Westworld Season 3 is bringing my interest back online in every way. HBO's Westworld team has a panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, and the filmmakers revealed the official SDCC trailer. We already saw the brilliant teaser introducing Aaron Paul's new character, Caleb, who connects with our Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) in the outside world. Now we have the real world of the future -- and what looks like a World War II World. Is that a new park Maeve (Thandie Newton) is in when she punches out some Nazis? Check out what's happening in the trailer:
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when....
That pretty much sums it up. Don't know exactly where, and now I'm confused about when. But we'll meet Maeve and company again in Westworld Season 3 in 2020. The SDCC panel did not confirm anything about a new park. The cast and producers didn't share many new details in general. If only we could yell "Analysis" at the showrunners and they'd actually tell us more.
During SDCC, co-creator Jonathan Nolan said the theme of Season 3 is "The New World." Nolan also recently said Westworld Season 3 would be less of a guessing game than Season 2. Fellow showrunner Lisa Joy said Season 3 will pick up directly after the events of Season 2, looking at the aftermath of the Westworld park massacre. Dolores got out of the park and now we get to see her interact with the world.
I'm especially curious for what Maeve is up to now, though. It looks like she's in a World War II park of some kind, unless we're going back in time -- which seems less likely.
Also, if you're wondering what happened to the Westworld aspect of Westworld, now that we're not really spending much time in that OG park, let Jonathan Nolan explain in his pre-panel talk with EW:
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. The idea of the West as a wild place, where just over the next hill or horizon there are no rules. 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.
Don't forget that Westworld Season 2 also cast Vincent Cassel as a new villain. It's not always easy to tell a villain from a hero on Westworld, but at least we have that much info. Westworld Season 3 -- or Westworld III -- has yet to announce a premiere date, but it's coming in 2020.
