Westworld is one of those shows which is hard to
recap because you almost want to quote every word because nearly every speech
has so much nuance
Take our opening scene with Arnold and Delores having a conversation about a dozen or so different things at once.
But after all that
setting it up we now have Bernard waking up on the beach to see an army of
people moving in. Stubbs, the former security head, is the only familiar face
and everything is under the control of Karl Strand, a Delos big wig with a
small army of men. We also have one of the big mysteries solved - where is
Westworld? Well we have actual soldiers from an actual government wanting to
find out what is happening only to be given their marching orders by Strand
because apparently their government gave them possession of this island and
complete rights over it. Even in the case of massacres apparently
So Westworld is an
island - and we hear there are 6 more parks on this island as well because some
creatures (like a tiger) are crossing borders). What we do see a lot this
episode is a lot more blurring of lines between the humans and the hosts - we
see this from Karl as well. His men are rounding up hosts and shooting them.
And yes I expected
them to destroy the hosts. But this isn’t how you deal with malfunctioning
equipment. This isn’t even how you deal with equipment that you’re scrapping.
Especially very expensive equipment - and doubly so when it’s resilient. After
all, from a practical point of view, hosts are designed for two things: to be
super realistic and to be killed repeatedly. Any competent designer would make
them resilient and easily repaired - especially when facing bullet wounds which
in an old west park happens a LOT. Gathering them together and shooting them?
Not a clever way to destroy them. But it is how you kill a human enemy...
Bernard is having
something of an amnesia incident which Karl really needs him to get over,
especially when they examine one of the host’s memories and find that Delores
is the one killing everyone - human and host alike. Which rather confuses the
tech because Delores is the nice welcoming face and she has gone waaaay further
off script than hosts are supposed to.
So let’s have some flashbacks. Bernard and a group of expendable extras and Charlotte. She thinks that This is all set up by Ford as an elaborate suicide and doesn’t buy Bernard’s theory that the hosts are acting on their own free will. They try to escape, killing one pretty innocent host, finding other hosts torturing and killing humans and the extras all eventually walk into a trap and are slaughtered by former members of Wyatts gang who are now following Delories.
That leaves Bernard
and Charlotte to find one of Charlotte’s secret Delos bases. Inside are deeply
deeply creepy drone hosts who are doing disturbing experiments harvesting guest
DNA and experiences from hosts… which to me means either a) blackmail or b)
scarily accurate clone hosts used to replace people in the real world and do
Delos’s bidding. Both makes Delos scary.
Charlotte seeks a
rescue but her bosses don’t really give a shit about her - they want the host
she uploaded all the secret data on. Until she delivers that, no rescue. But
Bernard knows tricks which will help her track this Host (Delores’s father)
down.
But he’s also having
problems. During the escape he was… wounded?Damaged? Basically his brain is
cracked and he needs to inject himself with more host brain goo to keep
functioning. This could be a problem and introduce a weird serial killer
storyline.
And from here we have
Delores.
I think one of the
main questions on this season is less “who is a host and who is human” but how
awake are various hosts? Like we’ve seen Rebus, a rather nasty host, killing
humans in torturous ways - is he awake and seeking revenge or just following
his programming to be a nasty mid-level bad guy who just sees humans as other
hosts now?
Or we have the
innocent stablehand boy so deep in his code he’s offering happy horsey rides to
people covered in blood and cowering in terror. Even with the park fully
running that kind of obliviousness to external stimuli would never pass muster
for a host.
And then there’s Delores.
And I approve of the fact that one of the first things Delores does, beyond
kill many people and torment them and generally being super super scary, is lay
out her consciousness. She, Bernard and Maeve are perhaps the only hosts we
know have broken their code - and there’s still doubt with Maeve and maybe
Bernard. She lays it out, she remembers every one of her lives: she remembers
the role of the innocent, good-seeing farmer’s daughter. She remembers her role
of the cruel, murderous Wyatt. But they are roles, and what has grown now is
neither of these personalities, it’s something else. It’s her. I like that
she’s not even saying her new self is a combination of those roles - she’s
saying she remembers those roles but they’re NOT HER. She, herself, as a fully
realised person, is a completely separate entity from the roles she played.
Allegedly… I think
the test will be when she meets Charlotte’s lost host - her father. And she is
still forged by the lifetimes of rape, torture and death she’s endured
Teddy is another
character whose code is in doubt. Is he awake and aware? Or is he just utterly
devoted to Delores which is pretty much the central theme of his code? He is
also basically good and not entirely happy with Delores slaughtering and
tormenting everyone. But she has a plan - she describes monsters that live
among them (humans) which must be stopped if they’re to be free. And they can’t
just make Westworld Human free - because humans own a whole world that will
destroy them
Which is ominous. True.
But ominous. Especially since she has her gang looking for something.
William, the Man in
Black, has managed to survive. And, after a moment when I thought he was
genuinely afraid when faced with a park where he could actually be hurt and
die, seems to be absolutely loving the new park with consequences. Even if it
means a couple of desperate fights for survival and having to treat his own
bullet wound.
He also runs across
the small boy host which has a message from Ford -yes even though dead he’s still
pulling strings: this time setting up a game for William. Not a maze - a door.
Which raises the
question of whether Ford is actually just pulling alll the strings from behind
the scenes all along even after death- perhaps even Delores herself.
Now to the main
storyline (I can call it main if I want to) Maeve!
So we have Lee, the
super arrogant writer, facing the cannibal host he created quoting his own
lines at him as he plans to eat him. All the voice commands fail - or his does.
Maeve’s do not when she rescues him
She looks classy and
awesome. We have awesome lines like:
“Did you do all
this?”
“No, but I suspect I
share the sensibilities of whoever did”.
He is less so and he
quickly begins digging a deep hole by questioning whether Maeve is real,
whether her daughter is real and generally not reading the room. He does
realise that staying near Maeve may get him not dead and offers to help her
find his daughter. Except as they go through the complex they find everyone is
dead and no-one is in control at all while Lee quietly melts down
They do find some
human soldiers and Lee almost exposes Maeve, only for some hosts to arrive and
Maeve use a big machine gun to get rid of the pesky humans. She then comes
soooo close to exposing Lee before covering for him and making it clear that
trying that again would be a Very Bad Idea.
And it must be
somewhat galling to have her quote threats to him that he wrote.
She drags him along
to find her daughter at least in part in punishment for saying her daughter
isn’t real. Besides even if he does hate the outdoors, no-one knows the
characters in the park better than him
They arrive at the
bar - and Hector is there, alive. He’s a bit beat up but Maeve can patch him up
after they have a passionate reunion (he is not shocked and she not overly
apologetic about her abandoning him).
And then we have one
of the most meaningful moments of the show. Maeve makes Lee change clothes to
fit in. And she makes him strip in front of them - and it’s full frontal
nudity. It’s stark and necessary because it’s the ultimate symbol of power
we’ve seen on this show. Naked hosts - especially Maeve - vulnerable, prodded
and molested by humans, controlled especially by Lee, the main author. This
nudity is the ultimate symbol of the reversal of power - Lee naked and
vulnerable at the orders of Maeve.
Back to the present,
Bernard leads Karl to a huge lake, a sea, which shouldn’t be there. In it are
floating many host bodies. He has a memory flash - he says he killed them all.
