Entertainment

Westworld Season 2 Theory Suggests Everyone is a Host and It's Pretty Solid

by Ryan Britt
HBO

Who is really a robot and who is really human on Westworld? As the season 2 premiere looms, one fan theory cuts through all the rest. What if everyone is a robot Host? If true, this meta-twist would simplify all the mysteries of Westworld by paradoxically making everything more complicated.

Sunday, April 22 will mark the debut of the next season of Westworld, and it’s going to be a doozy. While the show is certainly even more frightening than before, that doesn’t mean there aren’t like twelve new mysteries to unravel. But, what if there was one solution that unlocked everything? Big fan theories are making the rounds right now and on Tuesday, Esquire posted a list of their favorites. And the one that should catch your eye comes from Reddit. Here’s what it says: “The guests and Delos employees were just a second tier of hosts that believed they were from the modern world. All actually synthetic androids themselves. The real guests come to be part of a meta Westworld experience where they get to play as Westworld hosts leading a robot rebellion against the host guests and Delos employees.”

Delos, the fictional company that runs 'Westworld,' as depicted in the 1980 TV series 'Beyond Westworld'

Warner Bros/MGM

Is this a likely outcome from season 2? Probably not, but it is perhaps the only fan theory out there that also serves as criticism for the show itself. While Westworld pushed the envelop in many ways, its science fiction robot tropes and questions are hardly new. Plus, because character development is so intertwined with plot twists, sometimes the show doesn’t seem to know the difference between an emotional payoff and a fake out.

On Wednesday, writing for Slate, Willa Paskin wonders if the game of Westworld theories undermines the enjoyment of actually watching it. “Westworld, the multiplayer televisual game, and Westworld, the TV show, are often at odds with one another,” she asserts. In some ways, Paskin has a point. Even the creators of Westworld are making fun of the multi-layered confusing plot points in their own show. In fact, recent fake-out video which “reveals” all the “secrets” of Westworld — but really just finds Evan Rachel Wood belting out “Never Gonna Give You Up” — might be the best thing to come out of the show.

And yet, when watching the new season, fans will certainly find it undeniably compelling. Though the theorizing will happen again, it will be different this time. Westworld season 2 is less obtuse about certain things than it was the first time around. Some stuff is explained a lot quicker than last season.

Does this still leave a possible reveal in which every single person the show is revealed to be a robot Host? Yes. It seems possible still. But, in some ways, because Westworld is so aware of breaking the fourth wall into the fandom, that fact would hardly be the biggest twist. - Westworld season 2 hits HBO on Sunday, April 22 at 9 pm eastern.

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