the tribute here is yet another example of that on display.
As fans of that comic—and anyone familiar with the logo, in fact—surely recognized, too, there's yet another striking parallel between the comic's character and HBO's character: and it comes down to a single drop of blood. When The Comedian is killed in the comic, blood drips on his smiley face pin, making the imagery for which the series is best known. At the end of the show's first episode, blood drips in the same way onto Crawford's Sheriff star.
There are also theories (cited within the THR artcile) that Crawford and The Comedian are one-in-the-same; several characters from the comic's story do show up in Lindelof's Watchmen. But the showrunner has already ruled this theory out just due to logic: "The [timing] just never made sense to me. In 2019, Eddie Blake would be 95 or something like that," he told THR. Theories that Crawford could be an older version of Nite Owl, another comics character, though, have yet to be quashed.
The episode also set up several plotlines worth exploring in the future, from his and Angela's past relationship, to his cocaine usage. Despite Crawford no longer being among the living, we think this character's story is only just beginning.
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