Westworld season three will have fewer episodes than first two seasons

Westworld season three will have fewer episodes than its first and second seasons, but no word yet on relative episode length.

Sources close to HBO’s Westworld have revealed that season three will be shorter than season one and two. This means that season three will consist of eight episodes rather than the usual ten. The source did not reveal whether the episodes will be regular length or if they might be longer to make up for the shorter season. If the episodes are longer, that could mean that creators and showrunners Christopher Nolan and Lisa Joy are planning a few more ambitious installments of an already ambitious series.

Season three, set to air sometime early in 2020, has released a sweepingly epic trailer that premiered at Comic-Con this year. In it, we see our heroes and villains in settings from a familiar past and a distant future. The distant future makes sense, but we also see Maeve hanging around in a World War II setting, complete with Nazi flags.

The trailer includes retruning cast Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Ed Harris, and Thandie Newton along with new cast member Aaron Paul. Many viewers may want to know whether technically deceased characters like Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Robert Ford could be making appearances in season three, the chief of HBO programming Casey Bloys had no comment. “If you didn’t see them in the trailer, I’m not gonna respond,” said Bloys.

While speculation is half the fun, I don’t think anyone can predict what’s in store for season three. The end of season two set up Dolores and Bernard as adversaries, the first for the ultimate destruction of humanity to make way for the Hosts, while Bernard believes that humanity and the Hosts could learn to co-exist.

While you might think that a character hellbent on wiping out humankind would be defined as the antagonist to the optimistic hero Bernard, it is one of the unique things about the series that character representations are more complicated than simply good or evil. The entire series exists in a morally grey space, ultimately leaving the viewer to decide what is right or wrong.

Westworld returns to HBO the first half of 2020, with a deal set up for potential fourth and fifth seasons.

Source: TheWrap