Easter eggs are a way for the people behind legacy films or television shows to demonstrate their love of and fidelity to its source material. When showrunners, writers, and directors stick a glancing reference to Luke Cage’s yellow shirt from his 1970s comics in the gritty 2016 Netflix series, it’s a way of nodding to the fans, of saying “We’re fans too, and we can be trusted with your beloved properties.”
That seems to be the intention behind the omnipresent Easter eggs in HBO’s new Watchmen series, helmed by Lost and The Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof. The visual, narrative, and thematic references to the original Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons comic are obsessive and ubiquitous. But they don’t show that the series is keeping the…