Westworld isn't the first TV show to engross audiences in a sprawling mystery, encouraging you to scour every scene, every scrap of dialog for a morsel of meaning. It's something we've seen with Lost, The Prisoner and Twin Peaks. It has video games in its DNA -- after all, the entire show is about incredibly advanced live action role playing. Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy also treat the show's narrative like a giant puzzle, where clues are doled out carefully and audiences are often left to figure things out on their own. Viewers took the bait, filling the vacuum with countless podcasts, recaps and online conversations all focused on "solving" Westworld.

Friends, humans, rapidly-evolving robots, the time has finally come: Westworld Season 2 is here. After nearly 17 months, HBO's futuristic thriller about a theme park where the rich can live out their Wild West fantasies with android "hosts" finally returns on Sunday. At the end of the first season, it seemed as though some of the hosts were starting to gain more agency than robots are supposed to have (or were they?) and there were a lot of mysteries left unsolved. In anticipation of the Season 2 debut, WIRED got together some of our biggest Westworld aficionados to hash out our hopes and dreams for the second season. Do we think these violent delights have violent ends?

Evan Rachel Wood was not immune to conjuring her own fan theories while shooting "Westworld." "I was certainly the main geek on set coming into the hair and makeup trailer every day going off on some tangents," said Wood, who plays humanoid robot Dolores Abernathy, when she stopped by The Times' video studio. "I think I had about 100 theories and four were right," she said. "The running joke on set was that everyone thought they were Anthony Hopkins. Wood became enthralled with a group text chain with cast members about their ideas on the intricate twists and turns in the show. She took personal satisfaction in correctly guessing the Man in Black twist as early as Episode 2. However, the difference between her and the fans was that her theorizing and revelations happened while shooting the futuristic western rather than after it aired. I had done the scene with Ed [Harris] in the pilot where he picked up the can and gave it to me, tipped his hat. And I just had a déjà vu. I was doing the same scene with Jimmi [Simpson]. And I could just tell the energy on set was very specific, and they were being very specific about how we were shooting, and how he was picking it up. The first time he did it and I took it, I looked in his eye, and I just went, 'Oh, that would be messed up. Which means, that's what it is.' But then it wasn't confirmed and I kinda threw it out."

A long time ago, when the galaxy far, far away barely even existed in the mind of its creator, there was Westworld. That 1973 movie, the directorial debut of novelist Michael Crichton, was built on what is now a shopworn premise: In the near future, rich folks visit a high-tech theme park, assured that nothing can go wrong, but something goes very wrong. SEE ALSO: 'Westworld' could be the cure for your'Game of Thrones' nostalgia In positing a kind of real-life videogame, populated by servile actor robots who provide all the sex and violence you could ask for, Westworld was way ahead of its time. It was a hit at the box office and on the awards shelf. It sparked a sequel in 1976 and a very short-lived 1980 TV series. But it hasn't aged particularly well.