Westworld’s Producers Promise A Radical Shift In Season 3

Westworld Season 2, Episode 9

by James White |
Published on

Westworld is one of those shows it can be tough to talk about, especially if you're showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, frequently called upon to expound on their show while not revealing future spoilers. Still, talking to outlets such as The Hollywood Reporter. they have offered a few hints as to what's ahead for Season 3.

The second season, of course, ended with Westworld the park in a shambles and Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) escaping into the real world with a batch of Host brains and a plan to both exact vengeance on the humans who used her and her kind as playthings and take over their place in society. Which as you might imagine opens up a new alley or 17 for storytelling.

"I think it's a radical shift," Nolan tells the trade mag. "What's compelling and appealing about these characters is that they're not human. As we said in the show, humans are bound by the same loops the hosts are, in some ways even smaller. You couldn't expect human characters to withstand and survive the kind of story that we're telling. The hosts have a different version of mortality, a different outlook. I think clearly with Dolores, as she's laid out, there is a longer view here, a larger set of goals. They're existential. They span eons. And that's a fascinating level of story to engage in."

And to The Wrap, they also dropped the nugget that the idea for the third season has been bubbling away in their minds for a while. "It is our biggest undertaking as of yet,” Joy says. "But the great thing about Season 3 is, when we were writing the pilot, the major storyline for Season 3 was already something that we had talked about nonstop. We’ve been waiting to get to this place and now that we’ve arrived here, we already have a very strong idea of exactly where we want to go and we can’t wait to go there." From the sounds of it, they'll effectively be ushering the show into a whole new chapter, and the new season will feel differently. Oh, and it does have a code name the way Season One was The Maze and Two went by the moniker The Door – they're just not sharing that yet.

As for when it'll actually hit screens, that's another matter: the team hasn't started shooting yet and HBO/Sky Atlantic have yet to reveal a return date. We can wait. Just don't make us wait too long...

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