Familiar faces return in this season premiere, but the structure so far feels like we’re setup for a slow burn.
Hello my fellow guests/hosts, since I’ve been traveling and got behind, I’ve had the benefit of watching the first 5 episodes, so I’ll contain my thoughts to what happened in each episode in case you want to read these as you catch up.
Westworld Season Four is back after a polarizing end to last season, which left Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) dead and handing the torch of her revolution over to Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul). But even calling it a revolution is a bit misleading. With the majority of the hosts safely tucked away in the Sublime and Dolores pledging to Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) that she would leave them alone, the season had to resolve a different issue: human freedom. That’s right, turns out Dolores’ revolution ended up being more focused on rescuing humans from the plight of another AI that was taking the data mined from Delos’ parks and using it to chart the course of human history and possibly avoid a potential calamity. But that plan destroys millions of people in the process who don’t fit neatly under the model Rehoboam predicts.
While many fans were probably eager for a version of Dolores that would get her revenge on humanity, it seems that her time in the park shaped her differently than we had previously thought, as evidenced by the conversation she has with Maeve to close the season. Her often repeated line “I see beauty in this world” was true; even if the park had taught her to hate and have every reason to destroy humanity for what they had done, she ultimately understood something else, that given a chance, a real chance, humanity may be able to take a different path (as evidenced by her time with Caleb). Now, what I find sneakily good is that this season can hopefully allow two visions to play out: one where the seed that Dolores has planted has a chance to take hold while fighting off the other Dolores (Hale or Halores as I’ve come to call her, played by Tessa Thompson) and her vision that more closely aligns to what we thought Dolores would have done.
With that stage set…wait, I nearly forgot, Bernard was in the Sublime and woke up apparently many years in the future…oh I’m sure they’ll get to that, let’s get into the episode…
What Is Host-William Up To?
The premiere opens with Host-William (Ed Harris) attempting to buy a data center controlled by a drug cartel. When the cartel controlling the data center won’t budge, he resorts to a rather bloody solution: a swarm of flies enters the body of one member and subsequently forces him to kill his other members before finishing himself off, leaving William in control
Another Dolores Clone?
The next scene opens with a very familiar shot, one we’ve seen over and over again through this series, Dolores waking up and starting her day. Except, it’s not Dolores, it’s a woman named Christina. She spends this episode showing us her daily routine as a story designer for a video game company called Olympiad. Except one man believes that her stories are about him and ruining his life, so much so that he’s willing to confront her until he’s stopped at the last moment by a unknown hero.
Veterans of the series are not buying this façade for a second. We already know last season that Dolores copied herself onto multiple hosts, is it possible she hide a version of herself in the Sublime? Again, this could be the real world, but I sort of doubt because of the episode’s last second reveal
What Is Teddy Doing Here?
Yep, Teddy (James Marsden) is back and we figure out he’s the one who saved Christina from her assailant. He’s honestly a sight for sore eyes; as much as I loved the past season, I can understand why some fans felt disappointed as the story has drifted further and further away from the park. Given the reveal in season one about the nature of the park, I personally was never going to be satisfied by a series that felt trapped by that structure and I’ve enjoyed the deeper sci-fi exploration they’ve attempted in season two and three. But familiarity can breed opportunities for fans that need something to grasp onto, so his return opens up a few possibilities:
Is this the same Teddy that went into the Sublime? Could he be trying to help a version of Dolores accept her new reality while the events in the real world play out?
If this isn’t the sublime, then what the heck are two clones or identical versions of our characters doing here? Also, is this happening at the same time as…
Our Heroic Duo
Last we saw of Maeve and Caleb, they had just defeated Rehoboam and were ready to face the resulting fallout in the real-world. But not so fast, Rehoboam, like any other server system in the world had redundancies (think about Amazon data centers, if one were to go down, they have plenty of backups). We get a quick glimpse of them attacking another center before we realize this is Maeve and Caleb having flashbacks to the last time they saw each other. It’s been 7 years since the attack (which also gives us a timeline and context for the first scene with William, too) and they are now living in different places: Maeve off grid and Caleb has started a family; but those dreams are quickly dashed as Maeve is discovered and she goes to rescue Caleb just as his family is also being attacked by hosts sent by Host-William/Halores.
While we don’t know exactly what they will do or go, it’s clear their attempt at idyllic lives are over.
Final Thoughts
This episode didn’t have the kind of juice I was craving or expecting for a season premiere. That certainly doesn’t invalidate any of the themes that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan have laid out here or begun to spin for this season, but with a shorter season length that the first two seasons (this will be 8 episodes just like season three), a slow burn episode like this seems like an odd choice unless they can really deliver off of this.
Lastly, where the heck is Bernard!! I know he’ll show up eventually but I really want to find out what’s happened in the Sublime all this time.