On Monday, Westworld creators-slash-professional mind-fuckers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy did a Reddit AMA in honor of the show’s new season coming later this month. It was pretty standard for the most part, with Nolan and Joy answering questions about Anthony Hopkins and episode titles and the looming robot apocalypse. But toward the end, things took a bit of a turn.
In a supposed attempt to combat spoilers and the kind of obsessive theorizing that untangled last season’s twist mid way through the season, Nolan and Joy announced that they would be willing to release a video spelling out all the major season two narrative beats ahead of time.
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“That way, the members of the community here who want the season spoiled for them can watch ahead,” Nolan wrote, “and then protect the rest of the community, and help to distinguish between what’s ‘theory’ and what’s spoiler.” If his post got 1,000 upvotes, Nolan promised, then he and Joy would go ahead and release the spoiler video.
Well, it only took a few hours for the post to far surpass the 1,000 upvote mark, and—true to their word—Nolan reappeared on the AMA page late Monday evening to post the link for a 25-minute video called “Westworld Season Two – A Primer.”
The spoiler video opens with Jeffrey Wright, who plays Bernard, narrating the aftermath of the Delos bloodbath that capped off season one. Bernard wanders around in a daze for a while, wrestling with his programming to remember what happened, and then… Well, just give it a watch.
If you were brave enough to click play then, yes, that’s Evan Rachel Wood singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Yes, this whole thing was an elaborate rickroll. Yes, the video then cuts to about 20 minutes of black and white footage of a cute dog sitting at piano as the Westworld theme plays. Well played, Nolan and Joy. Well played.
But who knows? Maybe this actually is an accurate representation of what’s in store next season. In that case, we should expect a lot of trolling and at least a few very good boys in season two, which debuts on HBO on April 22.
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