'Westworld' Season 2 Trailer Travels to Samurai World, and It's Intense

The violent delights of Westworld are traveling east, to Shogun World. In the Season 2 trailer of HBO’s ambitious sci-fi series Westworld, the sentient hosts of the lavish Old West theme park are bringing their revolution to another park, Shogun World, a sister park to Westworld and a playground themed after medieval Japan.

On Thursday, HBO released the trailer for Season 2 of Westworld, which gives a generous glimpse at the samurai-themed Shogun World. There are legions of samurai armies and close-up shots of an unnamed geisha host. Also in the trailer, Delores (Evan Rachel Wood) leads a group of hosts who are now aware of their existence as servants to the human guests’ whims. Jeffrey Wright also returns as Bernard, who — spoilers! — is a host himself, and continues his one-on-one talks with Delores. Elsewhere, Delos is in disarray, with so many dead bodies lying around wrecked control centers.

Shogun World is a similar park to Westworld that’s set in Edo Japan. It was teased as “Samurai World” at the very end of Season 1, as the park’s hosts started to wake up while Delos engineers ran tests on some samurai. In the 1973 film, the other known “worlds” were Romanworld and Medievalworld, which series co-creator Jonathan Nolan confirmed at New York Comic Con in 2016 would not appear in Season 2.

Like the main Westworld park, Shogun World appears to be a comprehensive recreation of Edo Japan, a period of Japanese history marked by prosperous growth (and isolationism) between 1603 and 1868 under the Tokugawa shogunate. Just as Westworld is like old western movies come to life, so will Shogun World, which would attract any Akira Kurosawa fan with lots (and lots) of money to burn.

The inclusion of Shogun World expands Westworld’s “universe” while the actual humans from Delos will probably try to regroup and take back control of the park. As the gunslingers of Westworld journey to a land ruled by swords, there could be agreement — or conflict — between two different worlds.

Westworld Season 2 will premiere April 22 on HBO.