Don't Worry, Elsie From Westworld Is Still Alive

Oh hey — remember Elsie Hughes? According to Westworld showrunner Lisa Joy, who spoke with Entertainment Weekly, Elsie is very much still alive, and will appear in season 2, despite her empty role in the latter half of season 1.

Elsie, for those who forgot about her, was the behavioral scientist who just disappeared. In episode six, she ventured into the park in search of answers and ran into... something. Or someone. Elsie (played by Shannon Woodward, whom you might recognize from Raising Hope) discovers in a decrepit building in the park evidence that someone named Arnold has been altering the code of first generation hosts. After calling Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) to relay this info, she hears a creak. Then, with a single ominous chord, Elsie was swiftly escorted offscreen and out-of-mind for the rest of the season. Later, we lost another character, Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), to a mysterious force — Stubbs was captured by hosts when he went looking for Elsie.

Stubbs and Elsie's ousting looked suspicious, given the highly-publicized rewrite that occurred midway through Westworld's first season. Elsie's death looked like collateral damage, the unfortunate result of having to trim down an ambitious show in the middle of production.

But, both are still around, and they're going to appear in the second season, which will debut April 18.

“[Elsie and Stubbs are] finally getting to experience Westworld as guests and not in the managerial halls, but I’m not sure they’re enjoying their experience," Joy told EW.

So, despite having dropped off the face of the park for four episodes, Elsie and Stubbs are still around. (The rumors are true: If you don't see the character actually die on screen, they cannot be dead.) Now that the hosts are effectively running the park, Stubbs and Elsie represent a shrinking cohort of real humans who need to fight to survive. In the show's first season finale, the hosts staged a massacre right in the middle of a gala for the board of Delos. A lot of humans died. The hosts, presumably, are now running Westworld, a theory supported by Westworld's creepy website that launched late last year. The website featured a video loop of an interface titled "Delos," where an unknown user wrote, "Is anybody out there? Something's gone wrong. We need help." Then, the screen rebooted, and a registered user wrote, "All is well." Translation: The humans are struggling to make contact with the world outside the park, and the hosts are doing their best to override it.

According to Joy, a few key humans did survive the massacre, like Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman). Both are at the mercy of the hosts, who are running the ball game this time around. So, Elsie, Stubbs, Charlotte, and Lee may all be alive, but that doesn't mean they'll stay that way.