If there’s one thing I could live without entirely, it’s fan theories about TV shows on the internet. Since most fans have no background in writing, they usually come up with insane plot twists reolving around minutia that no one would notice, usually accompanied by a back-pat for being the only person clever enough to notice the “hidden messages” left by the creators who didn’t actually leave them.
One of my favorites (because it’s so terrible) is a fan theory from the show Rick and Morty that posits that three full episodes of the show followed a Rick and Morty from a parallel universe for no reason and is based on the theory’s creator not understanding a joke at the end of a second-season episode.
For one show, however, one of the biggest fan theories turned out to be true. That show is Westworld and the theory was that some parts of the show, presented as if they were taking place in the show’s present, were actually flashbacks that had taken place decades earlier.
The creators of the show discussed fan theories at SXSW and, according to Esquire, have a plan to “f**k with Reddit” and disseminate fake fan theories during season 2.
We’re figuring out how to sort of interact with that in the second season. A somewhat controversial plan that we’re working on; we’ll have an announcement about it in a couple weeks. It’s incredibly gratifying to see people put that much work—not just into deciphering the season, but the fan art and music. The creativity you see coming back at you when you’re making one of these things is extraordinary.
Yeah, that’s what we need, the creators of TV shows going on Reddit and spewing a bunch of bullshit to protect their plot twists. As if Reddit isn’t completely capable of coming up with a bunch of bullshit on their own.