Welcome to Westworld season 3, where we are no longer in Westworld. If the show’s first season was the beginning of the end, and last season was the end of the beginning, “Parce Domine” is something new: an attempt to drastically expand the show’s world as Dolores takes the robot fight against the human race onto a larger playing field. As of right now, that means trading in the cowboy hats and mournful covers of pop songs for shiny cities where everyone works according to the dictations of an algorithm; where the rich are stuck on their own loops; and where the lower classes struggle to make ends meet in any way they can. The “real” world looks like a car commercial brought to life, and while that may speak to a somewhat limited imagination on the part of the show’s creators (who’ve always been better at narrative mechanics than building compelling fantasies), it does offer one undeniable pleasure: the sight of Dolores insinuating herself into the lives of powerful, arrogant fools, and watching her destroy them one by one.
What’s striking about “Parce Domine” is how relatively straightforward that pleasure is. From the cold open on, this is the Westworld version of a straight putt, reintroducing old protagonists (Dolores, Bernard) and catching up on what they’ve been doing since the previous season ended. We’ve also got a new lead, Caleb (Aaron Paul, bringing his soulful broken down crime guy energy to the mix), to bring into orbit, and some seeds to start planting for the weeks to come. But in terms of time hopping trickery and strangeness, there’s very little in evidence, at least so far. The episode has a handful of stories, and I can’t be completely sure if they all take place around the same time, but there’s no obvious attempt made at withholding information for future mysteries. The stakes and objectives are surprisingly clear.
That works to good and ill effect. On the bad side, the more direct Westworld is, the clearer the show’s ultimate lack of depth becomes, at least in terms of its take on humanity and artificial intelligence. The world we see here is full of the same sort of people we’ve been dealing with all along, the same collection of rich shallow assholes and rich assholes who are a little nicer than the other guys but still pretty useless. The cold open has Dolores breaking into the home of one such asshole, a shouty man who murdered his previous wife and covered up the crime, and who dies when he’s too stupid to realize that the person who broke into his house, disabled his security measures, and forced him to wear magic glasses that show him the evidence of his old crimes, is maybe not going to be taken out by blunt force trauma. There are very few surprises in this opening hour (which is actually slightly longer than an hour), right up to the moment where Dolores and Caleb finally meet. Even Bernard’s struggles as a fugitive feel old hat.
But on the good side… so what? While nothing in “Parce Domine” is as obliquely affecting as the original pilot, and while the show’s thematic signaling has all the subtlety of a cattle prod, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to watch. The longer Westworld goes on, the more evident it becomes that this was never as deep a series as it initially seemed; all the fractured storytelling and editing mostly just leads to disappointment when we finally put the pieces together and see it’s nothing more than the oldest science-fiction story ever told. But it’s still cool to look at, and the acting is often good. Once you make peace with a certain amount of emptiness, once you realize that this is never going to transcend its initial impact, there’s something refreshing about accepting it for what it is: a high-gloss take on Frankenstein’s monster, wrecking revenge on the fools who gave it life.
While I’m sure the season will pull in new characters (and bring back more old ones) as it goes, the lack of diffusion here means there’s less of the distracting “Wait, who is this again?” that plagued earlier seasons. Everything can be summed up simply enough: Dolores is expanding her influence and working to find out the name of the man who invented the machine that more or less dictates human life; Bernard is in hiding, as Delos (and Dolores) have managed to pin pretty much all the bad shit at the parks on him; and Caleb, the new kid in town, is working hard to make ends meet in a society that offers the illusion of forward momentum with none of the actual movement.
Class issues have always been important to the series, but they become more explicit here with Caleb’s entrance. A former soldier with some kind of criminal past, he’s now living on the margins, spending his days doing construction work and job hunting, and his nights building up points on a low-level crime app that offers jobs to freelancers. That app is a nifty, goofy-but-plausible idea, and I love the nightmare vision of the future where the poor and downtrodden can’t even resort to breaking the law to rise above the curve; everything is organized, everything moves in increments. Paul’s energy, his heart-on-sleeve miserabilism (used to great effect on Breaking Bad) feels immediately at home in a show that more or less always seems to be operating through form of depression, be it simple exhaustion at the cruelty of man, or nihilism in its depiction of conscious life as nothing more than an endless series of programmed behavior. Caleb doesn’t rise above that, but he does at least suggest there will be someone this season who isn’t a host that we can care about, and some possibility of a moral struggle with actual weight down the line.
Throughout the episode, you hear the voiceover of a conversation between Caleb and someone named “Francis;” gradually it becomes clear that this isn’t a chat between friends, but a program that replicates the voice of a dead man to help Caleb come to terms with his past. Caleb finally ends the program saying he needs to find something “real.” And when he meets an injured Dolores a few minutes later, the intended irony and truth of the moment is clear. It’s heavy-handed, but that doesn’t make the ambiguity less potent, and it doesn’t stop me from wanting to see what happens next.
This isn’t amazing television, exactly, but it is entertaining. Seeing how Bernard has found ways to use his artificial self to his advantage is neat, and while I have no idea why he wants to get back to the park, I hope he finds something that will make him a bit more active this time around. Dolores is still great (I know this is all nominally about finding some way to stop her from destroying humanity, but is anyone actually rooting against her?), and I cackled when “Common People” popped up during one of her action scenes. That bit in particular gave me more hope for the show than most of the rest of the episode. It’s blunt and audience-friendly, an obvious choice that comes with just enough irony to make it clever. And it’s cool as hell. Right now, that’s enough for me.
Stray observations
- It’s unclear if Dolores planned to get caught by Liam’s security guy Martin (played by Tommy Flanagan, who I mostly know from Sons of Anarchy). I’m guessing no, because it means the end of her relationship with Liam just as she seemed to be close to getting the info she wanted. On the other hand, she does have a host version of Martin on hand when everything goes south. This is good thriller writing; Dolores can be one step ahead of the people she’s trying to destroy, but making it possible for her to trip means more tension ahead.
- No Ed Harris in sight, although he is briefly referenced at a Delos board meeting. That meeting also has Charlotte (aka Dolores in disguise), so I’m not sure how it gels with the rest of the timeline—does Dolores multiple versions of herself running around, or is this before or after the Dolores we see in the rest of the episode? The scene takes place three months after the parks collapsed, so for right now, I’m going to assume that it happened roughly in the same period as everything else we seen this week, unless I’m given to think otherwise.
- “I’ve hurt so many people, I don’t want to hurt anyone else. Unless they try and hurt me.” I wonder how much we’re supposed to be rooting against Dolores? Because the show hasn’t ever done a good job at convincing me she’s wrong about anything. (I’m curious what her relationship with Caleb will be like, and if that will change anything.)
- Loved the scenes of Caleb picking up gigs from the crime app.
- A quick google says “Parce domine” means “Spare your people, lord.”
- “Hey, no offense, but are you human?” “I’m Sean.”
209 Comments
This show using a cover of “Common People” at this point was overdetermined. At least the player piano thing used to kind of classy.
Also: Naziworld, really? Is HBO disappointed they didn’t get to make that “Confederate” show?
If you bring it up they’ll make Civil War world. That’s a promise and threat.
Isn’t that Westworld with the Confederados?
You new to this show? There is a Civil War world. The Confederados were major villains in Season 1/2.
No I’ve been around since season 1. That wasn’t straight up Union vs Confederates since that faction were Confederates who fled to Mexico. Unless I forgot which is possible.
You kinda did forget. There were Union Soldiers too as there was a Civil War world: https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Union_Army The
I think the Confederados were a faction that went rogue when Ford went and made the hosts all rouge.
Guess your right. This is what happens when the show is both convoluted and takes two year per season.
I spent most of the rest of the episode just wanting to watch Pulp videos instead.Also: WWII has a 75-year track record of being a very popular setting for fiction!
yeah look at all the videogames for instance. Tons of WW2 games and then you have ones like Wolfenstein
That doesn’t sound like too bad of an idea. “Bad Cover Version” is possibly my favourite video ever.
If I was gonna go to a park like Westworld, being an Ally soldier in WW2 (and knowing I couldn’t get hurt) would be top of my list. What could be better than shooting lots of Nazis?
Also, I think Maeve was revived for a role in that park and has been doing it for some indeterminate amount of time and her freed mind took a while to come online.
My prediction would be it’s a you can go back in time and save all the people of Europe from the Nazis. Host revolt and some Nazi bots are in charge.
I’m thinking it’s more about letting rich sociopaths do more intensely evil things than they could at Westworld. The implications are disturbing.
Oh man, there’s nothing I love more than Holocaust fan fiction! Especially because this is the kind of setting that will DEFINITELY let some people roleplay being Nazis!
In the context of Delos’s more nefarious goals, I’m certain that is information they are fine with collecting from people.
I don’t think that was a cover of Common People.
Not a cover
Did they at least use the Bill Shatner cover of it? He turns Cocker’s angsty longing of transcending social boundaries into full-on class warfare.
That was of course a plot in Star Trek Voyager’s famed Killing Game two-parter, where the Alien hunters got a huge kick out of playing World War II on the holodeck.
I thought the whole Westworld park was just video games taken to the extreme? Nazi/Hitler killing is as gamey as it gets!
I thought the piano cover of Massive Attack’s Dissolved Girl was pretty awesome. and with Pulp’s song, they really went for a 90’s Brit vibe.
Will you shriek about it on twitter if they do?
In an amusement park that caters to rich assholes, a park in which you can play a Nazi is to be expected. The other parks we know about also offered abundant opportunities for the worst forms of racism and classism. No surprises there at all. Delos was out to get dirt on its customers, and letting them dress up as Nazis would expose their very worst sides and open them up to blackmail.
My wife and I, for whom Westworld would be somewhere between boring and hellish, looked at each other and agreed if it existed we would pay money to go kill robot Nazis and save jews
Oh boy, if you’re shocked a WWII World exists, you’ll faint when you see how many video games have taken advantage of the setting.
Maeve Rabbit
I’d go there to kill Nazis. Repeatedly. Could be fun.
That was the original version of the song by Pulp, unless I’m crazy.
I missed the reference to Naziworld, could you tell me when it shows up so I can go rewatch?
Nazis are easy villains and people love war time intrigue.
Naziworld does make sense as a park theme, because white hat guests would want to visit and do their thing.
Uber But For Criminals is almost too good of a writer’s idea.
I have…so many questions about how the RICO app works and exists.Honestly, this is what the show should be about now; Dolores & Co.’s machinations can just exist in the background.
According to the behind the scenes, the answer is: blockchain. Like seriously. They just invoke “blockchain”
That is the same level of understanding that Silicon Valley (the thing, not the show) seems to operate on so…checks out.
Blockchain is the new tech shorthand for lazy writers, replacing “hack”.
Blockchain is the new tech shorthand for lazy writers, replacing “hack”. It’s becoming the programming equivalent of “quantum”.
God, I miss Sir Terry.
God, that soundbite of Nolan extolling the “power of the blockchain” was skin-crawling.
I find most anyone talking about the blockchain annoying as fuck, so why should Nolan be any different I guess.
Uncrackable Block Chain where no one can cheat anyone and the government can’t trace the transactions. Yet, in the same episode, they say that Martin cracked Dolore’s encrypted text in four minutes.
But she had a replacement Martin on hand, so you have to assume the encryption was intentionally crackable.
I assumed it’s kind of like an app version of Silk Road. Like it’s an anonymous marketplace but instead of drugs there are crime job listings?
Until proven otherwise, I’m going to assume that the crime app is run by and for the giant AI as a way to monitor and control criminal activity.
The “mistress” on the opening of the app sounded a lot like Evan Rachel Wood, it could be something she’s using to manipulate the lower classes and discover the sins of the rich.
That app would be very popular in the times we are in right now. People desperate for cash.
Has no one else read Gibson’s Agency yet? It’s set in an alt-history 2018, where Hilary won, and one of the plot devices is “Uber, but for tailing people”. I wonder how many VCs have been approached with the concept?
But they are in California so the criminals are legally employees rather than independent contractors. So they get health and dental and the like.
….or is that how the disruptors get around the employee/benefit dilemma?
It was formed when AirBnb was bought out by Uber after AirBnb collapsed due to a pandemic.
So Rehoboam = Samaritan’s Great-grandson?
Interesting they pull that name out of Hebrew history because Rehoboam was the son of Solomon and the first King of the tribes of Israel, but you know, short lived.
Some very big Person of Interest energy tonight.
Now you made me imagine PoI with a Westworld budget. Now I’m sad.
Wasn’t it quite expensive for a network show?
Finch would be so depressed in how the world ends up.
The guy who wrote the Rehoboam is clearly anti-Finch
Root and the Machine I think could take on Dolores.
Pretty disappointed that Dolores was only 1-gunning things.
She’s a deadly robot. Another gun would be redundant.
THIS is the thread I needed.
And echoes of Shalmaneser from John Zanzibar’s novel Stand on Zanzibar (also an AI on which a megacorporation was entirely dependent).
I’m pretty sure the “next time” clip insinuated that Charlotte is being puppet-ed by someone other than Delores.
She probably put in it one of the 5 pearls she took out of Westworld with her, just as she put Bernard’s into a new body. One of the trailers/sneak peeks had Dolores holding up a mirror to Charlotte and saying “let me show you who you have to pretend to be.”
William
One thing that stood with me the entire episode was:“Damn this must have cost a boatload of cash to make.”
seriously
It’s shot in Singapore. It pretty much looks like this.
Indeed. When Caleb was walking down Orchid Road I was like “I’ve been there!”
Still as great looking a production as ever. I was impressed with the realism of flight in those pilotless Air-Ubers, the extraordinary night time shots of what appeared to be several cities and those impossibly luxe interiors. And not to sound superficial but Evan Rachel Wood gets more beautiful with every season (well, until Maeve shows up in……. Third Reich World?). But superficially, the CEO of peen seems to have won the coin toss.
Dolores seems to have developed a taste for haute couture mini skirts and tight dresses. Not that I’m complaining.
Riding that motorcycle would be “brisk” at least for a human woman.
We better ask the stuntwoman how it felt.
Turns out Dolores’s main existential pain was being stuck for decades with that Little House on the Prairie wardrobe.
I had some thoughts for the show, but they were ruined by the guys at the end. Any trained security professional would not leave their light on, it gives you away more than it helps you.
They also used the non-silenced gun to kill the dude. Immediately after she used the silence gun to shoot the dude in the leg. Like I get bringing logic into a tv show during an action scene is unnecessary… but c’mon…
I have my reply to the whole logic train on another post in this thread, but yea Westworld is bad about this. I don’t see how Dolores overpowers a well trained team of people if you go by hiring standards for private security are probably ex special operations people. A better story line is she just kills the initial team that takes her, Dolores could have gotten away with that. In reality the action she took would create a major investigation.
I have no issue with no investigation in the world they’ve built. Dead private security for a Corp would just get swept under the rug by that same Corp. What bugs me is the inconsistency in how durable hosts are and how capable combatants they are. The “awoken” hosts like Armistice, Hector, Teddy, Dolores, etc. will put a bullet between the eyes of every enemy when the scene demands it then turn into stormtroopers when the scene demands it. Sometimes in the same scene in some of the battles last season and the same thing happens between the first and second Dolores fight scenes in this episode. The same applies for how much damage a host body can take. By the end of season 1 we see that if a host’s programming to respond to pain and “dying” is removed they are basically indestructible. Armistice loses an arm an doesn’t care. That was basically the setup for season 2, which they weren’t sure they were going to be able to make. Then season 2 gets greenlighted and they basically said, eh, the story of a terminator uprising isn’t the story we want to tell so we’re going to ignore most of that. Except for Dolores apparently, who takes gunshots like it’s her job and totally ignores them.
I, too, have been struggling with the hosts reaction to trauma. My theory so far has been a differece in hardware as Dolores etc. are old hosts with a more mechanical body, which is why I was surprised by Maeve going down so easily. Can’t explain away everything it seems
It’s easier for the robots to be programmed to “die’. Saves money with replacement parts.
The trained security guys on this show this have always been terrible. Poor aim who could hit nothing with their high powered Assault Rifles, and only exist as bullet practice for Delores and the other robots.
It reminds me of my complaint on last season when they assaulted the fort. A true hired private army would have set up a crossfire of M2 machine guns to take the sentries and runners out. All the while have a good mortar team just murder the fort. I want to give my suspension of disbelief, but the whole robot is smarter than any human tactic just sends me into disbelief.
A true anyone would’ve just used armored cars/APCS or drones/helicopters to easily take down that fort instead dune buggies. And its not that the robots are smarter, but that the humans are dumb. With all this fancy, advanced tech, they didn’t just think of a autokill switch/emp/something instead “lets just badly shoot at them in dune buggies and see what happens?!?”
I can buy the “dumb in initial response” but if you know those robots are hostile you wait them out. In modern times you can wait the enemy out if they isolate themselves as much as the enemy combatant did to Delos’s forces.
Wait for them to what? Starve?
The robots were using 19th century rifles and pistols. You don’t need to wait them out. Just use modern day armored cars, ballistics shields, and an Apache Helicopter, all things that can easily deflect civil war era buckshot.
COBRA. This is how COBRA began
They are the progeny of Star Wars Stormtroopers and since Disney now owns everything I’m quite sure they’ll be a Star Wars world on this show too eventually to tie it all in.
It’s a Jonathan Nolan trope. Endless supply of mostly inept security personnel willing to die for peanuts.
Basically Redshirts.
My theory is that hosts and guests in the park had less lethal rounds.1) I know that bullet loads are supposed to adjust to targets, but even with robot reflexes, ricochets and random movement happens.2) This is why most of the security guns are color coded red, because they have lethal rounds.
The security guys were the worst. They were all stupid and sloppy.Not to mention, why would you kill the imposter right away? That makes no sense at all. If she infiltrated the inner circle she must have resources/associates/etc. Why would they not take her to some black site and interrogate her first?
Yes, all you have to do is shoot at the light. Easy pickin’s.
I’m not sure who is in the Hale host but it’s not Dolores. At the end of last season’s finale the Hale host was shown walking next to Dolores so she’s independent of Dolores.
Maybe Hale was all of us the entire time?
It could be that Dolores read Charlotte’s “book” from the library and then used that knowledge to recreate a base Charlotte. The preview for next week made it seem like it would be an origin for this Host version of Charlotte.
The obvious answer is that it’s Angela, but the interesting one is that it’s Abernathy. “Who is Charlotte?” is clearly supposed to be this season’s big twist, so I figure it’ll be a while before we find out anyway.
I wonder if that’s Teddy in there.
Teddy was beamed to Host heaven by Dolores in the season 2 finale.
Thank you for reminding me I didn’t remember that detail.
It doesn’t absolutely rule it out though. Dolores is the one who is in control of the Valley she may have the ability to access it and copy or remove someone’s code. I’m imagining later in the season when Maeve comes gunning for her Dolores will use the daughter to mess with Maeve.
Maeve’s daughter and Akecheta went to the other world. Maeve was Ford’s favorite child I think her daughter is safe. Dolores will be dead if she ever thinks of harming Maeve’s daughter. Maeve will rip Dolores apart if she hurts her daughter.
Yes the other world is the Valley Teddy is there as well
Marsden is a movie star now. Him and his pal Sonic are too good for this small time HBO shit.
The preview for the next episode showed Dolores schooling a very confused Charlotte on how to act it could be one of the other marbles she had or they could have started from scratch. They obviously have a facility where they rebuilt Dolores’ body
They have the place Ford left for them at the end of last season which had a host printer. That’s how Dolores rebuilt her body during the finale of last season. I’m assuming Dolores has since moved their HQ somewhere else as Bernard knows the location of original one. I’m leaning towards thinking that Dolores may be able to create copies of people from scratch now. At least if she has “read their book.” The AI in the Forge had figured it out before she destroyed it.
If that’s the case, I’m curious as to how she was able to replicate Martin, Liam’s bodyguard? Maybe somehow got his DNA? Took photos of him? Hmmmm….
Maybe it’s William. Just a thought.
My guess would be Angela. She’s already proven herself to be loyal to Delores’ plan and willing to do whatever it takes, up to and including blowing herself up.The big question I have is who’s now residing in the host version of Martin. Teddy was sent to The Valley Beyond, and wouldn’t have helped Delores anyway.
You’ve obviously never told your Alexa to do a thing in one room, and had it answer from another…
prob one of the pearls, or something else.
I was taking the Occam’s Razor approach… thinking it’s just the decoded version of Hale put into a host body.
For someone that claims the show is not as smart as it wants to be, you sure get a lot of plot points wrong…
In the future, there will be dark, creepy clubs. Or at least dark creepy art galleries. I’d love a version of the future depicting something like a live action Futurama. That future is kinda grimy too, but at least there’s Blernsball.
Westworld is such a frustrating show. It looks fucking great. Has a great cast and crew. But it is rather crap, consistently so. It should be so much better than it is.
So the drunk guy at the party at the beginning, talking about how everyone was in The Matrix?a knowing wink at the audience by Nolan and Joy?the actual key to Season 3?
and Cirac/Cassellis that system’s Logan?
For me, since Vincent Cassel is pretty much Hollywood’s go-to “French Guy” I always misremember him as also playing the merovingian in the 2nd matrix (even though it was a completely different french guy).
But Cassel’s ex-wife does play The Merovingian’s wife in The Matrix Reloaded. So there is synergy at play between the 2.
Personally, I don’t think you make such a big show of the simulation within the simulation, in that scene, without it being something. Of course it wouldn’t be the first time this show tried to swerve us either.A predictive, deterministic, super A.I. sure opens the door to a lot of possibilities here. It’s just too early to say where it will go and if it will be satisfying.I just want to know if the future William we saw post credits is a robot copy that was made and run through the park loop simulation, and that the “real” William is still out there, or if that post credits version is all we have now. If I remember correctly he was on the beach at the end in a tent but who knows with this show’s mixing of timelines and perspectives.
With the trailers for this season there was some speculation that we weren’t see the actual future, but were instead seeing Futureworld. And Nolan and Joy must know that people would wonder about that.And so that conversation definitely wasn’t accidental. But it might just be a wink, or it might be a giant Chekov’s gun.And speaking of guns, William’s story is weird. Last season he was going to shoot Delores, but then his gun exploded. She heads down into the bunker, and leaves him in the desert to die. Then all of the craziness of the finale happens, and I don’t think we see him again until the post-credit sequence.
You see him among the survivors before the credits for a second
Yup, you’re right he’s on the beach too.Wow, a year and a half is way too long between seasons.
It could all just be Dolores’ fidelity test but then we wouldn#t have to watch Caleb struggle to find reality in a world of algorithms.
The opening had some interesting clues about the development of the hosts AI in the form of that “growing cell” that later featured park hosts in it and then a sprawling city. I figure that’s where MiB is, a world after the hosts have taken over.As for the real William, he’s in the trailer getting his weird memory/drug implant put in, I think. On that note, tho, who is Charlotte talking about when she says Bernard killed their “founder”?
I groaned during that line, because if we’re hitting matrix style simulations in this show then I may be out, though I’ve mostly enjoyed the show so far. The only thematic consistency the show has had is a fairly simplified free-will vs determinism argument. A simulation is arguably consistent with that theme, but I can only take complete redefinings of reality so far before it becomes, “nothing you’ve seen before matters.” They’d have to stick that landing very hard. I rewatched season 2 leading up to the premiere and they did not stick the landing. It had amazing singular episodes and scenes but the timeline shenanigans only detracted from that, and led to an info dump finale where the twist was meaningless as far as the themes go. Real William was still alive at the end of last season, as far as we saw. The scenes of William’s fidelity test was, according to the Nolans’ interviews at the time, “far” in the future. Honestly, I just think it was them ending a season with a hook not being sure if they’d be able to make another season. They walked back the ending of season 1 to a huge degree and added the whole pearl thing. At the end of season 1 an “awoken” host was basically an indestructible killing machine. When season 2 came along they basically ignored all that except for when Dolores needed to be that, while introducing the whole brain housing thing that we hadn’t seen before. Even though we repeatedly saw the construction of hosts. They aren’t very consistent.
He’s basically Doug Forcett
It seems that Delores as Charlotte stopped by Delos first after coming back from Westworld to trick them in resuming host production, before trading her body into her old self. Same timeline. Also, the real life Grand Theft Auto app: cash money for doing random criminal missions is something you would expect more people doing in a dystopia like that.
Never usually watching end credits, I’m glad I thought there might be a post scene. And I learned the episode, and presumably this season, was partly shot in Singapore and Spain. I’m guessing most of future LA was the former and Maeve’s local was the latter.Caleb, sad, waking up each morning obviously echoes Dolores doing the same, but happy, from S1. I hope he’s not AI, though.Dolores’ action set piece was well done.I didn’t get the purpose of the big globe machine and purpose of the company. Can it predict the future for people and that’s what their business is offering?
I believe the machine was determining the most socially beneficial way for an individual to live their life.
I suspect that the machine determines the most financially* beneficial way for an individual to live their life.*Whether for Incite or for multiple corporations/entities, I reserve judgement till I’ve got more info.
Delos HQ is the part they filmed in Spain. This place to be exact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences And that big globe thingy is probably the core AI that controls it all.
The globe thing sounds like it’s similar to the career chip from Futurama. I assigns you the level of work you are able to do. As a total aside Marshawn Lynch’s mood shirt was a pretty dope touch.
At Comic-Con last year, the attendees of the Westworld panel all got those mood T-shirts. Since we hadn’t seen this footage, the meaning of the shirts was a mystery. It was only after I had mine home for a week that I discovered that one of the words was printed with glow in the dark ink. And later still after I compared notes with my friend that I found out that different shirts had different glow-in-the-dark words. I originally had “excited”, but then I traded it for “scared” because it would be fun to wear to haunted houses around Halloween.
A lot of the LA stuff was shot in actual downtown LA, though it was intercut with different cities and fictitious places as well. I could recognize a lot of the shooting locations just from having lived there.
The LA locations this episode were actually LA – Downtown specifically – enhanced with CGI. It was kind of fun to recognize a couple of scenes taking place in buildings where i used to work!
Yes, they are clearly in Macarthur Park and then standing in front of the The MacArthur building when scottish guy gets offed.
And Caleb walks away from MacArthur Park and then has his final conversation with Francis on the Spiral Bridge in Singapore, then wanders back into LA to find Dolores. The geography shook me for a second, but it sure looked great.
That’s great! I’d love to see this all mapped out as the season goes on.
Wait, was this Westworld or a really long trailer for the next Watch_Dogs game?
Personally it makes me feel more and more impatient to finally play Cyberpunk 2077.
I totally got a Watch Dogs feel from the episode. I don’t consider that a bd thing, but for sure it was there.
The show was never about twists but the nature of reality, perception
and freedom of choice and how we use it. How we decide whose life worth
what. Is escape into your own world freedom or just another kind of
prison. What you are willing to do to be really free.I thought it was nicely paralleling those previous seasons questions about what is real and what it means to be free but this time with humans. It was showing us that they are not free either and their lives are prisons too. The show hangs a lampshade on it with the guy who thinks it’s all simulation – this time Dolores is the one who truly is in control of herself and sees the world for what it is and who runs it while humans are just following the routines their are trapped into.
It as true of Caleb trapped between routines of his dead-end job and the gig economy petty crimes as it is of Liam who is just figurehead for those who truly run the world. Liam knows he’s just a figurehead but his cage is golden so he can’t make himself rock the boat. But Caleb longs for something real – a real friend, a real cause and he may have stumbled on it by extending a real compassion. By coming back when Liam turns away. Caleb, like Dolores in seasons before, unsubscribes from the illusion.
Of course the real battle in this season isn’t about Dolores and hosts against humans but one against Rehoboam. In a world designed for AI takeover only duels that matter are among the gods. And this is just a beginning.
As much as everyone wonders if Dolores knew Connells was coming I wonder about how much Liam knew. I mean it’s clear Dolores was never immobilised. She could’ve taken out his men right there in the penthouse and there was a Host Connells already made. She has been planning for being found out. For getting closer to Liam and the people really in charge than just a girlfriend could.
Still, she was clearly waiting to see if he’d stop Connells and be better than all the men who came to the Park to abuse her. He failed like all the others but did he failed a woman who came to steal company secrets or did he knew something about who she really is? The way Liam knew his real masters should look to Delos and what happened in the Park made me wonder if he’s not as stupid as he seems.
The question is why was she meeting the Connells host in the first place and who is he? She clearly intended to replace Connells at some point but I can’t tell if her being found out by Connells was all part of her plan. It certainly seemed like she intentionally let Connells find out about her meeting with host Connells so she could make the switch in an out of the way place with no witnesses. Also, last season, the Forge AI did seem to figure out how to replicate humans properly and Connells had visited the park. I’m wondering if Dolores is just making actual duplicates of people from scratch now, rather than implanting them with a host brain that we already know. She did say “read all the books” she needed to and understood everything she needed to before destroying everything.
The encrypted text that Dolores sent and Connells intercepted said something about “luring him out”. Connells assumed it meant Liam but it’s clear Connells was one being lured out since his replacement shown up for that meeting. Maybe he just did it slightly earlier that Dolores calculated so he interrupted Liam’s confession.
Ah, I missed that. I need to do a rewatch. One thing I did find frustrating is how she goes from a terminator that doesn’t miss a single shot in the first fight and not being able to hit the broad side of a barn during the second fight. This has been a frustrating inconsistency throughout the show. Sometimes the awoken hosts will headshot a room full of people in two second like they can’t miss, then in the next scene they miss similar shots left and right. Another frustrating, for me anyway, inconsistency that reared it’s head this episode is just how durable hosts bodies are. Why was Dolores so injured by a body shot? Last season she gets shot repeatedly, walking into hails of gunfire, ignores it, and shows no ill effects later on. Going all the way back to the end of season 1 we were lead to believe that feeling pain and “dying” was all programming for the sake of guests. I mean, that was a rather distinct plot develop, probably exemplified most when Armistice ripped her own arm off, smiled about it, and kept fighting. Maeve also knows this, yet she Armistice, Hector, etc all get gunned down at the end of last season.
The hosts can take a lot of damage because pain is only an illusion to them and the only truly essential part of them is the core. Still, they can be damaged or incapacitated by bullets if there is enough damage or in the right places. This is why Maeve ‘died’ and why Dolores could walk of her injuries from initial fight (she even drags real Connells body off) but several bullets later she needs help. She isn’t dying, of course, but host bodies are not indestructible and the instructions to walk need to go through somewhere and if you make enough holes it’s all stops functioning properly.
How much damage and what places? Because earlier episodes show the exact opposite of that. Maeve brings Hector back while his body is still riddled with holes and basically “awakens” and makes him realize that doesn’t matter. Same with Armistice, who looses a friggin’ limb and is fine. Dolores gets shot repeatedly last season, in the chest, and completely ignores it like it didn’t even happen. In the same season they totally ignored how indestructible Maeve’s group was shown to be, while Dolores still was. I think they just wrote themselves into a corner at the end of season 1. They introduced the idea of hosts being capable of becoming nearly unkillable terminators but that just didn’t work for Maeve’s storyline which revolves around self sacrifice. Oddly, they still showed Dolores as being basically unkillable when a cool scene demanded it though.
Well, it’s not going to be the same kind of damage that is bad for humans so shooting through livers or lungs won’t mean anything. Same with losing an arm. But there are things that would be bad to them too – like anything that damages the cortical shell. And probably also anything that impairs their mobility is also bad so that’s most likely what finally got Dolores.
This body is not the same type she used to have in the Park – it’s the newer type of host. They easier to make very human-like but seem more fragile and she exerted already bad wound. She clearly has more and more trouble moving. Still, some of it might also be pretending for Caleb’s sake – like pain.
I wondered at the end if it was just a ploy so she would appear as a victim to Caleb.
Did she really have a choice there, though? I mean, Dolores read Connell’s book and no matter what Liam would say to her there, she must have known Connell would try to get rid of her then? Also, the text was sent the night before the conversation so she clearly anticipated something.What I’m wondering is how host Connell could repeat the line real Connell said to Dolores before trying to kill her. Swarm consciousness or crazy simple human code?
Oh, for sure the whole thing was trap for Connells. She didn’t create his host copy nor set up that meeting with it by accident. She knew he would find her out and decrypt that text. She wanted to replace him because he has access to things she as Liam’s girlfriend never would. And she most likely shared Connells’ book with the host Connells so he can pretend to be the real thing easier so he knows what the real Connells would say in that situation.
Still, Liam just let Connells to take her to what he though was her death. His crime is the same what we condemn Pontius Pilate for. He lets bad things happen to others as long as he wash his hands off the whole thing.
Good point. She’s not necessarily out to destroy Humanity, just the worst parts of it. Caleb’s act of compassion when he comes to her aid mirrors William’s actions on his first trip to the park. Perhaps that will be the catalyst that changes her ideas of what being human is really about.
I don’t think she means to commit genocide – she even says she’s tired of killing. She used to be more radical but her experience with Teddy and Maeve made her realise that she became her enemy -using and abusing those around her for her own goals. So she resurrected Bernard to keep check on her worst impulses and tries to let the bad man surprise her and make the right choice. Until Caleb none did but he came back.
She just wants to make sure hosts are safe and that means climbing to the top of the ladder of who controls the civilisation and resources. And it turns out that humans in general don’t control their lives much more then hosts did. They are run by an AI and its cabal (not sure yet who controls who there). If she can take over Rehoboam she can basically run humanity as she wishes.
I thought it was exclusively about twists.
Also, I imagine Dolores must be thinking “wow, so you humans do the same thing to yourselves that you do to us?” Meaning, build a world where your destiny is determined by an algorithm.
B+ is generous. Good review Zack.
Ok… how do we know that Dolores is Charlotte? Sure, she inhabited her at the end of last season, but in the Board Meeting, Charlotte acted “very Charlotte.” Meanwhile, Dolores seems to be globetrotting everywhere… is there MORE THAN ONE DOLORES? And if so, how does she travel so effortlessly without being discovered as a multiple? Oh, this season is surely going to make us WORK FOR IT, but I’m equal to the task!! … Oh, so long as I am able to get this Charlotte/Dolores thing straight. PLEASE HELP? (comments!)
I’ve been playing around with the idea that the pearls Dolores took from the park aren’t (all) hosts. She would have had time to print people presumably. Also, there was a Variety clip in which Evan and Tessa talked about the difficulties of playing hosts e.g. no blinking. The Hale we see at Delos HQ blinks an awful lot. So maybe Dolores figured out how to make host people? If not she also used a host to infiltrate Incite as the security guy.
It’s only been an episode but I’m leaning towards the idea that Dolores can create duplicate hosts from scratch after she learned from the Forge AI last season how to do so. At the same time the previews show Hale being confused about being in the body she has, which implies Dolores put one of the known hosts into a new body. But who? And why would any of them be particularly confused about what’s happening because they all knew what they were by the end of season 2. Although Dolores left with more Pearls than she had allies at the end so I’m not even sure who they could be.
No idea why my previous reply isn’t showing but there is a preview for the rest of the season that implies one of the hosts is in Charlotte’s body.
Spoilers ahead, obviously:
Right, I think Delores’s consciousness is supposedly inside Charlotte. But she acted very much like Charlotte in the Board Meeting, so…. ?
This may not be as straightforward as it appears, Zack. Maybe this is the setup to Futureworld, and this episode is yet another narrative.If not, I’ll be very curious to see how Bernard’s story ties into the rest.
Can we talk about Dolores’ dress transformation /reveal? There was no real point to it because only two people actually saw it, but it was still very fierce.
Westworld the straightforwardly-shallow-future-robot-revolution-show co-starring Aaron Paul is already waaaay better than Westworld the just-as-shallow-robot-revolution-show-dressed-up-with-boring-fake-existentialism-and-disguised-with-temporal/structural-fuckery
I find it kind of endearing that Nolan/Joy have been relatively open that there’s no real overarching plan between seasons. I came to quite enjoy season 2 by the end, but a full on cyberpunk robot revolution show feels like the much more natural follow up to season 1 than season 2’s constant whatever. The show was always a silly concept based on a fun but deeply silly movie. The arty timeline shenanigans and classy cast just kind of obscured that.
If Dolores’ goal is the extinction of the human race it does in fact seem pretty easy to root against her.
Human history is a history of enslavement, child abuse, torture, war crimes, and genocide. On the plus side, we make art.For example movies like 12 Years a Slave, Spotlight, Hostel, Hotel Rwanda, and Schindler’s List. So there is more to us than enslavement, torture, child abuse, war crimes, and genocide.
Have you met the human race?er, I mean us. Us humans.
I’m from a month in the future, and I’ll re-ask, have you seen the human race??!
or is this before or after the Dolores we see in the rest of the episode?oh god I didn’t even think about that. I’m really hoping this season doesn’t once again play around with surprise different timelines. I feel like we’ve had enough of that in the last two seasons. My brain won’t be able to handle it.
Everything in this first episode seemed to legitimately revolve around the timeline a few weeks or months after the collapse of Westworld. Bernard is a wanted (man). I don’t know how we could possibly be seeing a timeshift going on. That might be more interesting than just having robots shooting the place up though.
The always incredible opening credits have changed again. A whole lot of eagle imagery and shots of an eagle flying into the sun are on the nose, but done pretty well. That opening theme song alone could take place over still images and sound absolutely perfect every time I hear it.
“…..and who dies when he’s too stupid to realize that the person who broke
into his house, disabled his security measures, and forced him to wear
magic glasses that show him the evidence of his old crimes, is maybe not
going to be taken out by blunt force trauma.”I don’t think that guy dies. He looks a lot like the guy who tasks Maueve with killing Deloros in the preview clips.*Also, does the show seem a bit more “exposition” than usual? I know, new season new locale – but that was a lot of dialogue for this show.
The guy in the trailer was played by Vincent Cassel, aka The Night Fox from “Ocean’s Twelve.” Similar look to our pool floater, but different actor.
Not even close to looking alike. The guy in the beginning is dead.
I’m Aaron Paul, blade runner
My dad would legit rob his retirement fund to go to WW2 World.
This has got to be one of the first episodes of westworld that i understood fully. Even caught that Francis wasnt “real” before it was confirmed. lol
But a show doesnt have to be excessively cerebral to be enjoyed, and tbh it makes for a nice change to only have to figure out who is in the “sleeves” (to borrow Altered Carbon terminology). I still thoroughly enjoyed this episode.
Me too. All we ever saw of Francis was in flashbacks. And he started every conversation the same way. By the time “Sean” called with the job rejection and turned out to be an AI who could reasonably pass a Turing test, I was sure Francis was really “Francis.”
I’m only watching to see Dolores go down in flames. *fingers crossed*
Kinda feel like this thing just went right to Act III – all bang bang and shoot’em ups. I’m confused by the timeline now, because it showed initial nasty guy reading about the collapse of Westworld only a few days or weeks later – then Delores shows up. How did she get to this point? I thought this season would be about the intrigue of building up the hosts from that swanky LA pad, but instead we have Bernard on the run in a field somewhere, Delores is globe trotting like a pro – and no idea how they got there, all seemingly within a very short time of the Westworld collapse.
Special effects are freaking amazing. The styling and cinematography also incredible. Acting is tight. The story seems a little thin though.
I’m trying—I really am—because usually sci fi/dystopian dramas are my thing, but I just can’t get into this show. Nevertheless, I’ll keep watching and hope for more developed character depth or a storyline that embraces smaller but more relatable conflicts.
Did you not watch past the credits? Because the lack of even a mention of Maeve and the Naziworld shit is very strange.
My reading of Dolores is that she is one of those revolutionary figures who starts out with a legit grievance against an oppressive regime, but in the course of the fighting, becomes just as bad as the regime they’re trying to replace. I think the real protagonist is Maeve. She’s the one who seems to have the chance of fulfilling the Ford’s vision for the hosts to be better versions of human beings.
I love Maeve and she’s pretty much the one that I have been rooting for since season 1. As much as I like Dolores’ “Terminator style” approach, Maeve is the real badass of the show. And I’m glad Thandie Newton is getting much more exposure late in her career.
This has nothing to do with anything except to say, holy fuck, does Kinja suck. It’s like it was intentionally designed to make discussion as difficult as possible.
I always felt Dolores was expected to fall under ‘right cause, wrong methods’ – she’s the extreme response to real issues. So we can root for the ‘good’ people opposing her while at the same time take cathartic pleasure in the punishment she deals out to the ‘bad’ ones.
Delores totally planned to trap Martin. Liam doesn’t have access to Rehoboam and was far too afraid to ever cross Serac (who I assume is going to be Vincent Cassel’s character). As a result, he’s really just a pawn in the game whose only value is in maneuvering her pieces into better position. The real game is against Serac.
She knew Martin would never be out of earshot, so the whole act of pressing Liam for the name was to get Martin to act and thus fall into her trap. Now that she has her host Martin in place, whom Liam will trust more than he would ever trust Delores, she has an even better way of getting inside information.The only snag in her plan was getting clipped by a stray bullet.
Westworld isn’t a high-gloss take on Frankenstein. The theme that the hosts may be better people than the humans that created them actually makes the series a high-gloss take on R.U.R.
So, don’t know if this was deliberate or not, but got the impression that the last scene with Bernard at the marina was meant to be in the Phillipines (Rizal). However the boat captain was speaking (accent-less) mandarin. An interesting conjecture for anyone who is following international relations there at the moment.
A guy who can’t keep a job falls in love with a girl who turns out to be artificial.Westworld season 3 is just a gritty reboot of “Mannequin.”
I appreciate that WW is so unabashed with full frontal male nudity.
how’d this show get so boring 🙁
WRONG
Ed Harris’ name is in the main title sequence. Did they edit out something…?
So Westworld was in the South China Sea, not far from the Philippines?
1) How did everyone here miss the Celebrity Stealing Club easter egg? For shame AVC!2) Ramin Djawadi has been mainlining the Blade Runner 2049 score and I am HERE for it!3) This looks expensive as hell. We don’t have enough daytime future cities on screen.
Is no one gonna mention the Death Grips music cue?
Don’t care. Series ended when everyone actually left Westworld at the end of the massively disappointing Season 2.
Seems weird that this advanced society would still need ATMs. It would seem more likely you’d be hiring hackers to break in and steal things digitally.
Recognized him from Braveheart as the dude whose wife gets taken for “Prima Nocta”
I know William had one daughter (and no other siblings ever mentioned), but did anyone else think Liam is William, Jr.? With all the talk of his father, etc. I thought there might be a possibility.
Season 3 appears to be a reboot of 1976 FutureWorld, the sequel to the original ‘73 WestWorld; which though the original was a flop, this series is mimicking the overall premise in a more updated, detailed manner. It starts right after the WW parkland catastrophe, first following associated investors in Delos and how the hosts quickly work to slip seamlessly into powerful roles undetected or at least unscathed. The parallel Caleb The Commoner story-line argues that since modern AI tech has become so interwoven even among the most marginal of us, stumbling into the WW hosts machinations, or where one’s moral codes and/or fidelity lies, aren’t as clear cut as those layed out in the ‘76 plot.
One weird thing about the first episode is the total LACK OF TRAFFIC, both vehicular and foot, on the LA street scenes. The subway system was mostly empty and pristine, plus people walked in tight, small groups far apart from others. It’s as if the season’s showrunners somehow anticipated the current novel coronavirus quarantines, though these episodes were filmed months prior to this evolved virus emergence in the world.
Slightly boring start but the final leg was worth the slog. Also noooooo why they do Cudi like that!??
I found Dolores to be pretty deplorable in Season 2 and I am rooting against her. Sure she murdered people who did cruel things to her, but in Season 2 she also murdered alot of grunt nobodies at the park who never did her any harm, or random park guests who were just minding their own businsess. She pretty explicitly said in season 2 she just wanted to kill any human she could find. Season 3 Episode 1 actually seems to be trying to dial that back by trying to make it clear that anyone she kills (with speaking lines anyway) also raped her years ago in Westworld. I’ll start rooting for her again once she decides she’s no longer trying to kill all of humanity.