Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Q: Into The Storm’ On HBO, A Docuseries Examining The QAnon Phenomenon And Its Followers

Q; Into The Storm is a six-part docuseries where director Cullen Hoback spends three years diving deep into the phenomenon that is QAnon. An ever-growing group of Americans have followed the anonymous user “Q”, who claimed to be a high-ranked government insider, and interpreted his “drops” on boards like 8chan as truthful information on how the government and Hollywood really runs.

Q: INTO THE STORM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In old-fashioned CRT text typing, Drop 885 from Q is displayed, dated March 8, 2018. “Everything has meaning. This is not a game. Learn to play the game. Q.”

The Gist: In the first episode, Hoback gives viewers some of the basics of the QAnon phenomenon, starting from the January 6 Capitol insurgency and then working from the beginning. He talks to the major players that have facilitated Q’s “drops,” from 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan to Jim and Ron Watkins, the father and son team that ran the board through much of Q’s rising popularity.

Hoback also speaks to QAnon devotees, some of whom are ordinary families who have bought into Q’s theories, including the notion that the Washington-Hollywood “cabal” run by people like Hillary Clinton regularly sacrifice and eat human babies. The director breaks down the structure that has formed around the mysterious Q, including the “Q-tubers” who have gained six-figure YouTube followings by interpreting Q’s cryptic drops and the 8chan board administrators that have hosted his drops over the past few years. He also talks to people who spend as much time debunking Q’s theories as much as Q’s followers spend interpreting them.

There are plenty of theories as to who Q actually is. Some think that it’s Donald Trump himself, matching timestamps from Trump’s tweets to timestamps from similarly-worded drops from Q. Others think it was an inner-circle Trump administration member, like Don Jr. or Michael Flynn. Some think it’s more than one person. Others think that some of Q’s drops have come from an impostor. Suffice to say, calling the organization “labyrinthine” is an understatement.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In a lot of ways, Q; Into The Storm isn’t far off in topic and tone from the recent docuseries about cults like NXIVM and Heaven’s Gate.

Our Take: You might not think that there’s enough material for a six-part docuseries on QAnon, but the first episode of Q: Into The Storm convinces you otherwise. It’s such a tangled web, stretching back to the ridiculousness of Pizzagate during the 2016 election, that the first episode leaves you with so many more questions than you had when the episode started.

To be honest, it also left us feeling a bit queasy. How did these seemingly-intelligent people, people who have voted all over the political spectrum in the past, come to believe the most extreme of Q’s theories, or at least the extreme interpretations of those theories? Who are QAnon’s devotees really following, the cryptic drops by Q or the people who have interpreted them? And just how did QAnon get strong enough to storm the Capitol in January?

Because Adam McKay and Todd Schulman are executive producers of this series along with Hoback, there’s a strong indication that the series is there to bring light to just how deep and complex QAnon has gotten, and how the theories its followers have come to believe are neither new nor revolutionary, and they were equally insane now as they were then.

But to get to that point, Hoback has to drill down, and the fact that he’s able to talk to previously anonymous QAnon supporters like Paul Furber, whose 8chan board Q first moved to after getting kicked off the more heavily-moderated 4chan. He also gets Brennan, who is ambivalent about Q, and the Watkinses, who seem to be even more hands-off, to talk on camera. The access Hoback has gotten is pretty remarkable, all things considered, and we hope that access shines some light on just how all this started and why it’s grown so rapidly.

What we’d like to see is at least some time devoted to just how and why Q can suck people in with some brief videos and his legion of interpreters. Is there something in these people’s underlying belief systems, like a fundamental distrust of government and media, that is the basis for making the leap to believing the baby-eating theories? Are there QAnon believers who are more skeptical of Q’s more extreme theories? And just how did a district in Georgia manage to get a QAnon true believer elected to Congress? We’d really love to hear about that, along with more debunking of QAnon’s various theories.

Parting Shot: Hoback sets up a meeting with Ron Watkins, and he talks about setting up a meeting with both Watkinses, Brennan, and some dude standing on a mountain holding a hammer.

Sleeper Star: Listening to OAN’s Jack Posobiec talk about how he did a snarky video that subtly tried to debunk Pizzagate, only to see it blow up in his face as people thought his wise-ass comments were real, is a pretty funny self-own that demonstrates just how far down the rabbit hole these conspiracy believers are.

Most Pilot-y Line: Hoback’s storytelling style gets a little too self-aware at times, like when we see him futzing with his Skype connection before he sits down with Ron Watkins. Less time with that would give viewers more time to figure out just how people can buy into Q’s insane theories.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Q: Into The Storm may make you shake your head for six hours, but it’ll also give you a better understanding of the QAnon phenomenon and just how so many people could buy into theories that seem to not make a lot of sense.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Q: Into The Storm On HBO Max