Everything to Know About 'Westworld' Season 2
It's been more than a year since Westworld's violent delights met some extremely violent ends, and now it's almost time for HBO to return to the park. Here, everything you need to know about the imminent season two.
1. Season two premiere will April 22. It will consist of 10 episodes, just like season one. Season one was subtitled "The Maze," and according to showrunner Jonathan Nolan, season two is subtitled "The Door," a secret that's apparently important enough for fellow showrunner Lisa Joy to be surprised that Jonathan revealed it. "If the first season was a journey inward, this is a journey outward," Jonathan told Entertainment Weekly. "This is a search for what is else is beyond the park, and what else is in the park. Are there more parks? How big is the park? What’s beyond the park?"
2. The premiere will not pick up immediately after the events of the season one finale. Last summer, Lisa said that you'll see the "aftermath and the effects of what happened," but Jonathan noted, "We are definitely not picking up right where we left off."
3. Plenty of your favorite cast members will be back. Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores), James Marsden (Teddy), Thandie Newton (Maeve), Jeffrey Wright (Bernard/Arnold), Rodrigo Santoro (Hector), Tessa Thompson (Charlotte), Ed Harris (The Man in Black), Jimmi Simpson (William aka Young Man in Black), and Talulah Riley (Angela) will all return for season two. Whether Anthony Hopkins will return as Dr. Ford is something of a mystery, but there have been hints that he'll be back in some shape or form.
4. Luke Hemsworth (Stubbs), Shannon Woodward (Elsie), and Ingrid Bols? Berdal (Armistice) will probably be back too. All three of their characters met murky ends in season one - Stubbs and Elsie in the desert, and Armistice in the Westworld headquarters - but they're not dead. Lisa Joy confirmed that both Elsie and Stubbs are alive in the park, telling EW, "They’re finally getting to experience Westworld as guests and not in the managerial halls, but I’m not sure they’re enjoying their experience." Armistice was seen escaping in a post-credits sequence in the season-one finale, and Jonathan Nolan told TVLine that she'd "without a doubt" have a larger role in season two.
5. Shogun World is probably happening. (And it's called Shogun World, not Samurai World as previously believed.) The original Westworld movie featured other parks like Romanworld and Medievalworld, but until now the show hasn't featured anything but the Western-themed park of the title. The season-one finale hinted at another park with a shot of hosts dressed in decidedly non-cowboy-like gear, and HBO's social media has thus far hinted at "Park 2."
6. The female characters are coming for revenge. "It really is a season where I think women are king," Tessa Thompson told Elle.com last fall. “I think they rule the world in the park this season...Particularly for the women that play hosts on the show, because you see them as sort of objects, like Thandie Newton’s character who works in a brothel and can be had whenever people want her. This season you see her taking that entirely back and she’ll have anyone that she wants."
7. There'll be a larger focus on what it's like to be a guest at the park. Jonathan Nolan told TVLine that this season "will spend a little bit more time...shining a light on those aspects of the park - what does it feel like to come to it as a guest? - just a little bit before the mayhem starts."
8. There's also going to be more time spent learning about what happens outside the park. "The scale of season two is just nuts, literally right out of the gate," Jeffrey Wright told EW. "It’s so much more expansive, it makes the first season look like a genteel kitchen drama." "As the hosts learn more about their world - and other worlds, and the real world - the audience is doing the same thing." added Jonathan Nolan.
9. Dolores is fully conscious, though all of the other hosts aren't quite on her level yet. Evan Rachel Wood has described season-two Dolores as a "chess master," but her friends and colleagues have a little bit of catching up to do. Teddy, in particular, is behind, and according to James Marsden is also trying to "make sure the manner in which we proceed still feels like the good parts of Teddy that he remembers."
10. You might need to rewatch season one for clues. If you think you've found every hint there was to find, you're wrong. "I’m going back to things in the first season,” Evan Rachel Wood told EW. "There are things I actually said as Dolores that I had no idea of the significance of until filming this season, and now I’m going, 'My god, [the showrunners] were telling us!'" Jeffrey Wright also said that he rewatched the pilot after shooting season two and found "a lot" that applied to the new episodes.
11. Get ready to meet drone hosts. One image from the new season shows an extremely creepy white robot that's way less humanoid than the hosts standing behind Bernard. "The drone hosts relate to the corporation’s secret project which is hidden in plain sight in this park," Jonathan Nolan told EW. "As we talked about in the pilot, the park is one thing for the guests, and it’s another thing for its shareholders and management - something completely different. We’ve used the Google analogy - for consumers, it’s for search and email, yet for the company, it’s for advertising. There is an agenda here that Delos has undertaken for a very long time." In the trailer released during the Super Bowl, you can see one of these drone hosts attacking someone around the 1:15 mark.
12. You might find out where Westworld actually is. "We don’t want to create the world’s largest mystery around it because we have equally interesting, or more interesting, character questions to ask," Jonathan Nolan told EW after the season-one finale. "But I think the rule we’ve built from the beginning - whether it’s frustrating for the audience or not; hopefully it’s not - is you really only know as much as the host’s know. Our worldview is limited to theirs. They don’t know where they are yet."
13. There are a ton of new characters coming on board. Katja Herbers will play Grace, who Deadline reports is "a seasoned guest in Westworld whose latest visit comes at the park’s darkest hour." Then there's Neil Jackson as Nicholas, "a charming and resourceful man who finds himself in uncharted territory," and Jonathan Tucker as Major Craddock, "a commanding military officer" (both per The Hollywood Reporter).
According to Variety, Gustaf Skarsg?rd, brother of those other Skarsg?rds, will play Karl Strand, "a white-collar guy comfortable in the field." Betty Gabriel, who appeared in Get Out, will play Maling, a character who is "trying to restore order on the ground." And Fares Fares will play Antoine Costa, "a tech expert."
14. The first "official" trailer introduced a new character named Akane, who seems to be involved with Shogun World. She's played by Rinko Kikuchi, who appeared in Pacific Rim, but it's not clear if she's a guest or a host.
15. Maeve is definitely going to Shogun World. It happens in the most recent trailer.
16. It's going to be even more complicated than season one. "I think that's what the audience wants, and because part of the fun is figuring it out you know they're going to make it twice as hard this season!" Evan Rachel Wood told the Independent. "I'm excited to hear the theories because I think there's going to be quite a lot of them."
17. The showrunners have threatened to spoil the whole season before it airs, but they're probably not going to do it. During a Reddit AMA, Jonathan Nolan said he was going to post a spoiler video laying it all out there, but when he followed up on the statement, it was a 25-minute rickroll. Well played, sir.
18. Did I mention new characters? Tao Okamoto, who you may recognize from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, will play Hanaryo, and Kiki Sukezane will play Sakura. Julia Jones, who played Leah in The Twilight Saga, will be playing a character named Kohana, and Zahn McClarnon will be playing Akecheta. Got all that?
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