Westworld showrunners tease a fresh start for season 3

We don’t know when Westworld is returning to HBO for its third season, but showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan have given us something to mull over while we wait. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the married couple discussed fan reaction to season 2 and teased a little of what’s to come. Nolan kicked things off by remembering how the show came about:

"It’s funny because the project really originated with Lisa and me sitting alone in a room thinking about what Michael Crichton was thinking about 40 years ago and then trying to build on it. These things always start as a private enterprise; at a certain point, you have to show it to an audience. The reception was obviously incredibly exciting, and the level of engagement from people. And we know that our show requires people to lean forward a little bit and pay attention and maybe hold off on going to make that sandwich for another five minutes."

Is that last bit an attempt to spin the fact that the second season confused a lot of people? Do viewers need to pay closer attention, or do the scriptwriters need to craft something compelling enough so making a sandwich doesn’t seem like a better time? Just a thought.

Anyway, it’s water under the bridge, because when it comes to season 3, Nolan says that we’re in for “a radical shift.”

"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."

That sounds like we’ll be focusing on the hosts more in season 3, although Dolores will have to interact with human beings if she plans on taking over their world. “It really is like repiloting,” Lisa Joy added.

While Nolan says that starting fresh is “terrifying and exciting in equal measure,” it’s not completely uncharted territory. For example, they’ve known what they’re going to do with Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), who was killed and replaced by a robotic double with Dolores’ control unit inside, for a while. “[A]nd it’s something we’re really excited about, especially because Tessa is such a fun, amazing and versatile actress,” Joy said.

"So we always knew that we were going to do this reveal and let her expand into this new role. We have a very diabolical arc for her planned out. Part of the fun for the character will be self-realization. She will be realizing the things we know about who she is."

Critical reaction to Westworld season 2 was split, but there are definitely people who loved it. Joy remembered receiving several personal responses to season 2, more than for anything she’s ever written. “One of the things that has touched me deeply is hearing from people who have been trapped in loops in their lives that they’ve struggled desperately to get out of, whether they’re cycles of violence or cycles of addiction.”

Nolan, meanwhile, is thinking about how Westworld reflects our real world…to an extent. “Look, it’s a fictional show. It’s about f**king killer robots, right? You know you’re into that genre space, but for us, it’s also about human behavior, and one of the things I think is that we’re all looking at the world, which is ever more incoherent every day.”

"All of us are struggling with human foibles and this feeling that we’re backsliding. Are we retrenching from a global community? Are we backsliding into war again after a long peace? When people talk to you about finding things in this very heightened show simultaneously in the future and the past, how it speaks to them about human behavior and about things they’ve struggled with, that’s very powerful."

We’re looking forward to all of those questions being definitively answered in season 3.

Westworld garnered 21 Emmy nominations this year, just a hair under Game of Thrones, which snagged 22. Let the games begin.

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