‘Westworld’ Season 3 Adds Lena Waithe, Won’t Air Until 2020
By Ben Pearson/April 15, 2019 1:30 pm EST
But after a frustrating second season, the show is making all the right moves to hook me all over again. Multi-hyphenate Lena Waithe (Ready Player One) has joined the cast for Westworld season 3, which will air on the premium cable channel sometime in 2020.
According to Deadline, Lena Waithe “will appear” on Westworld during its third season, though the extent of her participation remains unclear. Is she just dropping by for one episode, or is she going to be a new series regular? The former seems more likely at this point, since announcements like these, even if they’re light on details, typically contain information about a performer’s status on a show.
Waithe is the first black woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, taking home the prize for her work on the season one Master of None episode “Thanksgiving,” which featured her character coming out of the closet to her family. She got her start working as an assistant to Ava DuVernay, and eventually worked became a writer on shows like Bones and Transparent. She produced the 2014 movie Dear White People (and continues to be a close collaborator with DWP writer/director Justin Simien), she’s the showrunner of the BET series Boomerang, and she created and executive produces the Showtime original series The Chi. Plus, Waithe wrote and is producing Queen + Slim, a provocative new movie hitting theaters this November. This woman is everywhere.
Waithe will join fellow new recruit Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) in Westworld season 3, which – spoilers for season 2 ahead – will follow the Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores inhabiting the body of a host robot replica of Tessa Thompson’s character Charlotte Hale. It’s implied that the action is going to shift away from the Delos theme parks and the hosts are going to infiltrate the “real world,” drastically changing the scope of the show.
