“I Just Wanted to Preserve It Just as It Is”: Gothic Nostalgia in The Watcher

Abstract

In hindsight, an aspect of The Watcher’s release as surprising as the enormous viewing figures which boosted it to the top of Netflix’s coveted “most-watched” page in October 2022 has been the lack of impact the show has exerted over popular culture. Despite proving a large enough commercial success to have earned the commission of a coveted second series, misconceptions over genre conventions attached to director Ryan Murphy’s name led to a mixed reception among both critics and fans familiar with his past horror works. If read as a work of Gothic television, however, The Watcher is perhaps the most remarkable offering since fellow Netflix broadcast The Haunting of Hill House.

From costumes visually linking the characters to Grant Wood’s American Gothic to a whole shoal of red herrings, Murphy confidently employs and subverts traditional Gothic hallmarks to create an impactful Gothic property of his own. Despite the supernatural being teased throughout the series, the “Gothic property” in question, 657 Boulevard, is just a house. The Gothic nature of the property, therefore, is revealed to be psychological rather than supernatural, with the haunted incidents constructed by individuals who seek to reinstal an idealised past by ousting the house’s current owners.

This essay will explore The Watcher as a work of Gothic fiction, exploring the tangled ideals of personal, national and political past projected upon 657 Boulevard by the individuals who fight to own it. From a historic monument to an idealised America to a way of resolving a lifetime of trauma, each individual’s need to own the house stems from a deeply Gothic interest in the interplay of past and future. The show’s unprecedented viewing figures, however, represent a far more contemporary concern. If the Gothic reflects the anxieties of the era, entrapment as a consequence of an unstable housing market proves to be the true nightmare that haunts the series.