Westworld was an absolute delight, bolstered with an intriguing narrative about androids hosting a Wild West-themed amusement park, where high-paying guests can decide to play the role of the good guy, or indulge in their wildest fantasies and become black hats.
It’s a sci-fi thing to be jam-packed with mysterious hints, subtle foreshadowing, and cryptic messages, and HBO’s genre-blending epic is no exception. Eagle-eyed fans revelled in the thrill of picking them up, and they did a good job with detailed analyses and highly-reasonable fan theories.
One little mystery was never quite solved, though. In the season finale, a small section labelled with the initials ‘SW’ made its appearance in a room of traditional sword-swinging Japanese hosts. Up to date, the most common guess remains to be “Samurai World” for obvious reasons.
Turns out it’s not so much Samurai World, but Shogun World instead – or ShogunWorld, if it takes after one-word ‘SHOGUNWORLD’ naming convention in Westworld‘s finale script.
This name drop comes after a second-season trailer release at Super Bowl LII, in which little to no information were revealed. Now that it’s been known to be Shogun World, it does make the park name sound more elegant and authentic.
It’s fitting, too; after all, “Shogun” is a term applied to military commanders in feudal Japan, and what better descriptor to use for Japanese warriors-in-training than that?
Regarding the decision to include this mysterious new park that’s set to open up the Westworld universe, showrunners Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy talked about the influence of highly-acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, and the opportunity to tap into Asian talents:
(Nolan) The reason we went with the shogun, Imperial Japanese motif for that world is in large part because of the beautiful relationship you had between the golden age Westerns and the golden age samurai films. As soon as Akira Kurosawa would make a film, it would get remade with cowboys. The idea that those stories worked in two very distinct genres and languages, and the relationship between those genres, to me was irresistible as an homage to how Kurosawa was responsible for some of the greatest Westerns of all time.
(Joy) It’s wonderful to work with actors we haven’t worked with before. This allows us a lot of access to Asian actors and the Asian community, which is very important to me as part-Asian myself.
Between these words, and HBO’s earlier image tease on social image – possibly representing a region in a simulated version of Japan – it seems viewers can anticipate the dawn of a new time in the feudal Japan-themed land.
Apart from Shogun World and Westworld itself, five other Delos Incorporated-owned theme parks are said to be featured as well, though information remains on the hush-hush on that front.
Well, there’s only one sure way to find out, and that’s to catch season two of Westworld when it comes to HBO on April 22, 2018 and in Asia on the 23rd!
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Natalie
