After Reddit and other fan communities pretty much predicted the entire first season of Westworld, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy made headlines by promising to work with online theorists in the second season. Now, we might know how: Spoil absolutely everything.
Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) prepares to tell young William that he’s actually the Man in Black. Image: HBO
During a Reddit AMA, Nolan shared a controversial plan to safeguard the biggest secrets of season two. He said they’re thinking of creating a video that lays out the entire plot of the second season, along with all of its twists and turns. The idea is for the video to do for Westworld what A Song of Ice and Fire did for Game of Thrones: Give certain fans a chance to serve as gatekeepers who’ll protect the season’s biggest secrets from the larger fan community.
It creates a larger problem for us, though, in terms of the way your guesswork is reported online. “Theories” can actually be spoilers, and the line between the two is confusing. It’s something we’ve been thinking about since last season. The fans of Game of Thrones, for instance, rallied around and protected the secrets of the narrative in part because they already knew those secrets (through season 5).
We thought about this long and hard, and came to a difficult (and potentially highly controversial) decision. If you guys agree, we’re going to post a video that lays out the plot (and twists and turns) of season 2. Everything. The whole sordid thing. Up front. That way the members of the community here who want the season spoiled for them can watch ahead, and then protect the rest of the community, and help to distinguish between what’s “theory” and what’s spoiler.
It’s a new age, and a new world in terms of the relationship between the folks making shows and the community watching them. And trust is a big part of that. We’ve made our cast part of this decision, and they’re fully supportive. We’re so excited to be in this with you guys together. So if this post reaches a 1000 upvotes we’ll deliver the goods
Nolan said they’d only go through with it if their comment got 1000 upvotes on Reddit, which it doesn’t look to have achieved yet. Of course, there’s always the chance that Nolan isn’t being serious, but I’m going to try giving the benefit of the doubt in this case. Nolan and Joy seem sincere about trying to engage with the community to avoid major spoilers for the next season, and it’s at least an attempt to negate some of the damage. That said, having a couple-minute video synopsis of a season isn’t nearly the same as reading a book series, so it’s hard to say whether it would actually work… and whether any fans would be willing to sacrifice an entire season of reveals so they could protect others.
Westworld returns to showcase on April 23.
Comments
5 responses to “Westworld’s Showrunners Offer To Reveal The Entire Season Two Plot To Help Protect Its Biggest Spoilers”
I feel like they haven’t thought this through. The reason fans of A Song of Ice and Fire didn’t go revealing plot spoilers en masse was because they had taken the sizeable time investment to read (and most likely love) the books. Generally, that investment would have likely given them a) some reverence for the source material and b) the ability to feel a little smug knowing they knew the major plot points. Both these things would have meant they were more likely to gatekeep the spoilers and less likely to ruin it for the general viewership.
With Nolan’s proposed plan, any troll could watch a short spoiler video and then start spamming social media with spoilers. There is no barrier to entry that weeds out the fans from the trolls. This is going to get messy.
I have a sneaky suspicion that if they do release it, it’ll be a bait. I remember reading an interview done by them on how they were taking a similar approach to game of thrones in which they had multiple endings filmed or in the script so that if any major leaks occurred, they could switch it up. I can only imagine how many facebook comments would have spoilers, just like when game of thrones episodes got released early!
Yeah I saw some people in the AMA thread speculating that even if they do post the video there’s no way of knowing that it’s actually spoilers and not just trolling to throw everyone off the real story.
sounds like a good social experiment although 1000 seems rather conservative (it’s sitting at 3K current?)
well can’t wait to see what happens haha
hahahaha no. I was spoiled several times (and sadly some were major plot points) by book readers. Sure some might keep it secret, but there are so many trolls and terrible people on the internet, that it takes one to spread it. I can’t see some movies without going without internet because of spoilers, and they want to hand the entire Season 2 spoilers to the internet from the get go. Guaranteed half the internet will have comments with just spoilers, even in posts with nothing to do with the show, just to get random viewers to read it unsuspecting and have it ruined.
It’s better to let people guess and most likely get it right. I saw some guessing out of Reddit during S1, but because it was guessing, people left it alone and I ignored it, since it could possibly not be true. This guarantees anything I read has a HUGE possibility to be true.
Its gonna fail and a lot of people are going to have a lesser experience because some people can’t be trusted.