The biggest show on HBO right now, or at any time in its history, is obviously the fantasy epic Game of Thrones. And though the network would love for Westworld to attract the same kind of massive audiences, that wasn't really happening during Season 2. In any case, the two fictional worlds seemingly came together during Westworld's bonkers finale, which featured a visual element that has been intrinsically tied with Game of Thrones since its earliest days: a gyroscope. Is it a legitimate tie-in easter egg? Let's discuss.
The scene in question took place within the Forge's digital realm, where Ben Barnes' pseudo-Logan took Bernard and Dolores into the library holding millions of books containing all the park guests' coded consciousnesses. There, viewers (such as this Reddit user) may have noticed the scene was lit up in a pretty gyroscopic way. Take a look!
There are arguably no gyroscopes in modern fiction, much less on TV, that are more famous than that of Game of Thrones, which had for years showcased the device in its memorable opening credits sequence before officially introducing it into the show itself for Season 6. So it couldn't possibly be a coincidence that a gyroscope would then appear on another big HBO drama during Game of Thrones' lengthy hiatus before its destructive final season, could it?
It's highly doubtful. Beyond the network connection, one big clue is the location in which both shows' gyroscopes are located. In Westworld, it's seen in the digitized library housing the entirety of the data that Delos had been compiling for many years. In Game of Thrones, it's in the Order of Maesters' Citadel, which houses records (known and secretive) from all things Seven Kingdoms-related. Both locations are where one would go to learn vast quantities of facts and figures, so that's extremely convincing circumstantial evidence, if nothing else.
I like to think that, within the continuity of Westworld, that Game of Thrones was a show that existed in the 2010s and gave Robert Ford and Arnold Weber something to watch as they worked on bringing Westworld and its hosts to life. And that the names of co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff would be seen on two of the books within the Forge. Also, when Dolores is out and about in the real world in Season 3, she might come across the eight GoT seasons and the multiple spinoffs that HBO will have no doubt released in the years prior to Westworld's current-day timeline. Then, Dolores could add some Cersei and Daenerys quotes to her verbal arsenal.
Of course, none of that is likely to come to fruition, with the two HBO projects existing on wholly different fictional planes. In the real world, it's probably not too hard to find a gyroscope fixture like that, even though it was a digital creation within the Forge's library. But even if that detail doesn't turn out to be a Thrones reference, as it goes with most things in Westworld, it's still a lot of fun to talk about.
Westworld won't be returning to HBO for a long time, with filming for Season 3 reportedly not planned to start until the summer of 2019. Until then, you can stream both seasons now on HBO Go and HBO Now, and to see what other new and returning shows are coming soon, head to our summer premiere schedule.
