‘Westworld’ Season 2 Spoilers: Name For Samurai World Revealed

After months of teasing about the new and unexplored parks of “Westworld” Season 2, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have finally revealed what they plan to officially call the Samurai World.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, that new park will be called “Shogun World,” although there are still some debate going on about the word spacing. Both “Shogunworld” and “ShogunWorld” are being pitched, but nothing has been decided yet.

Nolan earlier said they decided to go with a Japanese theme park because it is a good complement to the cowboys and guns theme. “The reason we went with the shogun, Imperial Japanese motif for that world is in large part because of the beautiful relationship you had between the golden age Westerns and the golden age samurai films,” said Nolan.

“As soon as Akira Kurosawa would make a film, it would get remade with cowboys. The idea that those stories worked in two very distinct genres and languages, and the relationship between those genres, to me was irresistible as an homage to how Kurosawa was responsible for some of the greatest Westerns of all time,” he added.

At the same time, his wife Joy added that incorporating the shogun world gave them a chance to work with a variety of actors and open up the doors for racial diversity in Hollywood. “This allows us a lot of access to Asian actors and the Asian community, which is very important to me as part-Asian myself,” she said.

In Season 1, fans were already introduced to Felix Lutz (Leonardo Nam), the compassionate lab technician in Westworld who helped Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) break free. Nam is very proud to take part in a show that welcomes actors of different backgrounds.

Even while auditioning, Nam said he appreciated the fact that “Westworld” did not limit its cast to just one race. “When I was in the audition room, you saw all walks of life there. They were casting multiple roles at once, you didn't know what they were going to do or how they were going to go,” Nam told NBC News. “When I finally did see the cast and was on set, it really reinforced what I had thought and hoped from the beginning — that this was something special.”

Nam said that Hollywood can embrace diversity just as long as writers adopt an open mind with their characters and let actors audition for roles regardless of their ethnicity.

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