One exciting moment from the all-round thrilling finale of Westworld‘s debut season occurred when the action spilled out into a neighboring park, revealing that the Delos Corporation were running another robot-filled environment called Samuraiworld. We didn’t see much of this other park, but it opened up a lot of doors for the future of the show. After all, if there was a Westworld and a Samuraiworld, what other theme parks could there be?
If you go back to the original 1973 movie that the hit HBO series is based on, you might find the answer. In the film from Jurassic Park‘s Michael Crichton (that man really hated theme parks, didn’t he?), Romanworld and Medievalworld are also featured, and these two parks might just be appearing in Westworld season 2.
At the 2017 Vanity Fair summit, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were asked why they didn’t include Roman/Medievalworld in season 1, and the former teasingly answered: “We had to save something for season 2.”
Apart from that, it also makes more sense from a narrative perspective to introduce these theme parks next time around. Action was mostly limited to Westworld in season 1 because the hosts were largely still under control. Going into the show’s sophomore run, however, hosts such as Dolores and Maeve have gone rogue. So, it makes sense to burst open the boundaries of the series as the hosts explore the reaches of their own artificial intelligence.
Speaking of which, Nolan and Joy were also on hand to discuss their thoughts on A.I. Nolan has a mixed reaction, as he fears the possible ramifications but is also optimistic that it “can yield dramatic improvements in the way our world functions.”
“I feel evenly split between the fear that A.I. will enslave us and make us do its bidding and my fear that it won’t. If you look at things that have gone down in the last year, humans are terrible at running this world. It’s clear that there’s room for improvement.”
Joy, on the other hand, explained how our fear of A.I. comes from the “binary” thinking of computers and how that could potentially be extrapolated into something dangerous.
“People like to ask, ‘Why would A.I. want to be evil and destroy us?’ A corporation’s goal is to make profits. It’s very simple. It’s binary. It’s either less or more. Computers work along the same thing. If you can see how, with the simplest of directives that can get blown into something beyond what could image, that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about.”
Westworld season 2 lands next spring.
