Westworld Is Returning Way Sooner Than Expected & We Already Have Theories

This is way bigger than any football game: Westworld season 2 is returning April 22, which is a hop, skip, and two months away. HBO released the first full trailer for the show's second season during last night's game — which I guess some people cared about? — along with the official release date.

This release date is news because Westworld's second season had, in the year since the season one finale, become like getting coffee with a childhood friend: There was a lot of talk about doing it, but no one really expected it to happen. We knew the release date was somewhere in the year 2018, but no matter what happened, the prospect of another season seemed distant.

Yes, there were newsy tidbits every now and then. In August, Entertainment Weekly announced that Betty Gabriel (the scene-stealing grandmother in Get Out) would be joining the cast alongside Gustaf Skarsgård, and Fares Fares. We also had exciting behind-the-scenes Instagrams from Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden to analyze.

Westworld is one of those shows that unfolds in two places: on our screens and on Reddit. And, now that we have a release date for the second season, the Reddit boards are right back at it. One Redditor theorizes that Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Dolores (Wood) will assume the role of the "humans" in the new, robot-led Westworld. Then, the season will replicate what happened before; absolute power corrupts absolutely, after all.

"We can save this world," Dolores says in the trailer as chaos erupts in Westworld. "We can burn it to the ground, and from the ashes, build a new world. Our world."

The trailer actually shows very little that amounts to new information — most of it features the destruction of Westworld, set to Kanye West's song "Runaway." There are other speculated aspects of season two that did not appear in the trailer, such as Samurai World, which appeared in the final moments of season one.

Alas, with the theories and the speculation comes misdirection. Westworld loves to trick its viewers, and it's apparently already doing so: The Hollywood Reporter reported that HBO filmed scenes specifically for the promo, so some of this trailer footage might not even appear in season two at all. So, that elegant shot of Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) placing a hand on the glass might not even be part of the next season. With Westworld, it's impossible to know the truth.

One thing is clear, though: This season is all about the women. The trailer focuses primarily on Maeve and Dolores, the leading hosts, and Tessa Thompson, who plays executive director of the Delos board Charlotte Hale, told ELLE.com in September that the second season would be very "feminist."

"I think [the women] rule the world in the park this season. It’s kind of all about the women," she said. But still! This didn't mean we had a release date, and after the emotional turmoil of waiting for the final season of Game of Thrones, we knew better than to raise our expectations.

Most importantly, though, this means that we have two months to re-watch the first season, scouring the show for details. Here's to April 22 — watch the full trailer, below.