It seemed as if Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of HBO’s Westworld, had given up. No plot twist could ever escape the imagination of theorists, the element of surprise was dead, striving for a spoiler-free television show in 2018 was futile.
Reddit had defeated them. So, like a soon-to-be-exiled employee insisting “You can’t fire me because I quit,” they told their Reddit superfans they would reveal the entire plot of the second season in a 25-minute video, released less than two weeks before its premiere.
You can’t spoil me because I spoil you.
The theory: If all the plot details were known ahead of time, the community’s moderators could potentially squelch any open discussion of them, protecting the rest of the community from stumbling upon the truth. Everyone would get what they wanted.
If such a video were posted, it would upend every viewer expectation of secrecy and surprise in modern television serials. For those who chose to watch the video, spoilers wouldn’t drip out through questionable sources — they’d be confirmed, complete and present top-of-mind throughout the viewing experience.
For those who chose to stay in the dark, every day on the internet would become a more challenging slalom. News sites earnestly dissected the decision to create the video and its implications, while Reddit commenters tied themselves in knots debating whether they’d watch.
But such an industry-changing video wasn’t posted. There were no spoilers.
The video opens with Jeffrey Wright, who plays Bernard and narrates the video, waking up on a beach next to a champagne flute. He says he can’t remember how he got there or what happened, and he’s questioned by park security.
There are bodies littered on the beach, and a gunshot is fired. Bernard rides a train into town — then, 90 seconds into the video, everyone freezes. The camera switches to Angela Sarafyan, who plays Clementine in the show, in front of a piano as a familiar riff starts to play. Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Dolores, appears and softly sings “We’re no strangers to love.” Savvy viewers start to put together what’s going on: It’s all just an elaborate Rickrolling.
The 10-year-old internet prank — tricking people into clicking on a video of the British singer Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song Never Gonna Give You Up — had its heyday but hasn’t been much of a thing for a while now.
The song in the Westworld video is followed by 22 minutes of a dog sitting in front of a piano as the show’s theme plays on a loop.
In a December 2016 interview, Nolan said that he loved the site and that “the theorising was right on target.”
“I was only frustrated when quote-unquote theories, which at a certain point clearly became spoilers, wound up in headlines,” he said. “When those theories have been taken out of a site like Reddit and put into headlines, that’s a bummer.”
The video left the Westworld community on Reddit a very confusing place. Many of the users were playing along, pretending that the video offered actual spoilers.
Some of the commenters who hadn’t watched the video appeared to have no idea they had merely avoided a Rick Astley cover, while those who had seen it were delighted to be in on the joke.
