Video: See how HBO brought the drone hosts on Westworld to life

One of the eye-catching moments from the Westworld season 2 premiere came when Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) descended into a top-secret bunker staffed by hulking and featureless “drone hosts” busying themselves carrying out tasks for the Delos board of directors. Just as it does with Game of Thrones, HBO is releasing weekly videos going behind-the-scenes of each new episode of Westworld. This week, we pull back the curtain on those drones. Enjoy:

Just as Game of Thrones uses practical effects and detailed prosthetics to bring its White Walkers to life, Westworld takes the same approach for these drone hosts. Production designer Howard Cummings had the idea to base the drones off of the host template from season 1, and co-creator Jonathan Nolan explains how they take us on a trip to the Uncanny Valley:

"When you take away something’s eyes, when you take away its ears. When you take a human form and you get rid of the inessential, you create something that feels like us, enough, that you begin to attribute agency…you’re looking for the soul in this thing and it’s not there."

“Soulless” is definitely an apt description for these escapees from Dante’s Inferno.

One of the drone host actors is 6’4″ and performs ballet when not terrorizing Bernard. Good luck scrubbing this image from your brain:

Could robots — drones or otherwise — become self-aware and rise up against their human creators? Westworld’s co-creators think it’s a possibility. Speaking to Esquire Magazine, Jonathan Nolan has some advice for all AI developers out there: “Stop.”

Nolan’s wife and Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy elaborated:

"Being careful of hubris is as important as knowing the technology that you are developing. See in yourself and other people the capacity both for evil and for good. Know that the machines you build, your creations, will bear your fingerprints to some degree. And not necessarily the fingerprints you intentionally left but the ones that kind of grazed it unintentionally. It’s important to have people who will question you occasionally."

Joy previously spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the threat of investing too much time or emotion into AI. “There’s also what will happen with emotional intimacy when you’re forging a connection with creatures that are artificial. They’ve done these tests where you can talk to a ‘bot and it’s almost as good as talking to a psychologist,” she said. “People just need someone to listen to them sometimes and that’s easy code — really easy. So many of our drives are just primary colors, which is something that’s both beautiful and tragic about us. So many of us feel alone. But that feeling of loneliness is one of the fundamental building blocks of our collective psyches.”

"It’s just going to open up so many questions … One day they won’t have to even go out to dinner because they can just hook up into a VR machine and imagine the taste. We’re getting further and further from a tactile universe. Maybe I’m a Luddite in that way, but I prefer a board game in front of the fire. And that’s actually why Westworld was created within our story."

Apparently there’s a class component to the story Joy and Nolan are telling, too, although it’s under the surface. “We allude to it, but it’s that people without money have to settle for VR and AR. But once you get to the point where you can afford a trip to Westworld, you want that because you can feel the difference,” Joy explained. “You’re walking around smelling the air and touching the things. Technology takes us further and further away from, yet also takes us closer and closer to, the things we want in our lives.”

Westworld season 2 marches on this upcoming Sunday with “Reunion.”

Next: Westworld, Episode 201 Review: “Journey into Night”

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