Westworld producers promise to take more active role in online fan engagement
By Shawn Lealos
Westworld was center stage at the South by Southwest Festival this week and they had some interesting things to say about online fan speculation.
Anyone who has been on Reddit, or to a lesser extent Facebook, knows that fans of major shows like Westworld, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead love to speculate on what is happening in the shows and to uncover and share spoilers. The fact is that anyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled should just avoid certain subreddits.
However, while talking about sites like Reddit, IGN reported that producer Jonathan Nolan said that the production team plans to hatch a “controversial” plan to handle the fan engagement, speculation and spoilers when Westworld season 2 gets underway.
"“We love to f*** with Reddit as much as possible… We’re figuring out how to interact with that in the second season.”"
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When Nolan said this, he pointed out how many Game of Thrones fans found ways to share their information and speculation about the show based on reading the books by George R.R. Martin without spoiling it for those fans who never read the books and had no prior knowledge of the series.
Now, this is not to say that Nolan and other Westworld producers are going to post false rumors on the Internet sites like Reddit. More likely, this means that those producers will have people interact with fans on Reddit and possibly pass off some hints and tips as the season wears on that will allow the fans passionate about speculation to figure things out ahead of time.
Just because people figure something out ahead of time does not mean the episode is spoiled for them. While some fans don’t want to know anything, others find it a victory to figure something out ahead of time and can still enjoy the series. Remember, the episode of Game of Thrones that was leaked (“The Spoils of War”) was the highest-rated episode of the HBO series ever.
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Want to be able to start guessing what is going to happen in Westworld season 2 ahead of time? Actor Jeffrey Wright said that “there are a lot of things there” when talking about watching the season 1 pilot and finding things that pay off in season 2.
Westworld returns to the air with season 2 on April 22 on HBO.