Second season of HBO’s Westworld will travel well beyond Sweetwater

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Much of the first season of HBO's Westworld took place in the titular park or the behind-the-scenes areas, but the second season will quickly be leaving the town of Sweetwater behind. Co-creator Jonathan Nolan told Entertainment Weekly that the second season will be "much more of a road show—Sweetwater isn’t home anymore." We already know that Shogun World will touched upon, but Nolan added we'll learn much more about the various Delos parks as well as the world beyond throughout the season.

We don’t like to endlessly build mystery; we like to settle our debts by the end of the season. We want to feel like the show is rocketing ahead. The first season was a journey inward; this is a journey outward. It’s a search for what else is in the park, and what else is beyond the park. If we were to describe the show as one camera angle, it would be a steady pull out revealing more and more context. So as the hosts learn more about their world—and other worlds, and the real world—the audience is doing the same thing.

Westworld quickly became one of my favourite shows of the year, so I'm quite pleased to know the world will be expanding as well as bringing new mysteries along with it.

In addition to exploring other worlds, the story could very well travel into the future. "These hosts don’t live on the same time frame we do and don’t have the four-year life span of replicants [like in Blade Runner]," Nolan said. "If left to their own devices, they could live forever. So our story has some real scope to it." If you assume that the cast-members of Westworld have a better idea of where the series is headed, you'd be wrong, as Ed Harris admits to not knowing exactly what the heck is going on in the upcoming season.

It’s a pretty trippy second year, man, I gotta tell you that. Hopefully somebody can explain it all to me after it airs. But it’s going to be tremendously watchable.

Westworld's second season will premiere on HBO on April 22, 2018.