Of all the images to emerge from the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, the one which has lingered most is probably that of Jake Angeli (variously known as the “QAnon Shaman” and “Yellowstone Wolf”) flexing from atop the dais in the Senate chamber, boasting a horned fur hat and an exposed chest covered with tattoos. Like so much associated with the far-right Q conspiracy, the scene was at once deeply sinister and grotesquely absurd, evoking a dizzying mix of blood-and-soil nationalism, renfair-esque cosplay, and the irreversibly addled minds of the terminally online.

Though there’s plenty of competition, it’s difficult to think of a single shot more emblematic of the spluttering final days of the Trump era — or anything that better illustrates why the whole Q phenomenon is such a difficult subject for documentarians to explore. Combining violent intent, internet grift, and a sprawling, incoherent narrative about the mythic destiny of the president who formerly hosted NBC’s The Apprentice, QAnon is an extremist political tendency that is also postmodern to the core. For that reason, it presents any prospective filmmaker with something of a dilemma. How, after all, are you supposed to treat a subject that’s simultaneously so dark and so ridiculous?

This was the challenge confronting director Cullen Hoback, whose entertaining documentary series Q: Into the Storm began its run on HBO in March and concluded last weekend. Hoback’s answer to the question, it would seem, is largely to let the film’s characters speak for themselves while doing his best to investigate and uncover the identity of the mysterious “Q.” That search, alongside interviews with various figures connected to QAnon, is largely what carries the film throughout its six parts — the arc of which broadly traces the conspiracy theory from its earliest days in 2017 to its animating role in the events of January 6, 2021.