Two hidden trailers for Westworld season 3 have been uncovered on a viral marketing website for the HBO series. Fans are eager to return to creators’ Johnathon Nolan and Lisa Joy’s puzzle-filled adaptation of a novel by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton. The new season has been teased out in small doses, mostly through a website for Incite, Inc, a fictional company from the world of the series.
Westworld follows the android uprising at a futuristic theme park where the lifelike robots are indistinguishable from the humans they service. The robots, called hosts in the show, start to achieve sentience thanks to a program written into their code by the park’s founder Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins). Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is one of the first hosts to come unraveled by her newfound sentience, eventually leading a revolt that begins with Ford’s assassination. A trailer for season 3 was released in late February, revealing Dolores’ quest for freedom will bring her in direct conflict with another powerful host, Thandie Newton’s Maeve.
A few days after the first trailer, two secret trailers containing new footage were discovered on the Incite, Inc website by a Reddit user MTC_Chickpea. The trailers are hosted on two unlisted YouTube links, and both contain shots and dialogue not revealed in the first trailer. MTC_Chickpea uncovered the secret trailers by going to the Incite website, clicking on the “my privacy” tab, and then using a VPN with a clean browser history to get a different trailer. You can watch them both below:
The first thing that sets the trailers apart from the officially released version is their names, “Your World” and “Free Will Is Not Free.” In the latter, the focus is on the impending violence, pain, and trauma facing the characters in the third season. New shots of Aaron Paul’s Caleb, Ed Harris’ Man In Black, and more are intercut with title cards expressing grim proclamations, like “escape is not freedom” and “death is not dissent.”
Meanwhile, “Your World” opens exactly like the officially released trailer, with narration from Dolores. However, at the 1:18 mark, the trailer diverges from the original. Instead of a chilling Guns N Roses cover, the show’s creepy score kicks in on the soundtrack. “You’ve turned a young man before, haven’t you,” Mauve asks, “unleashed the darkness inside of him. Whoever he is, he can’t save you now.” We’re treated to a few more action scenes teasing the showdown between man and machine, before hearing Aaron Paul ask why Dolores picked him. Her unsettling answer warns him that humans were free until we tried to build a God. “Only that thing you built isn’t God. The real Gods are coming,” she cautions, “And they’re very angry.”
Based on the three trailers, it sure does seem like Dolores and Mauve have left the theme park behind. Paul’s Caleb is somehow pulled into the fight for machine independence, seemingly recruited by a vengeful Dolores. Or maybe the whole thing is just another, even larger, elaborate theme park. Westworld‘s eight-episode third season will reveal all when it premieres March 15, 2020, on HBO.
