Writer’s Note: Every Westworld episode review this season will involve spoilers of some kind so you have been warned.
!! Spoilers Start Now !!
Quick Synopsis
- Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), back in her original body, attacks a Delos shareholder in his home in order to gain funds and access to AI company Incite; he dies after attempting to attack her.
- Caleb (Aaron Paul) is introduced as a war veteran struggling with the loss of a former squad mate. Though he works in construction, it doesn’t pay the medical bills of his hospitalized mother, and he uses a criminal-for-hire app, RICO, to do small jobs.
- Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) is on the run since Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) had him blamed for the Delos massacre on the island. He works at a synthetic meat plant, but has to run when he’s identified by his co-workers. He later books a passage back to Westworld.
- Charlotte Hale is back at Delos headquarters, cleaning up the result of the massacre, though her real identity is unknown (Dolores is back in her original body)
- Using a false identity, Dolores attempts to get close to the CEO of Incite, Liam Dempsey Jr. (John Gallagher), whose father is one of two engineers who built the strategic planning AI, Rehoboam. Before she can learn the other name, she’s knocked out by Liam’s security guard Connells (Tommy Flanagan)
- Connells creates different tasks in the RICO app to have Dolores killed. Caleb completes a car drop-off as assigned by the app and sees Dolores, and drops his curiosity when pressured by security watching over her.
- Connells attempts to drug Dolores, but is shocked to learn it doesn’t work (due to her host physiology). Dolores wakes up and takes out her assailants and hunts down Connells, revealing her play to have him replaced with a copy she made. As host-Connells departs with the body, Dolores attempts to escape but is fatally shot and stumbles away, eventually collapsing in front of Caleb.
- In the post-credits scene, Maeve walks up in a European village set during World War II.
What Is Dolores Up To?
To no one’s surprise, we end our first episode of Westworld without knowing something…shocker.
This time however, it’s a fine stage setter for the season. We see that Dolores has been doing a lot since she left the island, securing money and assets, hacking our systems for her benefit, assuming an alias, all to get close to the AI predictive program Rehoboam. We don’t get a ton of detail about this AI, but we know from Liam’s description that it helps chart humanity on a better path. What that path consists of isn’t quite clear, but I’d imagine it will turn out to be more complicated than simply putting people on a better path. Speaking of…if this AI is supposed to be helping people…
The New Player
Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
…why is Caleb doing petty crimes and struggling to get by? Shouldn’t this AI be helping everyone out equally? I’m still curious of the dynamics with this system, but I already get the sense that it’s all based in some sort of elitism.
As for Caleb himself, Aaron Paul does a great job selling us his version of the real world. We experience the difficulty of his daily life, the haunting flashbacks of his squad mate’s death, and how that continues to affect him as he goes to counseling and applies for better jobs. The episode makes a point of showing his plight hasn’t completely eroded his morals. Even when using the RICO app, he keeps stating that he “doesn’t do personals” which isn’t defined by the show, but likely means taking a job in the app to harm individuals. When he unknowingly takes the one that crosses his path with Dolores, he emphatically states this again and becomes defiant, to the chagrin of the security guards working the job. However, the flashbacks Caleb continues to experience lead me to believe his squad mate died under suspicious circumstances. It’s possible they did another job for the app and he got killed, hence his hesitation to do certain jobs, and only dabble in minor crimes. Whatever the reason ends up being, it’s likely the key to fully understanding Caleb.
It’s refreshing to see a new face in Westworld giving us a slice of humanity we haven’t seen before. Besides the park workers, all the guests were the financial elite; people who could afford a vacation at Westworld. We’ve never really seen how the outside world operates, let alone how it’s poorest citizens live. I suspect this will cause some moral quandaries for Dolores: It’s one thing to want humanity to pay for their sins if you think they’re all monsters. It’s another thing entirely if she begins to understand how helpless humanity has become under Rehoboam.
New Tech
Season 3 is off with a bang, doing a fantastic job of showing us what the new world looks like, and how futuristic the modern Westworld universe is. We got some glimpses or ideas about this simply from the tech and conversations in the park, but actually seeing how it works is much better. We see advanced versions of items we’re working on today: like construction robots and automated cars, but then there’s the additional layers, like the AI counseling service, the expanded use of peer-to-peer (p2p) authentication to hide criminal activity with the RICO app
Bernard’s Starting Position
Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
We see very little of Bernard, but his situation as a wanted fugitive is definitely thwarting his attempts to stop Dolores. Add on the fact he’s worried about hidden programming she may have tucked away inside him and he failed to progress very far. Given his history on the show and being an unwitting pawn of Ford for most of his life, it’s understandable why he’d be nervous about his mental state or any back doors Dolores may have created. His device to handle this is quite ingenious; a simple button press to activate his subroutines, so he can diagnose any problems or changes along with locking away the most dangerous parts (like his attack abilities) of himself.
Overall Thoughts
Generally, I’m impressed about the start, this episode is clearly the intro and I’m expecting more of this season’s ideas to be fleshed out in the subsequent episodes. They laid out a groundwork of elitism, asked some questions of choices, and showed Dolores progress in the real world. There’s definitely more questions to ask though like:
- Who is in Charlotte and Connells host bodies? We see Dolores moving solo/on her own so she’s put at least two of the control units from last season into those bodies. I have thoughts on who Dolores may have picked, like Clementine or her father, but we didn’t spend enough with either of them for me to make confident choices.
- What is Rehoboam? We understand it’s supposedly making humanity better, but we start the episode with evidence to the contrary given Caleb’s predicament among others. Seems like a big ole blind-spot ripe for story threads and conversation.
- Why in the world is Bernard going back to Westworld? The 2nd episode teaser trailer hints at Maeve so that would make sense from a tactical sense. Having her disable Dolores from afar would be pretty useful, but if Maeve is inside the park fully, Bernard will have a difficult time retrieving her, let alone staying alive.