HBO's 'Watchmen' finally reveals Sister Night's origin story and why Angela Abar adopted her identity
How police officer Angela Abar (Regina King) came to be Sister Night is something that’s revealed pretty early in the series.
After the White Night, in which policemen in Tulsa, Oklahoma were attacked and killed in their homes by members of the Seventh Kavalry, Senator Keene (James Wolk) passes the Defence of Police Act, which allows policemen to operate under masked identities to keep themselves safe. This act somewhat legalizes superhero identities, which is ironic, as Senator Keene’s father was responsible for the bill that outlawed them in the first place. This, however, did not explain why Angela Abar chose the Sister Night identity or what inspired her pursuit of justice.
What the latest episode of ‘Watchmen’ gives us is not more background but, at last, an origin story.
In the words of Agent Daley Petey, “If masks are expressions of trauma, then what does 'Sister Night' say about Detective Abar?” A lot, actually, as Angela Abar has trauma to spare.
Sister Night, Angela’s sense of justice, and her trauma, all specifically tie in with one specific incident in Vietnam.
After discovering the existence of the ‘Sister Night’ movie as a child, an attack by an anti-Doctor-Manhattan terrorist caused the death of Angela’s parents. Later, Angela was able to help the Saigon police put one of the terrorists in jail, being one of the only surviving witnesses. Being able to bring her parents’ killer to justice obviously had a huge impact on Angela, as it’s right then that we see her dedication to becoming a cop when she grows up.
Sister Night was obviously a heavy influence as well. ‘Sister Night’ (“The nun with the mother#@^$ing gun”) was a fictional movie about Pamela Davis—nun by day, masked vigilante by night. The movie was a part of the 'Black Mask' genre of movies—a subset of movies that were made in response to the superhero phenomenon in the United States, that was made for the black population who moved to Vietnam (in the ‘Watchmen’ timeline, Vietnam became a part of America after Doctor Manhattan almost single-handedly won the Vietnam War) to escape the institutional racism of the Nixon administration.
Angela Abar, as a young black girl surrounded by Vietnamese children, found great inspiration in seeing a superhero who looked like her.
Another aspect of the film that might have inspired Angela is that Sister Night also managed to find peace with her own personal tragedy, the murder of her parents.
When Angela Abar took on the Sister Night identity after the White Night incident, her stated reason for adopting that look was written simply as “Watch the movie.”
A copy of the movie, Agent Petey notes, is not easy to find, but he does note that the theater that Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.) owns in New York has been playing the movie every Sunday night since 2017—the year that Angela Abar first took up the mantle.
The next episode of ‘Watchmen’ airs December 8 only on the ‘CW’.
