The second season of HBO’s Westworld will premiere on April 22nd, which means it’s time for a new trailer — and this afternoon, the network announced one was coming in an unorthodox fashion. At 8PM ET / 5PM PT, the feeds for all HBO and Cinemax channels “glitched out” simultaneously, airing a brief teaser clip with footage from the upcoming episodes, while promising that the full trailer will arrive on Thursday, March 29th, at 11AM ET / 8AM PT.
The clip is short, interspersed with digital noise and lines of computer code that will undoubtedly soon be analyzed by the show’s rabid Reddit fanbase. But the footage itself is intriguing. There are glimpses of heavily armed security forces, presumably from Delos, Inc., landing on a mysterious beach; a shot of Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard on a cliff, staring off in confusion; and a shot of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), striding purposefully while firing her pistol with nary a flinch. And underneath it all, Ed Harris as The Man in Black intoning, “They wanted a place hidden from God. A place they could sin in peace. We had something else in mind entirely.”
The first season of Westworld ended with the hosts essentially staging a robot uprising — with the help of the late Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) — and from everything that’s been revealed thus far, the hosts are still very much on the attack. Judging from this brief teaser, however, it looks like Delos, Inc. will be doing its best to fight back. Tomorrow’s trailer may offer a better idea of just how well the corporation is able to do in that fight.