‘Westworld’ Season 2 Won’t Spend Much Time in ‘Shogun World’
Well, the show isn’t called Westworld for nothing. Despite some major teases Season 2 would take us to the mysterious “Shogun World” glimpsed in Season 1, producers reveal our time in the five additional parks will be limited at best.
Entertainment Weekly spoke to showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for a few new details of the mysteriously gore-heavy “Park 2,” which will serve as composite of Japan’s Edo period with “artifacts from across 300 years.” Season 2 has only shown us Maeve (Thandie Newton) visiting the new locale, though we’ve glimpsed characters played by Pacific Rim star Rinko Kikuchi and LOST alum Hiroyuki Sanada. That said, Nolan urged fans not to get their hopes up about the new park, as Season 2 will apparently limit the time spent there:
We want to try and gently temper expectations. Most of our season is spent in Westworld — the eponymous Westworld. But we do get a chance to glimpse some of the other worlds. And we have a couple of episodes that are spent in Shogun World with one of our storylines, while our other storylines continue elsewhere. So I say we’re trying to temper expectations, except to say that I think the stuff we did for Shogun World is spectacular.
Season 2 has more than a few questions to answer about Parks 2 through 6, given all the details left blank. Are the Shogun World hosts experiencing their own awakening programmed by Ford and Arnold? How much real estate does Delos own, that they can fit verdant cliffs and another sprawling landscape next to the open plains of Westworld? And how is it that no one in Season 1 remotely thought to mention that park issues could affect five other tourist populations?
Nolan also suggested “Basically, we have a whole episode in Japanese,” though it’s unclear how seriously to take that. The answer to these questions and more lie with Westworld’s April 22 premiere, so stay tuned.
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