2. Painted around the eyes.
Multiple fans have speculated that Will is Hooded Justice, And after episode 2, it’s clear that at the very least, there’s a connection there. We see that Will’s father, who served in World War I, received a German pamphlet that was airdropped from the sky over Europe, discouraging black Americans from the war effort. This pamphlet is the slip of paper from the first episode, on which Will’s father wrote “WATCH OVER THIS BOY” following the Tulsa race riots.
In the comics, it’s heavily rumored that Hooded Justice was a German bodybuilder, Rolf Muller. This could be a nod towards that rumor–that Will’s father had some sort of connection to the Germans (did he cross over to enemy lines?) which was then passed down to Will.
We see a fanciful rendition of Hooded Justice in the show-within-a-show, American Hero Story. In this depiction, Hooded Justice was a white man. But just because he was white in the dramatic depiction doesn’t mean he was white in real life. It might be a commentary on the whitewashing of American history.
The camera also lingers on Angela’s costume dress-up routine in Episode 2. We see that she paints the area around her eyes, so that no one can tell her skin color. It’s probable that Hooded Justice did the same thing; he may have even used light-skinned paint to pass himself off as a white man.
Most notably, the American Hero show posits that the real Hooded Justice put Rolf Muller forward as a patsy. We’re not sure who is a reliable narrator and who is not. But the voiceover where he says, “I’m not ready to tell you who I really am. If I did, you wouldn’t watch until the end.” seems directed at us as much as the show’s characters.
