First 'Westworld' Season 2 Trailer Teases the Bloody Return of All the Fan Favorites
The first season of HBO's large-scale reinvention of Michael Crichton's Westworld, from Memento and Interstellar screenwriter Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy, was a Wild West thriller structured like a Rubik's cube. Trying to recap what went down for anyone who missed out would be a fool's errand (head to our "Westworld World" if you're eager to relive the spoilers and analysis), but even hardcore fans were left with jaws on the floor and questions snapping across their (organic) synapses after the show's first finale. Many humans died, many android "hosts" prevailed, and many questions were answered… with even more questions.
Now, just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con, HBO is here with the first big taste of Season 2 -- and the show looks rowdier than ever. Presumably picking up where Season 1 left off, the short tease reintroduces us to Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), an elder and seemingly sentient robot out to kill everyone in her path, Teddy (James Marsden), gunning down park visitors by her side; Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) all too aware of his robotic origins (but later seen cozying up to park servicemen); Elsie (Shannong Woodward) and Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) said employees who, before this snippet of footage, were presumed dead or injured enough not to be guaranteed Season 2 cast members; Maeve (Thandie Newton), who clearly took the ominous orders to stick around the park and is now gazing upon the bloodshed with Lee the Narrative Director (Simon Quarterman); and the biggest surprise, The Man in Black a.k.a. William (Ed Harris), Dolores's former love whose motivations for returning to the park and burrowing into the "maze" aren't totally clear. That's why we have a Season 2.
Where is this all going? Pfff -- like Nolan and Joy would reveal any of that this early in the game. But we can imagine! The entire premise of the original Westworld film revolved around the uprising of the park's code-adhering robot actors. When the system failed, the human found themselves hunted by the animatronic stand-ins. Season 2 seems to be taking a similar approach -- at least for the opening moments of the first episode. The Season 1 finale teased other side parks (including one set in feudal Japan) and purposefully left plot lines hanging; we still don't know what the world outside the park is like or if this entire rampage was planned by Anthony Hopkins's Robert Ford as retaliation, or defense, against the mysterious Delos Corporation. Dolores doesn't look ready to stay put, so literally anything could happen.
Westworld is set to return at an unspecified date in 2018, so for now, this trailer is what we get. Begin the over-analyzing.
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