Westworld season 2 finale: Is someone leaving the show?

Within the world of Westworld, can you ever say goodbye to someone for good? That is a worthy question to ask in the wake of Sunday’s finale.

For the time being, though, it seems as though Elsie is gone, as the character was killed off on Sunday’s extended episode. She had a powerful story across the two seasons that was thematically important, and it showed both the similarities and differences between her and some other characters. Her memory lives on, even if she does not.

In speaking on the subject of the character, and Shannon Woodward’s exit, to Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Jonathan Nolan had the following to say:

Shannon Woodward is a phenomenal actor and lovely person and we had a fantastic experience working with her and would relish the opportunity to work with her again. This show is about mortality and immortality and there’s never any real saying goodbye. Elsie’s story through the season underlines the challenges for the hosts — even if they find allies among the humans they’re still speaking to each other across this great divide. There’s a horrifying moment between Elsie and Bernard in the finale where you realize she has respect and affection for Bernard but she’s right that he’s not fully in control. The challenge for the hosts is that when dealing with humanity — even if somebody like Elsie is sympathetic for Bernard — they’re fundamentally different. Elsie, in this case, has underestimated the cravenness of her fellow humans.

Basically, our read into this is that it doesn’t seem as though Elsie is going to be coming back — and, for the sake of this show, there does still be some sense of loss in this world even if things are fairly hyper-realized. If you create too much of a revolving-door effect it eliminates the sense of stakes.

Nonetheless, it does feel like this character won’t be truly gone from anyone’s mind in season 3, no matter when it premieres. Head over here to get some further speculation on that.

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