Filming on Westworld’s third season is just over halfway complete, and although we have seen some set photos and a trailer, information on the storyline has been few and far between. Thankfully, new interviews with showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy shed (slightly) more light on what’s to come in the season three plot, as well as the locations we will see.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Nolan explains, “This season is a little less of a guessing game and more of an experience with the hosts finally getting to meet their makers…We always wanted every season to find our characters in radically different circumstances. And with a cast this talented, watching the metamorphosis of all these characters is one of the most fun parts.”
We know for certain that Evan Rachel Wood will be back as Dolores, and she will interact with newcomer Aaron Paul. He will play “a construction worker in Los Angeles named Caleb who has a strong impact on Dolores, who along with other hosts experiences major culture shock now that she’s in the real world.” Nolan adds, “Aaron’s character will challenge Dolores’ notions about the nature of humanity. He’s the type of person who doesn’t get to go to Westworld.”
Even though Dolores is no longer in the part, the title Westworld still has relevance. “Part of the story plays out in the Western United States, and that’s a thematic through-line in the show — the American West as a setting and an ethos,” Nolan admits. “On that thematic level, Dolores emerges to figure out what happened to the real West. And the answer is: We paved the thing over, and civilization eventually caught up with all those people who were running away from it.”
Check out the entire interview at EW, along with an exclusive new photo of Dolores in her modern LA attire.
While Dolores and Caleb may be located in LA (and they have certainly been filming there), Paul and Wood have also been in Singapore. Perhaps we will see a more futuristic Los Angeles? Lisa Joy spoke with CNA Lifestyle about the decision to head to a new location. “We needed to get on a plane and travel 19 hours because there’s nowhere else like this. It’s the ways in which nature entangle with modernity here.”
“Your architecture is so spectacular and quite singular and unique. There is a poetic shape to the skyline of Singapore that no other city has. There is a beautiful curvature to it that is really unique and interesting.” Joy added that they “needed to look towards the future” for season three. “We needed to create a world of fiction that was immersive, new, beautiful, gripping and fascinating. Looking outside the window at Singapore right now, where else would we go after seeing this?”
Joy found the city inspiring as she spent time there “polishing things up with Westworld’s incredible team of writers,” and confesses, “I was telling my team that I don’t want to leave Singapore! I just want to sit here forever and write. It’s also appealing to me personally because you’re immersed in a culture that feels right at home. It’s this mix of modernity and antiquity which I find very interesting, and I never want to leave.”
Read the rest here.
UPDATE:
Entertainment Weekly shared more comments from Jonathan Nolan about season three – specifically about the robot pictured next to Aaron Paul’s character in the above photo. Their article states “the robot’s name is George — Delos model G-267. He’s a ‘standard construction robot’ who doesn’t talk. He’s the helpful co-worker for a human Los Angeles construction worker named Caleb played by series newcomer Aaron Paul.”
Nolan adds, “Part of what our hosts find [in the real world is], they’re caught in between — they’re fashioned to look like human beings and act like them, but they have more in common with the mechanical pieces in our world. The hosts are uniquely alone in that way. And that’s not true of the other robots they find in the world. [Robots like George have] been designed for a specific purpose, and the hosts have been designed to be emotional mirrors for us.”
If Dolores figures out how to program these “helpful” robots, I have a feeling the humans will be in big trouble.
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