'Westworld' androids embrace their humanity, if not humans, amid Season 2 chaos

Bill Keveney | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Wood: 'Westworld' return 'like waiting for Christmas' At the season two premiere of "Westworld" in Los Angeles, actress Evan Rachel Wood talks about how excited she was to get back on set, with co-star Thandie Newton revealing how the new series changed her movie viewing habits. (April 17)

Get ready for Westworld Season 2.0: More parks, more personalities, more scheming and more blood, much of it of the human variety.

HBO’s critically praised sci-fi drama returns Sunday (9 ET/PT) with the futuristic Westworld theme park in a state of rebellion after suddenly sentient android host Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) murdered park founder Robert Ford to close Season 1.

The series expands in timeline and place, paying homage to its 1973 film namesake by giving viewers a peek at areas beyond the Western theme park’s boundaries, including Shogun World.

“It’s so much bigger than people expect. It was bigger than I expected,” Wood says. "I had an existential crisis at the end of (filming) this season. The first season made us question a lot of things about our own reality and this one really does."

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Season 2 opens brimming with mayhem after the murder of Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins in Season 1).

It tracks hosts Dolores, leader of an android uprising, and Teddy Flood (James Marsden), who remains devoted to her if not as enthusiastic about the enterprise; Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), a conscious, increasingly powerful host searching for her long-lost robot daughter; and Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), a conflicted android and park programmer confused about timelines and loyalties.

“If the first season was about control … the second is about chaos (and) free will. Once you have it, what do you do with it?” says Jonathan Nolan, who created the series with his wife and fellow executive producer, Lisa Joy.

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On the human side, Delos Inc. enforcer Karl Strand (series newcomer Gustaf Skarsgård) arrives to tamp down the host rebellion, as executive Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) alludes to ulterior Delos motives as she tries to retake park control. And the Man in Black (Ed Harris), Westworld's majority shareholder and a theme park master player, finally has the life-or-death stakes he’s always desired.

“There is a question of Delos’ real interests in the park,” Nolan says. “What are they really after? (It's) an enormously expensive theme park for wealthy people to indulge their darker sides, but, as with every Silicon Valley startup, there’s always a secondary business model.”

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Besides adjusting to free will, some hosts — and many viewers — face a more basic challenge, figuring out when and where they are as the show doubles down on alternate timelines, a Season 1 surprise that's now a featured element of the show's structure.

Bernard, in particular, struggles with memories and a sense of now, much of it the result of mechanical damage suffered after Ford ordered him to shoot himself last season.

“His synthetic brain is not invulnerable to bullet holes. He has some health issues that speak to a difference in his makeup and cognition from humans. It reveals, for him, a struggle with time,” Wright says.

In addition to those struggles, Bernard, as an android in park management, has a conflict. “He’s trying to decide where his allegiances lie relative to this chaos and what his place is in all of this.”

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Dolores, despite being more advanced than other hosts in comprehending reality, still faces a big challenge, synthesizing her sweet rancher’s daughter persona with her vengeful alter ego, Wyatt, who has a passion for shooting humans.

“Seeing her duality and how she struggles with it is part of her journey this season. But it’s brutal. Dolores sees the good in everything, Wyatt sees all the bad,” Wood says. “So having both of those inside of you must be challenging for her.”

It may be a challenge for Teddy, too, who remains committed to Dolores emotionally, even after the park’s programming no longer controls his behavior.

“I think he’ll follow her to the grave, but that’s not to say there won’t be challenges as far as what her objective is and what his is,” Marsden says. “She is a different Dolores this time around.”

Maeve, gaining access to more knowledge and power, also experienced non-programmed feelings at the end of last season, causing her to abandon plans to leave Westworld and return to search for her daughter, a robot from an earlier park narrative.

“She was sitting on a train opposite a human mother and daughter and she recognizes something in their interaction that she herself has felt. That’s an in instinct she simply has to scratch,” Newton says.

“Maeve’s choice to go back to the park is an example of the best of humanity, to go to great lengths because of love, even if that love wasn’t organic in nature,” Joy says.

But there's another side to the androids' emerging consciousness, she says. “Humanity is often associated with good things, but it has meant a lot of bad things, as well. So, the question is, when the hosts are able to choose their attributes, what will they choose?”



