Westworld made quite the splash at SXSW this year in promotion for season two of the science fiction epic from HBO. Not only did they have a panel with an exclusive clip and that Elon Musk appearance, a replica of Sweetwater from the show was constructed outside of Austin that gave the media and fans a chance to live out an experience from the show — up to the point of touching or breaking anything.
The #SXSWestworld experience is already bananas. Please join me as we do this. I’ve been assigned a white hat by a “host.” Here we go. pic.twitter.com/kvDItf6LdO
— Alex “Not Here Anymore Due To Musk/X Being Evil” (@alexm247) March 10, 2018
It makes it clear that HBO and the folks behind the show are setting the stakes pretty high with season two, even if they’re not sharing any plot details just yet. We know we’ve got Shogun World to look forward to and the ramifications of the season one finale, but everything else is still under wraps. One thing that Jonathan Nolan did make clear at the SXSW panel is the show loves to “f*ck with Reddit as much as possible” and season two will attempt to take that to a new level with fan theories and creative interaction with the community according to Polygon:
Part of it stems from other shows. True Detective had a lot of fan theories that proved to be theories. There are lot of theories about Westworld’s first season that proved to be plot twists. I think for every fan theory, we actually had an episode that dealt with it.
We’re figuring out how to sort of interact with that in the second season. A somewhat controversial plan that we’re working on; we’ll have an announcement about it in a couple weeks. It’s incredibly gratifying to see people put that much work — not just into deciphering the season, but the fan art and music. The creativity you see coming back at you when you’re making one of these things is extraordinary.
True Detective really was the worst of the current trend of fan theorizing we see online that have overtaken things like Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and other shows. But Westworld already seemed to embrace theories and the fan community with season one and the online aspects that followed — particularly the website for Westworld that continued to drop clues online for the folks desperate for more.
Mood: morose samurai in Westworld. pic.twitter.com/N73S82oY8n
— Josh Kurp (@JoshKurp) March 10, 2018
If anything, we’re taking cowboys and adding samurai into the mix for a television series. That alone should be enough to create some interest. Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune would be proud!
(Via Polygon / The AV Club / SyFy Wire)