'Westworld' Must-See Moment: Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris Prepare for a Showdown 

'Westworld' Must-See Moment: Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris Prepare for a Showdown

The two veteran actors will face off for the first time in Sunday's new episode of the genre-bending thriller.

Westworld. The Man in Black (Ed Harris) aims to break it. At the center of their conflict: a third party, Arnold, the park's co-creator who died long ago, and has long since been forgotten — if only by the history books.

The two flesh-and-blood figures, as well as the ghost that haunts them both, are finally set to share the stage together in the coming episode of the HBO series. While every fan hoped that an on-screen collision between legendary actors Hopkins and Harris was inevitable, most of those fans likely expected them to meet for the first time in the finale, or later in the season — making their upcoming scene at the midpoint of the show's first season all the more anticipated.

In a preview for the episode, called "Contrapasso," Ford and the still unnamed Man in Black sit at a table across from one another, with another gun-slinging party in play: Teddy (James Marsden), recently recovered by the Man in his pursuit of "the deepest level of the game."

"Have you made a worthy adversary," asks the Man. "Someone to stop me from finding the center of the maze?"

"And what are you hoping to find there?" Ford shoots back. The Man slowly looks upward, and offers a cold reply: "Something true."

Whatever else happens in the conversation, it's certain to take a tense turn: the trailer ends with the Man in Black raising a knife toward Ford, only for Teddy to interfere, grabbing the Man by the arm and slamming the knife down into the tabletop. It'll take a lot more than a simple blade if the Man in Black wants to take a shot at Westworld's very own deity. 

The scene between the Man in Black and Robert Ford isn't just anticipated because it brings Harris and Hopkins together for the first time in the show's run, but also because it stands to either answer or complicate some of the show's central mysteries — and, really, it's almost certainly the latter option. But as was the case with

Lost, which shares Bad Robot blood in common with the new HBO show, Westworld is at its best when it's lobbing mysteries into the air for its fans to ponder endlessly — and any mystery put forth by titans such as Harris and Hopkins will certainly be worth exploring all the way to the center of the maze.

Follow THR's Westworld coverage for interviews, news and analysis.

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