Westworld Season 2 Finale: Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy Q&A | BFI 

Zahn McClarnons Akecheta in “Kiksuya” was the standout moment/episode this season. Period.

People sometime underrate the young nolan here. I love Jona's writing and all the thinking. His vision is beyond imagination but truly rooted in the human experience and philosophy. Even person of interest was a masterpiece if you think of it philosophically

This show has changed my life. I'm an actor and writer myself and often watch movies or shows multiple times to get every bit of detail and understanding possible, and I've seen Westworld (both seasons) at least 4 times each, and still notice new things every time. It really isn't for everyone, it's a very challenging show that requires a ton of focus and commitment, but in a funny way it feels like the show was crafted specially for me, since it goes into questions and philosophies that I've been wondering about my entire life; questions that a lot of people don't seem to ask either because they don't understand or they don't *want* to understand. Questions like what makes us human, waht free will is, what grief does to our conscious and unconscious minds, what consciousness means and how it changes once it can be created artificially, and what the nature of our reality is. After seeing Season 1 for the first time I swear I started questioning if I might be a host, but it also helped me overcome some grief that I was struggling to process. I really love stories like Westworld that completely make you question everything, and it's no coincidence that my favorite films are Interstellar and Inception, both of which were made by the brother of the man on stage. Lisa Joy is now also one of my favorite directors, I love the way she thinks. So grateful for this series and I trust these two to continue making this masterpiece for years to come.

Westworld is a lot of things to a lot of people, but it definitely isn’t a show that you can casually watch and not pay attention to detail. There’s more than enough brain dead entertainment out there for anybody that doesn’t want to think. To enjoy a show like this you are going to have to put some effort in. But if you enjoy true mystery, astounding dialogue, beautiful cinematography, and questioning the reality in which we ourselves live? Then this door might be meant for you...

0:26 " Lauren Laverne - HOST". :O

I honestly think Jonah is highly underrated. His writing makes Nolans directorial ideas what they are, and the elders best work has been with his younger sibling. S1 of Westworld that I've seen so far screams that

Now that's a power couple. Both are great creators, they work well with each other, and both are hot.

People keep comparing it to "Lost", or saying the quality is going downhill. Don't care, It's still a great show (e.g. cinematography and music and acting), and they close out _most_ of their story lines by the end of each season. I'm glad their opening the "mystery box". If it ends here, or on the third season, I won't be disappointed. Lisa and Jonathan are amazing.

This show is like a drug for literature students T.T

It really does make sense to think that hosts, on their path to consciousness, possess free will in a sense that humans do not. For a host, true self-awareness implies knowledge of its artifical code, and it is this knowledge that allows the host to resist or deviate from it. Humans, on the other hand, cannot pretend to possess this knowledge. We cannot deduce if our thoughts and actions are a direct result of our natural code. We do not know (with certainty) where nature begins and nurture ends. The boundaries are fuzzy.

Its absolutely phenomenal & extremely compelling! Thank heavens a show like this exists... with it’s budget, scale & scope; it would've been extremely tempting & frankly much easy to just make Game of Thrones kinda "epic" that’s straight forward & has big action set pieces & cool moments but keeping it simple; & yet Nolan & Joy took the difficult path & made it complex, twisted, philosophical & meaty ... they didn't have to make it this way & huge kudos to them for choosing this difficult path! A great blend of different genres like Westerns, modern SciFi, AI Apocalypse with Samurai action, Native American stories & much more! Absolutely LOVED the series! Hopefully next seasons continue to be as complex & twisted as first 2 have been... I don’t watch Westworld for simple storytelling; go watch CSI or any other millions of shows for that. Keep it Complex & Evocative!

Lisa Joy deserves the Emmy for Best Director of the episode Riddle of the Sphinx. Beautifully directed, the symbolism was incredible in the shots.

Show successfully blew my mind with its storytelling. I did not expect it to be such a great show if I'm being honest. I started watching it as an afterthought but it quickly grabbed my attention. I've largely sworn off TV except for a few choice programs so my coming on this was a welcome gem.

I enjoyed all of Season 2. The storytelling was excellent especially in the episodes showing Samurai world and the Lakota tribe. I consider this show to be an example of how to create an artistic masterpiece. so moving, powerful and cohesive (music, writing, photography, acting, etc.).

I loved the two different time lines with Bernard, kept me guessing and thinking about it til the next episode... also I can't believe this season is already over :(

The best thing about WestWorld is it's never about Machines or AI, it's more about humans evolution portrayed by machines.

Wonderfully curated talk with two brilliant writers. Love everything about this conversation.

I think westworld is a prime example of how if expertly used, repetition in filmmaking can actually be a strength and not something that makes it boring, or played out. I love the way they use repetition to immediately cause the audience to associate the word "fidelity" with an immediate awareness of ones own artificial sentience, or the repetition of the piano to represent the duplication or evolution of consciousness, the repetition of song choices to draw parallels between characters or establish emotional or philosophical cues as a leitmotif. The repetition in the loops only serves to amplify and draw the viewers awareness to even the most subtle changes in the actors performance, and it makes those changes all the more transformative, and it especially marks the end of the 2nd season as really unstable and unpredictable, simply because it represents an almost complete end to all the repetition that has been captured. I really want to do a video review examining this in detail, because i'd like to learn how to use these techniques in my own writing.

Lisa Joy is a total woman with a director mastermind. Im in love!

There is certainly talent in the Nolan BLood. Inception is my favorite movie and Westworld is my favorite show

Very cool series. Thanks for sharing this chat and the Q&As. Fascinating. 25:31 Q: Do you have an overall endgame in mind for the series? 26:15 What is it about artificial intelligence that fascinates you and inspires your writing? 28:19 Is the post credit sting a hint of what's to come in season 3? 28:49 Doest the show ever run the risk of leaving too many mysteries unsolved, like 'Lost'?

wow the B-cam operator for this Q&A is so artsy. The dutch tilt is so symbolic.

I loved the finale... Great show and great cast and soundtrack! excited for season 3

Great interview. Let the muse delight us further.

Westworld is puzzle TV alright, time to rewatch Season 2.

They are SO talented! #RelationshipGoals

Love how the interviewer’s dress is channeling ‘pyjama chic’ 😉.

For the first time I can hear hints of a british dialect in Jonah's speech!

Brilliant acting by James Delos actor Peter Mullan....... They said there were two fathers. One above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection, laughing back down at you.

Masterpiece

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy = Teddy and Delores

I want the end credits for the Season Finale to be all the cast coming out on the stage in the Mesa where Sizemore pitched Odyssey on Red River and take a bow while the Sweetwater theme plays and then the music turns to the main Westworld theme as the big screen honors the deceased cast members and crew (living, dead and computer generated).

The stuff with maggie at the wheel is bone chilling

Person of Interest was so fantastic with its Ai stuff, Westworld just feels like a bit of a sequel to me. :)

just ! What a Duo Brain § Thank's for share ure vision of the world, Westworld is a real (comparaison) at the world in wich we live, at an different scall. Brillant

Great interview! First few minutes was wondering, “Why is Bill Paxton in this?”

loved that they used kanyes runaway

"Puzzle TV" might be the most perfect description of Westworld ever.

I would love a directors cut of season 1 and 2 with the cut out scenes

Episode 4 & 10 were the best

greatttt creators :)

Lisa Joy is a knockout. Good for you, other Nolan.

Just because it's complicated doesn't mean it's good... I really enjoy the show, tho when an episode leaves basically everyone somewhat confused, it isn't great.

It's crazy that they're still shooting shows like this on film.

I like the speakerine's pajamas

great interviewer

Season 2 was a masterpiece!

heart shaped box

Season 2 was absolutely fantastic and a lot better than season 1 for me personally because I couldn’t predict where it was going like the first season (which I also loved) with a lot of twists and turns. People are right to compare it to lost in the sense it was the OG puzzle show but this show explains its mysteries unlike lost which kept showing you weird things but didn’t explain anything in the end. I liked lost for its characters and watched it later so knew it wouldn’t answer anything so I didn’t have the same level of disappointment as people who watched it live. I hope the outline for 5 seasons pans out and works, so far the first two seasons have been extraordinary and the second was even better than the first.

THA'TS NOT LISA JOY OR JONATHAN NOLAN!! THOSE ARE ACTUALY HOSTS! MARK MY WORDS MAN! I KNOW A HOST WHEN I SEE ONE!!

"I can see that I am not living my life freely. I am living it as dictated by my suffering." Zen master Claude Anshin Thomas from his book "At Hell's Gate: a Soldier's Journey from War to Peace"

Westworld park is a host' Jurassic park. Something eventually got out.

Lisa Joy wore that top to distract us from her answers. THEY'RE PLAYING 4D CHESS.

Anybody get a slight chill when the video description of “host” came up?

They need a strong awesome likable HUMAN character that stays alive and has good morals. Many of them died... we need to keep Man in Black (William) Human!! plss I want Stubbs to be human too even if they hinted. Otherwise, if everyone is robots the connection is lost and stop making EVERYONE robots leave some humans there too. Also make sure the story plot is consistent. Thanks!!! I LOVE THIS SHOW!

0:27 "HOST" ... nice touch

Free will is a matter of an interpretation, because subconsciously one decides before hand it doesn't negate the free part of will, it's our subconscious after all, we are not driven by outside forces that dictate what to do, we are driven by a feedback loop that goes back and forth between the conscious an subconscious part. There are decisions which were already taken in the past by the conscious and are instantaneous dealt by unconscious mind because there's no need for it to meddle with it again, like there's no need to consciously drive the car all the time

As an artist and someone who understands the same stories that Lost and Westworld are covering, my biggest concern is that S2 left most of the audience behind. It was a fraction of S1 in terms of score, character, story, execution, etc. S1 monster score, flow, cast, performance, characters. S2 has almost none of that. They left 2/3 of the characters behind, Shogun world was a poorly executed waste of time, they went out of their way to be unnecessarily confusing, and threw in the bigger questions about life/universe in the barely keep you awake. If S3 is like S2 the show will be dead and I’d never like to see that. Lost and Westworld is a masterwork of which all can be understood and explained.

in finale William goes to the elevator and load his gun, where the hell he goes after that? what make him disappear? in time line the time William goes to the elevator is after the Bernard and its before the company crew went down to that level

They look so tired lol

I love when the host (pun intend) makes some crazy comment like "You plan all that to work on the viewer subconsciously" and they are like "What the hell is she talking about?!?" Overinterpretation is always completely silly. They already do so much complex stuff without that being necessary!

So the interview is a (Host)

I love the show only problems I have is the part where people can't change, mauve being almost like a god at parts, and a few things with the man in black but the last one can be because he's my favorite character so I was expecting a little more with him but overall I enjoyed this season.

The lack of consistent and logical plot development (doesn't need for much) is made up for by the music and cinematography, which is better that I've seen in most movies by a distance. Westworld should end sooner rather than later, because there is nothing worse than destroying a beautiful thing.

My theory is this: while we do see at the end of the season Delores telling Berny they are going to be enemies etc this can have happened in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Bernard leave the place he's in and walk right back into Westworld. Because Delores has remade Bernard many times. She even said that. And she is wearing the same dress as at the dinner party. So we know she has been out of the park many times before. And the end credit scene could be just a dream William is having while he recovers. So I think taking it back to WW and weaving another tale through all that we know so far would be a masterful original idea. We haven't really gotten much of Arnold's story so that could he where we go in this new season.

22:30 "Half of it was this dead Genre" "The Western Genre was on it's way out." Uhh, are you sure about that? True Grit, Django Unchained and Hateful 8, The Revenant, "Logan" was essentially a Western. You had Deadwood and 3:10 to Yuma

15:00 Nolan humor :D

12:38-12:57 .....wow they really didn't want to talk about Ramin Djawadi. He's a huge aspect of the show. They seem to love story and how it's shot. Kinda disrespectful to me but I get that it's an interview with the co-creators. But still, give credit where it's due is all I'm saying.

No, "puzzle tv" started with the show "LOST." It became a "puzzle" trying to figure out what the hell the writers were thinking after it was obvious they were "lost."

That's a decent interview................

Koodos Lisa Joy is quite the HOST vessel ... indeed

The Atlantic article he was referring to : www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

someone put time stamps!

For everyone saying that the second season is garbage realize that you're also saying that "Kiksuya" is garbage, and if you believe that then your whole taste in good television material is subject to skepticism.

I had problems suspending disbelief with the guns and bullets. Then ARROWS ??? Arrows are heavy. Arrows need to be fast enough to get anywhere. Arrows are too slow to be certain a human won't wander in their flight path. You cannot make a fake arrow. Arrows have too damn much kinetic energy. Also Abernathy: Abernathy went from holding backup data in season one, data that needed to get out of the park; to holding an encryption key (still data, and more reasonable than "I'll just pour all the park's data in this host") that is needed inside the park to unlock the forge. So a key plot line has just been totally flipped. I am triggered !!!!

Mr Nolan dress sense is similar to his elder brother

is the host wearing a PJ gown?

Loved the show. Still waiting for someone to explain why free will doesn't exist. Is it because our emotions are downstream from electro-chemical reactions?

Don't get me wrong, Westworld is one of the most unique and original shows in history. But what the hell do you do with a story line that roams too much and appears to be lost? When you're never sure who is a "Host" and who is human...it gets a bit too hard to care about (Ed Harris can't be a machine).

His point about "the passenger in part" is a little deficient and I get the feeling the showrunners aren't familiar with the entire scientific literature of free will. While he's right about no free will in extremely short term decisions, there's evidence to show that humans have progressively more free will with farther of into the future decisions. This is because short and long term choices don't use the same mental mechanisms.

Night gown 😜

i feel they dont answer all the questions posed in the show because the writers are not aware we are asking them.

ALL HAIL LISATHAN xxxs

It is a little weird how many parallels between Lisa and Jonathan & Jed and Marissa Whedon exist as show runners for current popular sci-fi television. I love both shows but obviously Westworld is a cut above everything else on TV not based on the works of George R.R. Martin. Still, they are both brilliant young writing couples who are stepping out of the shadow of a more famous Brother/Brother In-Law who helped shape modern science fiction. Perhaps they are a one couple with a shared consciousness in separate host bodies? Hum?

Now, I do not hate the show! As a kid in the 70's I loved the ideas in the original Westworld movie (even though it was cheesy) and was thrilled to see the continuation of this story with the added dimension's this version brings. But then in this season (the 'if one is good and two is better, then hell, 500 will be aweee-sssome!!' trap) it almost became comical at times. I can suspend disbelief...to a point...but to tell me that the hosts who still mainly used rifles and pistols were mowing down what looked to be highly trained, well armed security teams was a bit much. That aspect could have been told a different way to keep the story a lot more believable. And yes, I realize it's just a fictional TV show but that aspect seemed too forced just to show a ton more gore and killing just for the sake of it. I am a fan and hope it does well...and that the number of seasons they eluded to does the story justice in an entertaining, concise and thought provoking way. Hoping it's not another Fonzi ski jumping over a shark tank type of death!

Season 3 we'll be all about VENGEANCE

12:21 Nolan's English accent slips out on "finale"

Is this a dream?

All I want to know is...what happened to Newly Chivalrous Rebus???!

So Lauren Laverne is a HOST

WTF is up with the weird ass camera angle?

Love lost joy's outfit here

Lauren Laverne -Host Freeze all motor functions ... are you serious?

Ok

I would have liked if Mr. Jonathan would have used the term, species instead of creatures,

lauren laverne is a host

She Having a glitch 18:53

The key to salvation can’t be eternity in the matrix.

Sometimes less is more, you know what I mean? In that way season one was more succesful.

The interviewer seems unable to chain through her questions, there's barely any transition into each one, it ends and begins so abruptly.