Jonathan Nolan teases that Westworld season 2 is going to be twice as ambitious as its first. In an era where it seems like great, game-changing TV shows are now forced to consistently compete with other great, game-changing TV shows, few series managed to land with quite the same kind of splash as Westworld did with its first season last year. Based on Michael Crichton's 1973 film of the same name, and adapted for the small screen by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Westworld pushed the limits of its scope and traditional, narrative storytelling concepts in a way that few other shows ever had, with more cinematic-level visuals and performances than audiences may have been prepared for going into it.

While Westworld garnered its fair share of naysayers throughout the run of its first season as well, the overall consensus seemed to be that Westworld had proven itself worthy of its own hype. The series managed to break records for HBO with its freshman run, and its season one finale left viewers on the edge of their seats, waiting to find out just what would happen next.

Unfortunately, it's common knowledge at this point that they'll have to wait until 2018 for Westworld to return. But in a new interview with Variety, Nolan promises that the wait will prove to be worth it in the end, teasing just how exponentially the scope and stakes of the series will continue to grow in its sophomore season:

“It’s an ambitious season. We always knew that we wanted the stakes and the scope to increase dramatically and that means the scale of production increases as well. We have an amazingly talented group of writers, directors, and crew coming back and gearing up for what I think and what I hope will prove to be a season twice as ambitious as the first one.”

Westworld - Horsewoman

Considering that Westworld took place in an environment that was larger than almost any other TV show in history, and even went so far as to have multiple different timelines running all at once, it's hard to imagine just how much more ambitious it could get. But at the same time, it was clear from the show's season one finale alone, that things were going to get much, much bigger from here on out, with the introduction of multiple different parks and simulated worlds in season two.

So if Westworld can manage to expand both physically and narratively in a way that's satisfying on both counts, then the show's second season could very well prove to be an even bigger success than its first. After all, one of the biggest complaints some fans and critics had about the first season, was that it didn't feel like much really happened until the season finale, which means it'll be interesting to see just how Nolan and Joy plan on maintaining the momentum created by the season finale's final moments. With the park's robots finally achieving their own form of sentience and authority, the possibilities, narratively that the second season has are almost limitless. Now, all that's left to be seen, is which routes Nolan and Joy decide to take from those choices, and whether or not they prove to be the right ones in the end.

NEXT: Westworld Season 2 Premiere Title (Partly) Revealed

Westworld season 2 premieres on HBO in 2018.

Source: Variety