WESTWORLD Showrunners Discuss Season 2 and Samurai World
HBO's Westworld was a completely awesome and mind-blowing viewing experience. This is easily one of the best shows on TV, and I'm so excited that the story will continue with a second season. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2018 until we see it.
In a recent interview with Variety and EW, series showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy talked about the series and offered up some new details on where they will be taking it. If you haven't finished the series yet, then I suggest that you not read ahead because there are spoilers discussed.
One of the first things they confirm right off the bat is that Anthony Hopkins' character John Ford is dead, but it sounds like Hopkins could come back in some form. When asked if the actor would be back in season two, Nolan said:
"Working with Anthony Hopkins on this season of TV has been one of the greatest pleasures and privileges for Lisa and I in our careers. It’s been an incredible experience, and we’ll see where our story takes us."
So it sounds to me like they are keeping their options open. I'm sure they already know how they are going to handle it, but they aren't going to say anything! When developing the series they wanted the story and characters to grow organically. Nolan and Joy have already started working on the outline and scripts for season two, and it's looking very ambitious. Joy said that there are "some surprises and bits of it that you won’t see coming." Nolan explained that the ambition behind the project is one of the reasons why we won't see season two until 2018:
"It’s an ambitious project, and HBO has encouraged us to take the time and resources that we need to work on each stage of that. I love television. One of the fun things about television is that sometimes you find yourself in this place where you have to wear all these hats at once. You have to write, shoot, and cut simultaneously. We wanted to in the second season spend some more time writing, then switch gears into production, then cut. So we’re not going to follow the annual year-on-year tradition of television. Television’s changing. And the ambition of the project is such that we’re going to take our time to get the second season right."
In a separate interview with EW, Samurai World was brought up. We got to see a glimpse of this world in the series, and it was quite intriguing, one that I would love to see explored further. Samurai World is an extension of the Westworld park, and there are sure to be other extensions in development as well. Nolan said:
"One of the things we’ve established is Westworld is the proto-park. It’s the first park. The other parks, you would imagine, are extensions. In the Disney universe, you start with a parking lot in Anaheim, California, and then you grow. We would imagine, yes, Ford has had a great deal of sway over everything we’re seeing."
Joy explained:
"We’re definitely teasing there are other worlds. How many other worlds and what is the nature of the other worlds is something we’ll start to explore more in season 2. But it was definitely fun filming those samurai [scenes]."
Nolan added:
"It was awesome. Something we’re constantly asked is, 'Is there a Roman World and Medieval World? We couldn’t say 'no,' because we wanted to go in a slightly different direction. This samurai-shogun world, for us, has a very specific relation to the Western. Some of my favorite movies are the Sergio Leone adaptations of the Akira Kurosawa samurai films: The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. In the period when the Western was the biggest genre in the world, the interplay between Westerns and samurai films in the domestic market in Japan was really cool. On that meta level, those two genres have this almost incestuous relationship with each other. We just couldn’t resist."
In yet another interview with THR, Nolan and Joy clarified things a bit more, teasing that Samurai World will play a bigger part in the future of the show. Nolan said that he's been practicing with his Samurai sword, and Joy said:
"I’ve taken years of martial arts that have suddenly fallen by the wayside now that we’re showrunning. (Laughs.) But it’s wonderful to work with actors we haven’t worked with before. This allows us a lot of access to Asian actors and the Asian community which is very important to me as part Asian myself."
I'm not sure what there plans for it will be, but I sure hope that they eventually have an entire season dedicated to it! As for what fans can expect from season two, Joy offered the following insight:
"I think part of it is we’ve looked at the hosts trying to become aware of the reality of their situation and who they are. To hear their own voices. That’s where we’ve gotten to at the end of this season. Now the thing we get to explore is once they’ve heard their own voices and once they’ve embraced who they are, what choices will they make? It speaks to a thing of how identity constantly evolves. They were steeped and raised in violence. These violent delights did indeed have violent ends at the end of the season. And I think we’re going to see how that pendulum swings going forward."
She went on to say that now that the "gloves are off," we're going to see a lot of "flies." She explained:
Well, the flies were always the canary in the coal mine of where the story was going, because they were the one not-programmed creature in the park. So that tiny little slap that Dolores did at the beginning of the season was a harbinger of things to come. Now, in Season 2, now that the gloves are off, we’re gonna see a lot of flies — and they’re not necessarily gonna be actual flies.
I can't wait to see what kind of chaos will ensue in Westworld season two, but I know that Nolan and Joy are going to make sure that they give best possible series they can as they continue the journey that they've started us on.