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
- William (Ed Harris) hallucinates his daughter and contemplates killing himself before Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) arrives. She implores him to take the company private with his majority shares and sway over the board, thus warding off Serac’s (Vincent Cassel) takeover attempt.
- Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Ashley (Luke Hemsworth) are preparing to intercept Liam (John Gallagher), the Insight CEO from the first episode. Bernard prepares a motor function freeze device, believing that Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) has replaced Liam with a host body.
- Caleb (Aaron Paul) and Dolores kidnap an accountant working for Liam and use his “nanites” to bleed Liam’s bank accounts dry.
- Serac shows Maeve (Thandie Newton) the divergence that Rehoboam discovered at Arnold’s house (where Dolores rebuilt her body along with the other hosts). Using Rehoboam’s predictive power, Serac interrogates an “identity broker” for info on Dolores, later killing him for his “betrayal to the human race”.
- Maeve uses the information to shake down key people to track Dolores, ultimately ending in a showdown with Sato, the warrior from Shogun world.
- During an elite benefit party, Bernard makes his play at Liam, only to discover he’s not a host. Dolores and Caleb arrive and split up, Dolores taking on Ashley, while Caleb pursues Bernard and Liam.
- Caleb is aided by Connells (Tommy Flanagan), who lets Caleb and Liam go, keeping Barnard at gunpoint.
- Maeve, Bernard, and William all realize they are dealing with a copy of the same person: Dolores.
- Dolores-Hale uses this revelation to have William committed to an institution, gaining control of Delos.
- Dolores-Sato kills Maeve but leaves before they can remove her control unit.
Clones
Well…so much for my Clementine prediction
Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
This episode crescendos with the realization that Dolores never took other hosts from the park. She copied herself into other control units and has steadily been placing herself into key positions, like Hale’s position at Delos, Liam’s bodyguard Connells, and our surprise introduction, Sato as the head of the Yakuza. While this is certainly an interesting twist, it lacks the fun mystery most of us expected going into this season. I certainly looked forward to figuring out who the other hosts were though in hindsight, this decision works with Dolores’ hubris. She doesn’t trust many people, she didn’t believe everyone was destined to make it. It’s not a surprise after losing to Bernard in the park that he’s the only host she considered her intellectual equal. That said, there were hosts that were better or had different skillsets than her, and that lack of diversity may come to haunt her.
That leads me into a few questions that writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy will likely answer:
- Was the Dolores-Hale freaking out last episode because she’s a copy of Dolores, she’s fighting some imported data from Hale, or some combination of the two?
- What in the world happens when you clone yourself like that and put yourself in different situations? Can you guarantee your clones will continue to follow your plan?
- How long have Dolores-Hale and Dolores-Sato been in their respective positions? Was last episode the first time Dolores had to console herself?
Prisoner of Mind
Last season’s surprise reveal of William and his daughter Emily (Katja Herbers) inside The Forge several years after the park had closed didn’t make a ton of chronological sense…unless William imagined all of it himself. This show has been dropping hints at the “brain in a vat” / unplugging from the Matrix and it seems William’s breakdown will be at the very heart of it. How does one come back from that place? Especially when all the evidence to the contrary seems to suggest you may not be who you think you are.
Serac Reveals His Colors
Serac’s motivations are starting to take shape; He’s seen humanities worst (as we learn that Paris was nuked when he was a young child) and that drives him to protect the future that Rehoboam predicts and add more data, like Westworld’s, into the fold and make it better.
However admirable that may be in some respects, it flies directly in the face of information we’ve already witnessed in previous seasons and especially this one. We know the park data, while strong and persuasive that humans are not terribly complex, only captures the identity of mankind’s wealthy elite. We’ve also seen that Rehoboam’s predictive power is terribly problematic, especially in the case of Caleb. He can’t advance because no one wants to invest time or resources into him, yet those same issues are what keep him in the same place.
There’s several threads to continue unravel through the rest of this season just from Serac’s plan alone:
- Is Serac aware of outliers like Caleb and/or does he understand what Rehoboam is actually doing?
- If he does realize and doesn’t care or this is his blindspot, what else is he blind to?
- Why is he confident that Maeve and the other hosts won’t make it in the real world?
Cassel is playing this role well. We needed someone else to step up as Hale’s role changed and William stepped back. As we saw more of him this episode, he embodied a man on a dark mission.
Bernard’s Play
I’m starting to feel Bernard is getting short changed this season and/or really doesn’t grasp the stakes of what’s happening yet. I suspect that will change next episode, but he hasn’t made much progress into stopping or learning Dolores’ plan. Her head start is really staggering and it makes you wonder how much time passed from her leaving the island to the time she recreated Bernard’s body (not to mention the lie she made that put Bernard on a most wanted list, that also gained her more time and set him back)
Maeve’s Power Continued
Maeve is basically in God mode as she walks around. From hijacking auto-aim weapons to stop attackers and unlocking doors, the modern world is Maeve’s to run. Which also means, I’m not impressed by Serac’s device to inhibit her, because she’ll likely figure out a work around. He keeps flaunting it in front of her and I can’t wait to see it blow up in his face. That said, her skills proved futile against Dolores and it will be interesting to see how motivated Maeve will be to keep going against her or find a way out of Serac’s employ.
Caleb and Dolores Party
Dolores and Caleb had the least screen time, but they were strategic in the moments they had, from stealing blood/nanites in order to take Liam’s money or handling the party situation separately (Dolores fought Ashley while Caleb ran down Liam). Like I predicted, Caleb isn’t completely comfortable with everything Dolores is asking him to do (well…telling him to do, she doesn’t really ask anybody to do anything) and it’s likely to come to a head or debate in the next episode. His humanity, while useful to Dolores in some ways, hasn’t done anything to soften her fury towards the rest of the mankind. When the season really kicks into gear, expect this relationship to get fully tested and/or deepened.
Quick Thoughts
There’s only 4 episodes left (I totally forgot this season was shorter….noooooo!!!) so I totally expect the next episode will ramp us up to the conclusion rather fast. I’m predicting that Dolores and Serac will make their major moves in ‘Genre’ and from the teaser trailer, it seems like those sparks will fly.