“Look at this world – this beautiful world. We built this world together…[and] from the ashes, we’ll build a new world. Our world.”
As far as Super Bowl teasers go, Westworld takes this year’s prize for being the most unnerving promo of the bunch. While Avengers: Infinity War ramped up the stakes for Marvel’s superhero franchise, and Fallen Kingdom steered Jurassic World in the direction of full-blown horror, HBO’s Big Game spot – the first in 20 years, no less – sparked a robotic uprising.
Set against a haunting, slowed-down rendition of Kanye West’s piano-heavy “Runaway,” which was unsurprisingly scored by the great Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones), our first look at Westworld season 2 was every bit as mind-bending as we had come to expect. But thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now have some new intel on the prestige drama, courtesy of co-creator Jonathan Nolan:
We’ll do a proper trailer later in the year. This was very much conceived as a Super Bowl spot. HBO came to us and said they wanted to do it… and we were incredibly excited. The show has been off the air [since 2016], longer than normal for a TV show and we wanted to create a love letter to Super Bowl spots in general.
Arguably one of the trailer’s most striking scenes, Nolan then went on to address the shot of robotic bulls laying waste to the minions of Delos:
That set piece was conceived for the season and we executed it with extra time and care because our partners at HBO thought it would make a great centerpiece for the ad. It has always been scripted, but we leaned harder into it.
In closing, the show’s co-creator, who nurtured Westworld into existence alongside Lisa Joy, dropped an enticing clue about what the future holds for the HBO flagship.
Dolores’ story — as we’ve learned about all our hosts by the end of the first season — their lives span decades. So we have more storytelling to do about the origin of the park and the park’s little secret project.
Season 2 of Westworld officially boots online on April 22nd, and it may well whisk viewers off to that mooted Samurai/Shogun World, after all. Stay tuned.
