Below then, in the absence of disc commentaries, are fifty insights from the showrunners into theme, imagery and symbolism, gleaned from the Blu-ray’s various extra featurettes.

1. The Western is a particularly apt genre to mine for this story, says Jonathan Nolan, because Westerns are all about unwritten landscapes in which characters are self-determining and carving out their own paths. “It’s a great metaphor for what our hosts are going through,” says Nolan.

2. Moab, Utah provides the show’s mountainous desert landscape, the same location in which John Ford filmed The Searchers starring John Wayne. The show deliberately presents a vision of the Wild West as channelled through directors like Ford, Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone.

3. The camera movements and angles are all designed to nudge the audience towards empathy with the hosts, rather than the human characters. Through framing and composition, we’re led to see things from the hosts’ perspective, and to see them as the central characters, not as accessories.

4. Nolan and Joy asked the directors to withhold from using hand-held cameras throughout the season. They’re only used in the finale to coincide with and represent the hosts developing consciousness and “coming alive”. It’s seen when Teddy rescues Delores from the churchyard in the finale, and when Maeve looks at the little girl during her escape attempt – the first time hand-held camerawork is used for her character in season one,