‘Westworld’ season 3: Everything about the new parks
Westworld debuted its long awaited third season on Sunday, March 15. With the debut, we’ve seen more of the regular world in the 2050s and yet another world within the park. Over the course of the series, we’ve seen Westworld (duh), Shogunworld (modelled after Edo period Japan), and The Raj (modelled after British Crown rule over the Indian subcontinent).
In season three premiere, audiences were introduced to Warworld, based on War World II. If you’re curious about this new park, then here’s everything we know about it.
Warworld?
Warworld is based on Nazi-occupied Italy during World War II and is the new home for Thandie Newton’s character, Maeve. Series co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan said to IndieWire on the decision to make Warworld that it stemmed from imagining the cultural attitudes 30 years from now.
“We’re a moment culturally where the meaning of that conflict, the meaning of the rise of fascism in the 20th century, the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazis is being eroded and subverted and perverted and, frankly in very frightening ways, turned into a fucking video game.”
Nolan went on to say, “So many villains in film and television are likened to Nazis. Who better to kick the shit out of? So it’s a commentary on a number of different levels, but it proved irresistible. Honestly, in that sort of queasy way, it felt like an inevitability that that would be one of the parks.”
There was a different plan for Warworld
Rather than have the focus of Warworld be on World War II, it was going to be the Spanish Civil War and be nicknamed Hemingworld, named after the famed author. The joke had been going on in the writers’ room for a while. They actually had some things for Hemingworld planned out.
Nolan said, “We first set the conflict in the Spanish Civil War. It was rooted in a joking idea in the room from way back, of one of the parks being called Hemingworld. Drinking at the Hotel Nacional in Habana Vieja, then take your fishing boat out on the Keys, but then also go to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War and fight the fascists.”
So why was Hemingworld scrapped?
Sometimes, you have to kill your darlings in the television industry. While the writers’ room absolutely loved the idea of Hemingworld, they couldn’t justify people in 2050 caring about the Spanish Civil War or Hemmingway all that much. Eventually, the writers’ room turned their attention on making Warworld into World War II where you punch all the Nazis that you want.
