‘Westworld’ Season 2 Spoilers: Jeffrey Wright Breaks Down Bernard’s Multiple Timelines

The first episode back into “Westworld” Season 2 seemed to focus on Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and his deteriorating health.

He also appeared to be jumping from one timeline to another - first talking to a very timid Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), then hunting down hosts in the park, and running for his life in the aftermath of the host takeover.

But why is the storyline built that way? Wright told Esquire that Bernard is a broken machine, so his timeline is a mess. “This season, Bernard is struggling with the basics of himself - meaning his relationship to time, his relationship to space. His cognitive abilities have been adversely affected by a bullet glancing off the hard drive,” he said. “He’s got some real challenges to overcome just in terms of perceiving the world around him, and that’s compounded by the world around him falling apart. That has its challenges and it forces the performance to focus on the immediate granular moment.”

At the same time, Wright said Bernard is experiencing memories as a machine and not as a human. As a machine, his memories are stored in close proximity to what he perceives as the present.

“Unlike humans, it allows us some interesting exploration regarding his relationship to time,” he continued. “We’ll begin to walk down that strange path with him as the season goes forward.”

It also looked like Bernard is struggling with his affiliation with humans and hosts. For so long, Bernard thought that he’s a real human being and not a host. So when that revelation sunk in during the first season, he was devastated. Wright said that Bernard would have to fix himself up first before choosing to pick a side.

“He’s not going to be able to side with either host or human until he can patch up his fluid leaks and some other matters. That’s his first order of business. And as the season proceeds, he’ll try to begin to make a decision of where he sits in the overall upheaval of the world,” he said.

“Westworld” Season 2 premiered on April 22 on HBO.