Prestige drama television is becoming a small world. Jon Hamm is guest-narrating on this season of FX’s Legion; Ann Down departed from The Leftovers to The Handmaid’s Tale; the entire cast of The Wire has filled out the IMDb pages of many other critically-acclaimed shows; and now on Sunday’s episode of Westworld, “Reunion,” television got one of its biggest crossovers yet. Esposito spoke to The Hollywood Reporter this week to explain how this all came about. As it turns out, most TV showrunners are fans of the same shows that TV watchers are. El Lazo was initially “played” by a host named Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.), but with Lawrence now playing permanent lackey and sidekick to William on his many maze-related adventures, the park apparently decided they needed a new host to portray El Lazo. And good thing they did because now Giancarlo Esposito is even more firmly entrenched in TV history. Sadly, Esposito’s appearance seems to be little more than a cameo, as shortly after William and Lawrence come across El Lazo, he and his whole cadre of bandits commit suicide. William needed an army to get out of Westworld and complete the next step of Robert Ford’s grand game. Robert, however, wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “I have my senses that it’s a possibility this character has great potential and I’ll be back,” he says. “We hope! But we don’t know. We’ll see what our creators think and what HBO thinks, but I certainly would love the opportunity. I think this is it for season two…but, again, you never know. [Laughs.] I’ll leave you there. You never know!” That’s a shame but at least we finally got to see Gus Fring as an actual robot, harkening back to that amazing Breaking Bad moment in which it seemed he might be a Terminator model. Also, there is an extra layer of irony for fans of Dan Harmon’s Community, as Esposito appeared as a “big bad” (for at leat an episode) in that as Chevy Chase’s half-brother, Gilbert Lawson. There he tried to steal Chase’s character’s inheritance via a VR video game simulation. But given how terrible Chase’s Pierce Hawthorne is as person in that show, we couldn’t help but root for him there too.
