After Sunday’s Season 2 finale, HBO will freeze all “Westworld” functions for at least a year — but did the drama’s sophomore run finish better than it began?
This past weekend, Episode 210 earned 1.6 million linear viewers, according to Nielsen, which is down 24 percent in total eyeballs from its debut this spring. HBO added another 600,000 viewers via an encore and its HBO Go and Now streams, per the pay-TV channel, bringing the nightly total up to 2.2 million.
“Westworld” Season 2 premiered back in April to 2.1 million linear viewers, per Nielsen, which was actually 100,000 audience members slimmer than the show’s Season 1 finale. Counting an encore as well as HBO Go and Now streams, that night’s sum grew to 3 million overall viewers.
“Westworld” sees a lot of delayed viewing. Last season, the TV reimagining of the 1973 feature film saw nearly 80 percent of its viewers tune in post-premiere night, according to HBO. The premium cabler is expecting a Season 2 average of around 10 million viewers once all data has come in.
Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s HBO sci-fi series closed its sophomore run with a feature-length finale, titled “The Passenger,” which answered many a question we’d been pondering throughout the sophomore year of, but left viewers with a whole new mess of head-scratchers, like that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright)/Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood)/Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) murder-resurrection triangle; Ford’s (Anthony Hopkins) final fate; Maeve (Thandie Newton) and the other dead Hosts’ chances of being revived; the “real world” setting we’re entering in Season 3; and what in the heck was going on with the Man in Black/William (Ed Harris) in that unexpected post-credits scene.
You can read our full interview with Joy about the Season 2 finale here. And everything we currently know about Season 3 here.
'Westworld': Every Sad or Confused Face James Marsden Made in the Season 2 Premiere (Photos)
(Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 premiere) If Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood's "Westworld" characters have been fully awakened to the realities of their robot existence, James Marsden's Teddy is like that moment right after you first open your eyes, when you're still groggy and confused and aren't entirely sure where you are. And Marsden plays the role admirably, spending much of the season premiere looking as resolute and bewildered as a "Westworld" fan scouring the trailer for clues. Here are seven photos of James Marsden trying to figure out what's going on.
HBO
From the very beginning, Dolores rides into Season 2 like a badass, shooting down guests from the back of her horse, with the sunset on her face and the wind blowing through her inexplicably clean hair. Poor Teddy can barely keep up.
HBO
It's unclear how much Teddy actually understands, as far as the robot revolution goes, but he's apparently willing to follow Dolores' lead on things like murder, torture and delivering monologues.
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"Robots? If you say so."
HBO
This is the face you make when you ask your girlfriend to stop murdering people, and she just delivers another monologue about identity and free will. You don't really understand what she's talking about (and you already stopped listening), but you know enough to know that she's definitely not going to stop murdering people, and you just have to be cool with that.
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"But why can't we just buy a house, settle down and, you know, not murder people?"
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Teddy, like Jon Snow, knows nothing and needs to have this fact explained to him repeatedly.
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This reveal at the end of the premiere is a surprise, for sure, but once you sit with it for a while -- was anyone really expecting this guy to survive?
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Poor Teddy might be in over his head
(Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 premiere) If Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood's "Westworld" characters have been fully awakened to the realities of their robot existence, James Marsden's Teddy is like that moment right after you first open your eyes, when you're still groggy and confused and aren't entirely sure where you are. And Marsden plays the role admirably, spending much of the season premiere looking as resolute and bewildered as a "Westworld" fan scouring the trailer for clues. Here are seven photos of James Marsden trying to figure out what's going on.