In case you haven’t heard, Westworld season four began streaming on HBO on June 26. Chinese fans of the Emmy-winning series have been ecstatic to see a familiar face on the show: California-based Chinese American actor and director Daniel Wu.
While Wu is depicted wielding a mean-looking gun in season four’s trailer, little has been revealed about his role.
The sci-fi-meets-western television series, which began airing in 2016, is set in a futuristic amusement park populated with AI robots called ‘hosts.’ Visitors pay a hefty price to interact with these humanoid androids, which serve as pawns for living out their wildest (and often immoral) fantasies.
Previous seasons of Westworld explored the relationship between hosts and humans, especially after the hosts break out of the park and escape into the real world.
Wu, who appears alongside famous actors like Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, and Evan Rachel Wood in the new season, attended the film premiere with his wife Lisa S. and their daughter.
The 47-year-old, who first rose to fame as a model and actor in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, is commonly associated with AMC’s martial arts series Into the Badlands. Wu has also been a vocal advocate for AAPI representation in Hollywood.
On Weibo, fans are stoked for the fourth season and especially for the appearance of Wu. A hashtag for the latest installment of Westworld and Wu’s debut on the show had received more than 48 million views at the time of writing.
One Weibo user commented, “My crush! This handsome guy is getting older, but I still love him. I’m looking forward to his work!”
Some fans hope the appearance of Wu can turn the show around after its last two seasons, which bewildered some viewers.
“Wow! I really like this drama, although the last two seasons were hard to understand. Glad to see Daniel Wu join the show!” a commenter opined.
Whether in films or literature, the sci-fi genre boasts a strong fanbase in China. Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem and The Wandering Earth, Stanley Chen’s The Waste Tide, and the Marvel Universe have received high acclaim from Chinese audiences.
This article was updated at 11 AM on July 2, 2022, to confirm that Daniel Wu now resides in California, not Hong Kong.
Cover image via VCG
