Of all the many story twists peppered across Westworld‘s gripping season finale, the one involving Evan Rachel Wood long-time Host Dolores threatened to pull the rug out from underneath us all.
Having anchored the entirety of season 1 as the pure and innocent Dolores Abernathy, it was later revealed that Wood had been playing two characters all along, with the second being the elusive maniac known as Wyatt. To ensure said secret remained firmly under wraps, Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy refrained from telling Wood about the dual nature of her character which, in hindsight, caused a little confusion on set.
Looking back on Westworld‘s inaugural season, Evan Rachel Wood revealed to THR that, much like those of us tuning in, it wasn’t until Sunday’s “The Bicameral Mind” that she solved one of the show’s more confounding riddles.
Then they introduced this looming character of Wyatt, and I kept asking people on the set: “Have we cast him yet? When is he going to show up? Who’s playing him? Who’s Wyatt?” I went and looked everywhere, turned over every stone, and came up with nothing — and then I realized I hadn’t turned over mine. I looked everywhere else, and figured it had to be me. So I asked [co-creator Jonathan Nolan], and he laughed and walked away. It wasn’t confirmed until the [finale], and I was so excited. I thought it was a genius move on their part.
How does the finale impact Dolores’ arc moving forward? According to Wood, her sentient host has now embraced her inner Wyatt, signalling that Dolores was killed off during “The Bicameral Mind,” so to speak.
“The way I interpret it, when she finds the center of the maze and is talking to herself at the end, consciousness is a conversation with yourself. It represents to me that Dolores is fully conscious. When she realizes who she has to become and it becomes her choice, Ford has just gotten through telling her that the divine lives in our minds.”
As Westworld pandemonium continues to sweep across the Internet, one actor that’s lobbying for a role in future seasons is Nolan North, best known for his portrayal of Nathan Drake in the Uncharted games. Chatting to SFX Magazine (via Games Radar), here’s what North had to share:
“I am completely in love with Westworld. And I read somewhere that they have something like five to seven seasons completely mapped out, so now I’m like, ‘If this ever gets cancelled, I am going to have to find what they were gonna do.’ It’s perfect. One of my goals is to get on that show.”
It may not be expected to return until at least 2018, but rest assured Westworld has a big, big future on HBO. Sunday’s finale, for instance, pulled in over 2.2 million viewers, which makes Nolan and Joy’s brainy sci-fi series the most-watched first season of any original series in the network’s history.