Created for television by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, HBO’s futuristic blockbuster Westworld was inspired by the 1973 motion picture of the same title, written and directed by Michael Crichton.

The final episode of the HBO series Westworld, aired last Monday, might have satisfied viewers that had been kept guessing since the start of the show, but rest assured, all theories will be challenged once again with the start of Season Two.

And that is what makes the series compelling enough to keep viewers waiting until 2018 for its return with more unpredictable turns and twists from the West World theme park and one of its hosts, the gunslinger Theodore “Teddy” Flood.

James Marsden, who plays Teddy, was in town talking to Asian journalists about his role and his insights into the series he called “the next Games of Thrones”, while spilling hints about the story going forth.

“If you are asking me about where we are going to go in Season Two if all comes together - I’m really trying to be vague here — you got it all answered in the last episode,” said the American actor, singer and model known as Scott Summers aka Cyclops in the X-Men franchise and the star in Enchanted, Hairspray, 27 Dresses and The Best of Men.

“I never believe that something great happens easily. I think it takes time and dedication. Hopefully, the audience will understand that. I think we will be a more well-oiled machine the second time around,” he said at the roundtable interview on Nov. 30.

“Hopefully, the impression we made was so strong that people will be salivating, waiting for the second season to come around. I think the mistake could be to give it too soon when it is not ready. The last thing we want to do is let the audience down.”

The series — created for television by Jonathan Nolan (Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Person of Interest) and Lisa Joy (Pushing Daisies, Burn Notice), both of whom are executive producers and writers, along with JJ Abrams (Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, Lost, Alias, Super 8) — was inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1973 film Westworld.

The virtual theme park is a popular destination for adults wishing to live out their fantasies of the Old West. The android hosts are programmed to satisfy the desires of the human guests, even if it gets the hosts “killed” and being reset to return to service. The main theme in Season One is the “awakening” of the hosts’ consciousness.

The hosts are controlled by Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), founder and chief programmer of the theme park and his former partner Arnold — who turns out to be the past form of Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), the head of Westworld’s programming division.

Elected as one of the most gorgeous men alive, the 43-year-old Oklahoma native growing up fantasizing of becoming of cowboy and superhero was sort of laying the groundwork of the story, with his character at the start looking like a naïve guest in a romantic charade with farm girl Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), an impression that lasts until he happily pulls the trigger.

The realization that he is, in fact, a host comes only after he is killed by the Man in Black (Ed Harris) and has his memory wiped. And Teddy “dies” over and over again at the hands of the mysterious killer.

“I didn’t know that [my death] is going to continue to be a theme,” said Marsden, adding that the cast was only given the script per episode.

“I think the most interesting one is my near-death in Episode Three, when my bullets aren’t working on my attackers and in the next episode you find me hung up next to a vulture. They kept me alive maybe for a reason. So there’s a meaning behind that, I think.”

And that was the reason he wished to so less “dying” in the next season, with more romance.

“Teddy has a code, not just the code that’s programmed into him, he has a moral code, and he’s a decent human being — a decent host, you know what I mean, we’re approaching everything as pure human beings in the show. So I think Teddy’s journey would be very, very interesting, and he certainly won’t be a target practice forever.

“I think the audience empathizes with the hosts more than the humans, because the hosts are behaving in more humane ways. They are noble, they are virtuous. They are caught in this house of mirrors and stuck in this box constantly recirculating grief and torture.

“I think the audience is thinking: ‘These poor people. Just wait for them to burst through those walls’.”

On that note, Marsden summarized the big theme of the series that culminated in Ford, who doesn’t want to give up his dream, squaring off with Arnold, who insists on letting the hosts reach full sentience.

“What it means to be human and all the things that we deal with and what we turn into if we can have anything we want without consequences or without rules, laws and what happens if you extract grief from our life experience. Will it lose value because there is no suffering?

“It’s been interesting to watch Maeve [Thandie Newton] and Dolores have their awakening. They are given the opportunity to wake up, to remember, to see parts of their past, to look at themselves in the mirror and understand, and with that understanding, evolve and grow. And so I hope that continues.”

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Recap

Westworld will have the entire recap aired on Dec. 24 and 25, from 9 a.m. on HBO Signature as well as on HBO On Demand.

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