It turns out that yesterday’s controversial Reddit AMA post by the showrunners of Westworld was an April Fools joke come too late. In the note, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy claimed that they would release the full details of the show’s second season in a video to prevent accidental and unwanted spoilers from online commenters and pundits. Last night, Nolan posted a link to a video on Reddit that seemed to be the proposed explainer for the entire season’s plot. The 25-minute clip begins like you might expect an actual Westworld recap video to begin, with footage of Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) walking around a beach among dead bodies and trying to remember how he got there. As he wanders into town, the actors freeze, and suddenly a plain-clothes Evan Rachel Wood (Dolors) launches into an (actually very beautiful) rendition of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” the immutable theme song of Rickrolling. She is backed by Angela Sarafyan (Clementine) on the show’s old upright piano. The performance closes with a title screen: “Dear Reddit, From all of us here at Westworld, thank you for watching. We hope you enjoy Season 2…”
Officially, then, we have been owned, along with the most annoying-as-hell sects of the Westworld fan community. The rest of the video consists of a cute dog sitting at the piano as the show’s theme music plays. Sample the video and see Nolan’s post below.
