to mechanically perform for the fleeting amusement of the sci-fi theme parks human guests.
But now what do I fking do?
The power is with the hosts.
Credit: John P. Johnson/HBO
This is now their world.
Dolores, by the end of the first season, she has remembered a great deal.
She was at the mercy of her memories.
As she announces early in this season, she rememberseverything.
As she remembers everything, we explore some of those memories with her.
Her plan, her goal, is not as simple as escape or domination.
Its a longer, harder goal she has in mind and this is the first step along the way.
But not everybody in the revolution is on the same page.
There are hosts out there from last season, the Confederados.
Theyre not good guys.
Theyre a bad rogue army and its not like their personalities have dramatically changed since Dolores killed Ford.
Its not like theres no oversight.
Its cheaper that way to print them out.
They eat, they sleep, they have sex, they can poop.
Theres a lot of potential for them.
So no, theyre not looking for a universal power plug or anything.
Last season was such a tightly constructed puzzle box.
The hosts experience things differently than humans.
They remember and feel things in different ways.
You dont want to abandon the idea they are fundamentally capable of different things.
One of the fun things about writing them is they can enter this diagnostic mode or adjust their apperception.
Most people dismiss that as a possibility and I dont necessarily think thats the wrong instinct.
Were not the only archetype of what it looks like to be a creature with agency.
There is an agenda here that Delos has undertaken for a very long time.
The shape of the season emerges as you get down to writing.
We want to feel like the show is rocketing ahead, and want to be fearless.
If left to their own devices, they could live forever.
So our story has some real scope to it.
Theres a story here with a beginning and middle and end.
To that end, we dont like to endlessly build mystery.
We like to settle our debts by the end of the season.
We want each season to feel satisfying the way a film franchise feels satisfying with each film.
You said 18 months.
The first season debuted in 2016.
We want the show to get bigger and bigger and more ambitious and this takes time.
We want to take all the time we need to get it right.
We werent interested in doingFantasy Islandabout which crazy guests will come to the park each year.
Were not interested in repeating ourselves.
And for the hosts, their ambition is to learn a little more about the world outside their world.
Who are we to step in their way?
How much of season is still inside the Westworld park?NOLAN:Most of it for this season.
JOY:But not as much in Sweetwater.
And when we get there, the place is quite… transformed.
Theres some new terrain well be spotting.
TV audiences are so smart now and they get restless and dont want to see the same things.
Adding those textures to the show, the texture of the outside world, is incredibly exciting.
JOY:Yet its also a push into the interior lives of some of these characters.
Like Ed Harris Man in Black.
You were looking at him through the lens of Dolores and Maeve last season.
Hes such a generous performer, he would never take anything from anything else.
This season, youll also see a push into some of these guest perspectives.
There are too many cameras, too many live feeds, too many hosts, too many parks.
Its not possible to control it all so you rely on an automated system.
Its like if you have a Nest cam at home.
You dont watch it all the time.
You wait for it to ping your phone and let you know if it saw someone.
So thats one of the things were exploring.
JOY:When a human dies with a shot to the head, that human is dead.
Can you rule out an appearance by Dr. Ford this season?
Which is not the same question.NOLAN:Nowthatyou shouldnt rule out.
Weve established that part of our second season deals with flashbacks and the early origins of the park.
Theres some storytelling to be done.
What secrets is he carrying around?
Shes very much on a conquering path.
And what it would take to make it that is an, um, change in management.
The shows music, obviously, such an inventive and cool part of season 1.
To me, thats why Radiohead was a connected world in the first season.
There are questions of free will and determinism that come up.
For so long, the hosts have been following a script and not having agency.
Now theyre literally able to define themselves.
They go from passive enactors to self-defining and self-determining.
The leashes are off.
Theyre free to be who and what they want to be.
But now that you have a choice: Whats morality?
Whats true to yourself?
You have to choose and thats a struggle we all have.
You talk a lot about AI, which has been in the headlines.
There will be more and more virtual ways for people to engage in pornography.
VR is incredibly immersive at this point and you cant underestimate that market drives innovation.
Im not making a judgment call on what kind of porn should be allowed.
I think that will become a part of the cultural conversation.
Its a big question.
Theres also what will happen with emotional intimacy when youre forging a connection with creatures that are artificial.
People just need someone to listen to them sometimes and thats easy code really easy.
So many of us feel alone.
But that feeling of loneliness is one of the fundamental building blocks of our collective psyches.
Its just going to open up so many questions.
One of the things I wonder about, apart from sex, is intimacy and connection.
You see so many people go out to dinner together and they spend so much time checking their phones.
Were getting further and further from a tactile universe.
Maybe Im a Luddite in that way, but I prefer a board game in front of the fire.
And thats actually why Westworld was created within our story.
We allude to it, but its that people without money have to settle for VR and AR.
Youre walking around smelling the air and touching the things.
That is so very well put.
There are times Im sitting at a restaurant counter and looking on my phone.
Im sure their parents are relieved to get an hour off, I totally understand that.
But were feeding ourselves something thats very hard to turn off.
Like its very hard for me not to check my phone first thing in the morning.
It really does become like a leash.
Its not a tool after awhile but a dependency.
Westworldseason 2 premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.
