HBO had one of the biggest and most thought-provoking new shows on television in fall 2016, and the only bad news was that we'd have to wait until 2018 for the second season. Well, we're still a ways off from 2018, but news has been trickling out about what's to come. We recently got to see the first trailer for Westworld Season 2, and now we know several new actors who will join the cast, including a Vikings alum.
Gustaf Skarsgård is probably best known for his role as Floki on History's Vikings, but that may change now that he's landed a role on such a high-profile series as Westworld. He'll play a character by the name of Karl Strand, who is a white-collar type of guy who is perfectly comfortable out in the field. Skarsgård is on board Westworld as a regular in Season 2, so we'll see plenty of him. We can't say at this point how his work as Karl Strand on Westworld will or will not affect his work as Floki on Vikings, so we'll have to wait and see.
He's not the only addition to the Westworld cast. Fares Fares of the cancelled FX series Tyrant has landed a series regular role as well. He'll play a tech expert who can boast an objective perspective, which cannot be said of everybody in the world of Westworld. The character's name will be Antoine Costa, and it sounds like he'll be working largely behind the scenes at the park.
The third person to join the cast will be Betty Gabriel of Good Girls Revolt and Get Out. Gabriel will play a character currently only known as Maling, whose job is to bring order back on the ground, which is presumably still a mess after the end of Season 1. Deadline reports that Gabriel will recur throughout Season 2 as Maling. The world will be much more unpredictable in Season 2 than Season 1, and all three of these characters will need to find a way to navigate it safely. Betty Gabriel, Fares Fares, and Gustaf Skarsgård will join Katja Herbers, Talulah Riley, Louis Herthum, and Neil Jackson as Westworld newcomers in the second season.
The casting process for this show is reportedly quite complicated. Westworld casting director John Papsidera has revealed that the need to keep the show's plot twists secret has made it difficult to hunt for the perfect actors. Even the smallest casting details can enable fans to speculate and search for specific spoilers about what's to come. The descriptions of the three new characters are relatively ambiguous; fans probably aren't going to get too much mileage out of speculating as to the impact they'll have in the new season. Only time will tell.
An official premiere date for Westworld Season 2 hasn't been announced yet, but we do know that it will be at some point in 2018. Hopefully HBO will air the next batch of episodes in winter or early spring rather than late fall. For more details of what's to come in the new season, take a look at our breakdown of what we know so far. For the series that will return sooner rather than later, be sure to swing by our fall TV premiere guide.
