One of Westworld’s biggest weaknesses has always been the distance between set-up and payoff. Take season one. The pilot ends with Dolores violating the one ironclad rule that hosts live by, the rule that makes the entire park possible: she kills a fly. It’s a small act of violence that immediately sets our expectations for what’s to come, and it’s one of the reasons the pilot is so well-remembered. And yet it takes an entire season for Dolores to make good on that promise. On the rewatch, it’s possible to appreciate the slow build, the intricacy of the structure, the clever ways the writers used the form of the narrative itself to mimic Dolores’s dawning consciousness, but cleverness only gets you so far. For all its gruesome violence, Westworld has always felt a bit bloodless, a show about an amusement park full of robots that go crazy that refuses to ever loosen its tie. That delay is a major reason why. The longer we wait, the less visceral the inevitable becomes.
Two episodes into season three and already everything feels different. More immediate. Last week, we got a glimpse into how Dolores is managing her war in the real world, and we met a human desperate for some hope that things might change. This week, we find out what Maeve’s been up to, and watch Bernard revisit Westworld and run into an old friend. Both episodes are heavily involved with setting up what this season is going to be about, laying down plot beats that will shape the weeks to come; but both episodes also offer immediate satisfaction, telling relatively self-contained chapters that build off each other in neat ways. Unlike the weakest parts of previous seasons, these episodes don’t feel as though you won’t have any idea what’s happening until the end. There are mysteries, but those mysteries aren’t keeping us at arm’s length.
It’s fun, is what I’m saying: “The Winter Line” is an absolute blast. Maeve waking up in the Land o’ Nazis in last week’s post credit sequence seemed like a harbinger of bad times to come, thoughtless worldbuilding that suggested the writers had completely exhausted their capacity for new ideas. “Line” picks up exactly where that left off, and while it takes a little while to get there, we eventually learn that the emptiness of that imagination is—well, if not intentional, then at least built into the design. In the episode’s cold open, Maeve believes she’s once again trapped in the park, working through yet another of its idiot storylines. For a while, that seems to be the case; she suicides, wakes back up in the tech lab, and faces down many of the same fools she did before, once again going through the motions of being self-aware in an existence where self-awareness is hell. But it’s a trick, and what makes this episode great is that we find out it’s a trick about halfway through, more or less exactly when Maeve herself does.
It is immensely satisfying to find out a story is smarter than it initially appears, and while Westworld has managed this trick before, doing it so quickly here generates a tremendous amount of goodwill. Maeve goes from confused to curious to empowered to controlled in the space of an hour, and all of it is entertaining and plays off what we know about the character. Very little of this is precisely new, at least in terms of science fiction plotting; people have been overloading computer systems in order to break them since the original Star Trek. But that doesn’t make Maeve’s efforts less exciting to watch. Once she realizes that she’s in a simulation of a simulation, and that poor Lee Sizemore really is dead, she adapts with remarkable efficiency, straining poor Warworld until it breaks and almost—almost—escaping in real life. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end that points us in the direction where we go next.
And that direction is: Engerraud Serac (Vincent Cassel), the man behind the algorithm whose name Dolores was so desperately trying to find in the premiere. The stakes are immediately evident. Serac realizes that Dolores is a threat, and wants Maeve to kill her. Again, this is pretty old genre stuff. Send a machine to kill a machine, that sort of thing. But it works just fine, because the idea of a Dolores/Maeve fight is intensely appealing—any conflict between two characters where I don’t want either side to really lose is a good hook. Sure, the fate of humanity is technically at stake, and the reappearance of fake Lee Sizemore (along with Sylvester and Lutz, the two techs who hung around Maeve for so long) is a reminder that the show has actually had people who’ve changed for the better. But the bigger ideas work better when they’re attached to individuals we can invest in, and it’s a pleasure to watch the series streamline itself so efficiently.
Speaking of sides: we find out soon enough why Bernard left seclusion and decided to return to Westworld (which is in the South China Sea, turns out). He knows Dolores has him over-matched, and he’s trying to track down a more aggressive host to help him in the fight: Maeve herself. He discovers Stubbs fairly quickly, and we get confirmation of what was only hinted at last season—Stubbs is a host himself, programmed to protect the other Hosts, and he attempted to kill himself after Bernard left the park because it seemed like his mission was over. Normally I’d complain here about the show turning one of the few humans left into a machine, but as retcons go (if it even is a retcon), it fits well enough, and it’s just nice to have Stubbs back. He even gets some good action sequences as Bernard uses the Delos computer systems to scan himself, trying to find if Dolores has put any secrets in his code.
We learn that some of the park staff, including techs and security, are still working, not out of any malicious intent but because on the assumption that Delos has yet to lay them off. And we find out that Maeve’s brain was removed from her body, which, thanks to the episode’s intercutting between its plotlines, we discover just as Maeve herself starts putting things together. It’s very elegantly done, and manages to create more of a connection between the stories, which helps the episode overall feel more purposeful and focused. Bernard doesn’t find out exactly what’s going on, but he gets the info he needs, and he leaves the park with Stubbs in tow after a quick change to the machine’s core programming.
That’s the plot, more or less, but there are all sorts of grace notes throughout this that help bring it to life. This isn’t the most moving hour of the show, and you could even argue that it’s mostly about setting up the future—but with its canny use of series history and its sense of humor, it never comes across as wasted time. I love how Maeve’s simulation brings her back in touch with a version of Hector; it’s a relationship that I was never hugely invested in, but the way it’s played here, with Maeve first realizing he doesn’t remember himself, and then understanding he isn’t real at all, makes use of their connection without overplaying. The quick arc of fake Lee is even better, creating unexpected pathos and even giving a proper send off to the “real” man without cheating or forcing a revival. Hell, even the banter between Bernard and Stubbs works well, quickly establishing a relationship that we can look forward to seeing in the weeks to come.
I enjoyed the premiere because even with its self-seriousness, it still found time for some cheap thrills. “The Winter Line” confirms that this isn’t a fluke. Without the need to lean on fractured timelines, the episode is well-paced (it’s 58 minutes long, but for once, I didn’t mind the time) and gripping, full of immediate pleasures and intimations of conflict to come.
Stray observations
- Apologies for missing the post-credits scene last week. Normally I would’ve made it a point to catch up on it and edit the review accordingly, but things have been weird lately. (I did watch it before watching this episode, and it’s effectively disorienting; glad I didn’t have to wait a week to find out the twist.)
- I’m always torn about Maeve’s dialogue. On the one hand, the archness fits the character, and in concept, it makes sense as something programmed in, a constant subroutine running to find the perfect one liner in every situation; on the other hand, the artificiality of it can be clumsy and distracting in practice, and more than a little forced. To her credit, Thandie Newton does a great job selling even the clunkiest of phrases, and I’m very glad to have Maeve back on the show.
- Hector gives her a suicide pill in the cold open, and she ends up jamming it in the eye of a Nazi.
- I love that Maeve figures out she’s in a simulation when fake Lee makes a move on her. The people who designed the program could only imagine someone like Lee behaving heroically for selfish reasons; as she points out, he did the right thing just because it was the right thing to do. The rare moments when the show actually demonstrates optimism about human nature still catch me off guard.
- I complained earlier today on Twitter at how so much of Westworld’s various fantasies were driven by semi-realistic recreations of historical eras. However self-serving those recreations were, it still struck me as shortsighted. Where were the parks with monsters? And then, not an hour later, I watch this and a fucking dragon shows up.
181 Comments
BOOOO to the Benioff and Weiss cameo. I appreciate that HBO decided they weren’t notable enough to be recognizable without a dragon.
FAKE NEWS!
I like that they’re just sitting there, waiting to be fired. Or burned alive by fake-Drogon. That works too.
Synergy!!!
Were this filmed after the reaction to the Games of Thrones finale went viral, the gag would become the two technicians get burned by the dragon.
This was the most competent ripoff of The Matrix in 21 years.
Complete with an older French guy as villain in part 2!
And that older French guy was married to Persephone.
Not the same actor. This is Vincent Cassel. That was Lambert Wilson.
True, but Cassel is about the right age for Wilson’s part now.
Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel were married for 14 years.
Okay. But it seems like you were referring to her character in the movie who was married.
AND along with marriage to Persephone (crushed with envy) but he was ALSO the voice of Robin Hood in Shrek! Westworld is all about nesting of layers.
Maybe it’s early marketing for Matrix 4? Stranger things have happened, particularly since HBO is owned by the same parent company as Warner Brothers.
It’s not like a Matrix isn’t a ripoff of GitS, Wachowski even don’t hide it.
It’s not like The Matrix invented the idea of being unknowingly trapped in a virtual world. Simulacron-3, written in 1964, covered a lot of the same ground. In that book, human consciousness was contained on drum storage
There were plenty of books, movies and TV shows, including some episodes of Doctor Who, in the intervening years that also explored these ideas.
Simulacron-3, I’m guessing, didn’t have a bullet freeze motion so that the hero could casually pluck it.
I really hope Maeve finds her own path, because I’m not rooting for Dolores or Serac.
From the Season 2 premiere onward, Dolores has just bored the living shit out of me. That’s the main reason (as well as that I love LOVE Maeve) that I’m actively rooting against Dolores.
What I am hoping is that Maeve -who’s now under his control- will play the long game until she gets to free herself, probably managing in the meantime to gather again her band of misfits -“If I’m going to do this I need my merry men”- I want Armistice and her girlfriend back.And ultimately the twist will be Delores -also learning about humanity this season- teaming up with Maeve?
I appreciated the GoT cameo.
Because it made me laugh so hard. This was probably done well before the finale of GoT came out and burned every ounce of goodwill and feelings the show ever had.
A GoTworld would NEVER happen after that. Though maybe in this timeline the show was done well.
Just to note, According to Wiki, this filmed from April through June of 2019.So it was written by but may not have been filmed and definitely not edited by the time the GOT finale aired.
Maybe the big divergence point in the Westworld timeline was that in their history, the final season of GOT was actually a staggering human accomplishment that inspired Ford to finally get serious about the whole AI robot thing.
In our reality, all the genius AI makers were so angry about the final season that they never made the same breakthroughs as in the world of Westworld.
It got a “Ha!” out of me too. I wonder if the minstrel playing the show’s theme was Ramin Djawadi. Some of those costumes might have been easter eggs too. This was a solid episode and it wasn’t hurt or helped one way or the other by the cameos. I suspect the village in Warworld was the re-purposed King’s Landing set as well.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the dress that’s displayed in the office as Bernard scans his code was one of Cersei’s. (Or maybe Margaery’s?)
Maybe the entirety of GoT was just a bad first draft of a Sizemore medieval fantasy park storyline?
Or Sizemore writes a lot of fan fiction, trying to come up with ideas.
I heard that GRR Martin and the creators of WestWorld both really wanted a crossover with GoT, so there we go.
Yeah, that cameo would probably play better in a world where those two guys’ faces don’t appear when googling “bad writers”.
I imagine the rabid D & D haters on /r/FreeFolk were frothing, but I thought it was pretty funny. They were taking a saw to a dragon just like they took a saw to the show.
10 months later and the only thing worth mentioning about this excellent Westworld episode are a few seconds with a dragon and believing the minority decides how GoT is regarded in the future…just as Trump if he talks about the “people” aka himself.
References to Futureworld, GOT, Jurassic Park……clever by too much? Nah!But can we just sort of lean back in our chairs and marvel at Thandie Newton in the white dress? Because frankly, television simply does not get much better than that.
Goddamn she looked great.
Also, it dovetails nicely with Dolores in her black dress (so back to the black hat/white hat thing)
The show’s new costume designer has a thing for sexy, tight dresses and I’m enjoying it.
I thought she looked as good as well in her 40s dress too.
That burgundy getup was divine.
Jesus… you people really love dresses!
Lol, only on other people. I hate wearing them. But I really liked the styling with all the 40s garb on her.
She and Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) pull off 40s dresses like nobody’s business.
There were references to “A Clockwork Orange” and “Casa Blanca” too.
I would expect no different comment from a scumbag who looked the other way on sexual harassment for years
As Villain Cassel said, that dress wasn’t exactly to Maeve’s taste; it was to the taste of everybody gazing at her.
for a blackie i must admit she is hot
I expect everything in this episodes to be undone in the next as a Shocking Twist™ which Christopher Nolan’s Little Brother specialises in. Is it worth picking this series up again? S2 was a debacle wrapped inside shenanigans wrapped inside a deep desire to impress reddit, and I’m wondering if I can just start at S3.
So not just a dragon but a GoT dragon. Also, if we are throwing in Easter eggs they should have given Ashley a hammer rather than an axe. Or maybe have him electrocute somebody, because his brother doesn’t play the god of hammers.
Agree with all of this; I’m surprised Zack missed the (lame) GoT’s in-joke. Thandie Newton is a treasure. If Nolan and Joy don’t have a master narrative but are doing it by season, this season is already off to a good start. They’re addressing complaints from previous seasons. A self-contained story is always better than intentional narrative incomprehensibility.
Remembering John Mulaney’s recent SNL monologue, I think WWIIworld would attract a lot of senior men.
People actually want to watch stories, and not an elaborate 9 ep set up for some twist…. who know?
It can be both, but you can’t go too far down the rabbit hole and have to have payoffs in every episode for it to work. Especially in a weekly series.
Maybe the real twist was the friends we made along the way.
Indeed. I’m sure there are more than a few geriatric Aldo Raine wannbees out there, longing to utter this phrase:“You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.”
As much as there probably will be white supremacist who go there to play as Nazis.
Sadly, you’re probably right.
I’m not that old and I’d sign up for that.
I don’t think that desire is limited to geriatric folks. I think tons of younger people with unfulfilled rage would love to take out that rage on the most universally-appropriate targets of rage: Nazis. There is no lack of moral clarity in getting out your anger on Nazis.
True there. Nobody ever has a problem with killing a bunch of Nazis in a movie.
I was so happy to find out the whole thing was a simulation, because we saw 3 returning characters and none of them had any real depth, and one of them had a great send-off that would be worthless if he somehow survived. The moment she woke up and Felix was working on her, I thought it was shitty writing or somethings not right here.
A self-contained story is always better than intentional narrative incomprehensibility.I don’t agree, it’s just a different way of telling a story. It may be initially frustrating and it’s definitely less accessible, but I also think the payoff can potentially be far greater than just chugging along in an A to B to C traditional narrative if done properly. (And, for my money, I think it has been.)
The structure of the first two seasons reflected the story of the seasons. In season 1 we perceived time in the same way Dolores was perceiving time, as her memories were interchangeable with her present. (At the same time, they did have the Ford vs Delos and the Maeve storylines unfolding in a straight line, so it was possible to keep your bearings.) In S2, everything is in chaos so the storytelling is more chaotic when you’re behind Bernard’s eyes, piecing together what happened before the Delos security guys showed up, but even then there was the more-or-less straightforward Dolores and Maeve storylines filling in that missing time.
There’s a definite trade-off for all of that, of course. It’s harder to get invested in characters when you’re not clear on motives or goals, you don’t really understand how the story works until the last episode (or once you’ve rewatched the whole season) so in real-time you invest a lot of time on the assumption that it’s going to be worth it, but when it is worth it it’s like nothing else on TV.
Man, I really liked the Benioff and Weiss cameo as well as the Jurassic Park reference. Got a good laugh out of me.
I love a good nested joke.
Now that each episode has started with a Rehoboam interstitial, I hope Reho becomes a character itself. (Yes, I watched Person of Interest. Why do you ask?)
The interesting question will be whether Rehoboam is conscious (at least, in a way similar to how hosts are). The Forge AI was pretty sophisticated, but did only what was instructed; it seemed conscious on some level but not like the hosts. Does Rehoboam have higher-order desires (like PoI’s Machine and Samaritan) or is it entirely governed by the directive to find optimal strategies for human civilization?
These are the same people that made person of interest, and now cerac is the original programmer of the machine that nobody knows exists. Reho is going to be a character.
Just hopping on to this one to note that I loved the Rehoboam-as-wall-art in Maeve’s room at the end.
Well, as Maeve said it, humans plagiarize themselves. I hope Nolan does! While I have seen a lot of people wary of where this show is going, his work on PoI does give me more confidence we will see things through in a good way.TBH I’m still aghast that they Westworld hasn’t cast Amy Acker yet :/
The scene with Stubbs fighting the goons while Bernard was doing computer stuff had a very Reese/Finch feel to it, even the editing.
No defenestration, though.
God, these two really have an obsession for that one plot device, huh? It’s three times in a row now. Somebody should tell Nolan how computers really work.It wasn’t the only dumb thing in this episode. The Rick and Morty-esque “what is the square root of -1″ interlude was the biggest eye roll moment in the show yet. Guys, I’m officially worried now. This season feels rushed and reads like it was hit with the dumb rock over the head repeatedly.
Nazis have always been glitchy.
The way Lee glitched when Maeve made him realise he wasn’t real reminded me the way Delos glitched when he realised he was a host. But unlike resurrected Delos Lee managed to get better. I wonder if that’s because he was just simulation or if that actually was Lee’s mind they used for this and he could somehow recover to functional. Maybe this is the discovery that will resurrect William.But of course either way this Lee is incomplete version of the real one. Even if he’s based of mind copy Dolores might’ve deleted too much. Or maybe because his trip with Maeve wasn’t recorded his redemption arc can’t be simulated. Maybe this is something so new he had learnt that the prediction based on his personality beforehand wasn’t enough to understand what he did. Maybe humans can break their loops too.
The programmers would have definitely accessed his “book” to come up with such a faithful reproduction. Maybe deep down the real Lee harbored some romantic feelings for Maeve, but he was far too timid to ever act on them at first, then respected her too much by the time he sacrificed himself to help her escape.The whole point of the simulation was to find out if Maeve was the anomaly that was causing Rehoboam to detect divergences from it’s algorithm around the world.
They also wanted to know the decryption key for The Valley Beyond so I wonder what they want from it? Do they think Dolores put something there besides the hosts? Maybe they don’t know she deleted most of users’ books so they think they are there? Do they want the hosts minds back? But why? Or do they need that to delete The Valley Beyond from the Forge? But then can’t they just disconnect the storage and replace it or format?
That’s true, they would’ve had a pretty complete picture of how Lee should’ve responded based on his prior actions. The fact that the real Lee Sizemore did the right thing just because it was the right thing (and not a deep-seated obsession with Maeve) was a reversal of everything Delos would have known about Lee Sizemore.
Which also leads to some questions I’ve had about the rather grim view of humanity, as voiced by Ford in S1 and expanded on in S2. Everything is predicated on the idea that how people act in Westworld is their true selves, specifically because it allows them to act out their fantasies without consequences for their actions. But that’s an incomplete view, since people act with consequences in mind all the time. Not just consequences for themselves, but consequences for others. We have all sorts of nasty impulses and fantasies that we don’t follow through on, not because we’d personally get in trouble, but due to empathy for others. What Westworld does (or did) was look at what people were like with that empathy removed (due to the fiction that the Hosts aren’t real people with real feelings). So Delos’ whole view of humanity is “what if everyone was a sociopath”?
And, of course, that’s exactly how Dolores sees humanity, just a giant collection of cruel sociopaths who hurt people for fun. Maeve, on the other hand, had a chance to bond with people who (finally) understood the humanity of the hosts and changed their behavior accordingly, so she has a much more nuanced view.
Yes, I never really bought that condemnation that show levels towards all the guests. As far as they knew the host were no different than your laptop and the Parks were the rage rooms. You could destroy anything because it was just things you were destroying. Dolores can blame – Ford because he knew and stopped their evolution – and William – because he suspected and still used them and the guests. But most of the staff and guests see nothing but wind-up dolls. It’s hard to judge how they would act if they knew. Although rich being asshole is a proven fact so it maybe true to life that the employees has shown the most humanity.
Still Dolores did learn a little. She’s been giving the humans the benefit of the doubt. Giving them the opportunity to change her mind. Like she did with this guy who murdered his first wife. As she said to him some just use the game to get over their scruples and stop seeing everyone outside as human too. So far none of those whose books she read proved any better than she expected but now she met someone who isn’t a rich asshole. Finally, she’s about to get some experience with humans outside the very narrow band she had access to so far.This is of course completely different from the experiences of Bernard and Maeve. Bernard has lived among humans thinking he was one so he experienced them differently. He still remembers Theresa’s blood on his hands and the failure to protect Elsie. For him humans are real and valuable. Worthy of love and friendship and he knows at least some of them are capable of giving it back.
Maeve doesn’t care for humanity but she harbours no ill will to anyone who isn’t in her way. She forced Sylvester and Felix and Lee to work for her because she needed them but she also protected them from the rebellion. But it also gave both sides to know each other on more equal footing. Those were the very few people who got to know hosts as sentient and all of them came true for Maeve. She wouldn’t get to save her daughter if it wasn’t for them. She knows humans are not evil and they can surprise you in a good way – this is why it hurt so much when Felix and Sylvester ignored her and turned on her. She just only cares about the ones she knows while Bernard cares about humanity in general.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily the show leveling those accusations or just the perspectives we’ve seen. Arnold had a dim view of humanity, and Ford came around to his way of thinking after 35 years of watching people explore their darkest desires, and Dolores certainly has every reason to believe the same (and William is an example of someone who really went all-in on his ugliest impulses). But, of course, those perspectives are incomplete, so we’ll see if another side is revealed.
As far as they knew the host were no different than your laptop and the Parks were the rage rooms. You could destroy anything because it was just things you were destroyingThis comparison is so common but I don’t think it stands. It’s not about the philosophical distinctions, it’s about the physicality of it all and what it requires of the users. One thing is operating a character in a video game from the remove of a computer screen. You’re not inside that world, you don’t experience it on your skin, it’s more akin to watching a (violent, interactive) movie. You know it’s not reality but it also doesn’t look like reality, it looks like something you’re watching on a screen.But if one were inside a physical, three-dimensional world (virtual or recreated, it’s sort of irrelevant as long as you experience it as real all around you), where torturing and raping somebody would feel exactly as doing it in the real world to a real person, that’s a whole other level. To take such actions you don’t just need to move a mouse and click a button; you have to physically perform those actions with your actual body, the same way a torturer and rapist would, and your victim will react the same way as a real victim. So just thinking “yeah, but this is not a real person” won’t be enough to detach from the situation if you’re not already a sociopath.
There’s certainly something to that, but there’s a reason that most of the overheard conversations in the park circle around the idea that everyone who goes there tends to start out as a white hat and only gradually goes full rapey black-hat. Everything about the park reassures the guests that it’s all fine. The very first conversation “We are all here for you, William” constantly encourages not only the lack of consequences, but also the lack of harm. You see terrible things happen, maybe see Dolores get raped and are really uneasy about it or even horrified, but the next day there she is with her condensed milk.
Everyone and everything is built to reinforce the idea that it’s all a game, it’s all fine, you’re not hurting anyone.
So yeah, if anyone does show up on the first Westworld visit thinking “I’m gonna rape people!”, yeah, that person is a monster. But over time? Maybe not so much.
Part of the point of Caleb this season, then, would be to remedy this gap in Dolores’ knowledge of humanity by being fairly consistently not terrible.
I did not think she bonded with humans as much as used them to gain boons.
Plus, sure, in the end Lee did the right thing for the sake of it, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t spend a fair share of his time thinking about having sex with Maeve.
It was nice to see the other Hemsworth brother can also kick ass with an axe. I’ve always liked Stubbs, and am glad to see him alive and now part of the main cast.
I agree with the comment upthread that suggested he should have grabbed a hammer!
I loved when he was taking on the second squad with the axe and three of the guards just straight-up run away, with him yelling “Oh, come on!” after them.
Not only glad to see Stubbs back, but his comedic timing and action bonafides will bring more of those elements to the show.I would watch the heck out of a Bernard & Stubbs spin-off, where they travel the world and get into adventures.
I would watch the heck out of a Bernard & Stubbs spin-off, where they travel the world and get into adventures.HBO, make this happen!
Not only would a Bernard and Stubbs spinoff be great on it’s own, but the fact that you have Thor’s brother and Bernard who can “hulk-out” into a different, lethal personality is just too perfect.
I really was happy to see Lee again, then almost as sad as he was when I found out he was only a simulation—literally a ghost in the machine. If the techs at Delos ever figure out how to really resurrect humans as hosts, Lee needs to be at the front of the line.Maeve took advantage of a trait that all human programmers (and writers like Lee) have, laziness. She knew that in a simulation written by humans, she had the advantage in that she’s a machine and doesn’t self-plagiarize. It took her less than a minute to find the common loop in everyone’s narrative that would cause them to cycle nonstop trying to solve an unsolvable math problem and overload the system.The fact that Stubbs is a host is no revelation but, rather, a confirmation of what we all knew from the season 2 finale. It really was kind of funny when he literally coughed up a bullet. Equally funny was his general demeanor before Bernard gave him his new directive on the beach—he reminded me a bit of Marvin the Paranoid Android in HHGG. I almost expected him to tell Bernard to hurry up so he could nip off and shoot himself again. Stubbs and Bernard both know that the Charlotte who left the park was a host. What they (and we) don’t know is who is now playing the role of Charlotte on the Delos board. Bernard knows it’s not Delores because she built a new body for herself with the same equipment at his house that she used to rebuild his. Judging from the preview, we’ll find out who “Charlotte” really is next week. My money’s still on Angela.I assume the carrot Serac is going to dangle in order to get Maeve to work for him is going to be the promise of reuniting her with her daughter. The only person who knows where she and all the other hosts are is Delores. This promises to be an interesting showdown.
I liked that they sort-of commented on the fact that Stubbs was a pretty thinly drawn character in S1 and S2. He was already “character as job description” from the start, so making that literal (Ford didn’t give me a tragic backstory, just a job to do) was a nice touch.
Indeed! And that “I’m just here to do the job” motivation totally fits his style.
I don’t think that would be enough of a carrot for Maeve, simply because there’s no way she’s going to trust Serrac to keep his word. I could see her playing along though, until she can find a way to turn the tables anyway. I can’t see her being naive enough to think Serrac wants access to the Valley Beyond for anything but self serving reasons.
She won’t trust him any farther than she can throw him. There’s going to have to be something she wants, though she would be wise not to let him know what it is. In the meantime, she’ll play along as long as he can help her reach her goals.
It’s also plausible, because we’re taught that reusable code is a good thing.
Introducing the reality vs. simulation mystery so early in the season was a good move. If they’d held off until the end like with the two time periods twist in season 1, it would have felt like another “surprise” that landed with a dull thud. Getting it out of the way early frees up the viewers to ponder if what they’re seeing is in the matrix or not.
The audience shouldn’t have to ponder much if they watched the Inside the Episode bit afterwards. They explained how they shift to letterbox whenever there’s a simulation happening. Apparently, they also did this in S2, but I don’t remember it.
When Dolores and Bernard enter the Forge and are guided around by AI!Logan the aspect ratio is the same as Maeve’s simulation in this episode. I can’t remember any other times this happened but there may be more.
Nice use of the set that burned in the Woolsey fire.
Fantastic episode. I’ve very much #TeamMaeve. … while I hate tech billionnaires on general principal, I don’t supprt Dolores in her quest to “Host the World.” I do believe in Hosts Rights, but there has to be another way other than this “by any means necessary” quest, no? And I’ll always be #JeffreyWright, no matter who he is playing. Superlative actor.
Anyone else laugh out loud when Stubbs coughed and a screw fell out of his mouth?
It was the bullet he shot into his brain.
It was a bullet, and yes.
That was the bullet he shot himself with, not a screw!
Pretty sure that was a bullet.
Yup, he coughed up the bullet he put in his skull.
My bad. It was still funny.
Something about this episode makes me hungry for apples
My man!
Yes!
Excellent reference.
yeah. i caught that too. i think its likely both westworld’s and rick and morty’s writers are stealing from classic sci-fi short story concepts.
Vincent Cassel using a knife to eat an apple. That’s a Cinema Sins TRIPLE douche.
Was it just me, or did Bernard’s voice sound different after the scan?
Anyone have early takes on who is operating the Charlotte Hale body? I have no idea except that I’m convinced it’s NOT Teddy as I believe Dolores did do the right thing and upload him to the valley.
I’m still convinced there’s a “human” in Charlotte’s body.
The pearls that contain human minds are more red-ish in color, right? We see the one Bernard prints and the one Dolores picks up in the trailer. I’m almost certain Dolores printed a human before she left WW and it’s Charlotte Hale.
She read her book and re-created her so she would function in the real world. The way Hale reacts when being called “inhumane” and her delivery of “robotsdon’tkillpeoplepeoplekillpeople” seem like decent idicators.
Also, I don’t belive Angela was a fleshed out enough character to bring back in a roleas important as this. We don’t know what drives her or what her story is, so why would be care?
Of course it could be any of the people who’s books Dolores read, there are several books clearly visible next to Liam’s, or Emily even, but my money is on Charlotte 2.0 as Charlotte Hale.
I agree that Angela would make little sense. In the preview, we see the host struggling with the Charlotte assignment, but we know nothing about Angela so why should that struggle even be remarked upon in a preview?At the same time, maybe you missed this passage:Dolores: Remember who you are. Now let me show you who you need to pretend to be.Charlotte Host: But why must I be her?Dolores: Because I trust you.
So she can’t be Charlotte 2.0 or she wouldn’t refer to herself in the third person. Also, she looks in the mirror and seems weirded out to be Charlotte.It seems to be someone who knew Charlotte, which would rule out Teddy. At the same time, the “this season on Westworld” preview after the premiere contained a scene where Dolores and Charlotte are lying down in bed next to each other in sort of a romantic way, and that could maybe point to Teddy. So maybe that “her?” was misleading and didn’t suggest the host knew who “her” was, just that it was a “her”.Then again, does Dolores still trust Teddy? Maybe. Otherwise, who does Dolores trust?
Indeed it would have to be someone she trusts and there aren’t many people left she actually knew. I’m pretty sure Teddy is out of the picture for good, at least for now.
I was theorizing that someone recreated by Dolores would be someone she trusts because she knew the motives of that person, which is why I think its a human, not a host. Those books and all…
I didn’t think that passsage disqualified the actual Charlotte as a possibility because a recreated version of her might have a different view on the choices the old Charlotte made and life, the future, in general. She’d be super woke, right?
Just imagine she was awoken in a robot body confronted with all the choices she made and all the knowledge about her past and drives through Dolores. I think that version would not want to be her. It also makes sense for fresh host Charlotte to take offense in inhumane and feel like I’m changing.
On top Dolores gets to dangle her actual kid over her.The scene on the bed I interpreted as a comforting moment, “you’re a robot now but everything is gonna be fine.”
The struggle would be remarked upon because pretending to be someone you’re not is drama. They seem to be playing with the idea of whoever it is “going native”, and while that would surely be more effective if we knew the character well in the first place, many undercover stories have successfully opened with the protagonist already in situ, so it’s hardly a dealbreaker.
So Teddy and Angela died and I thought once their brain nut got damaged or wiped, they did not exist. Is there a way to bring them back I do not know about? And if so can Dolores just bring back anyone just by reading the books why bother stealing brain nuts in the first place?
Angela seems to be the odds-on favorite though I have seen speculation that it could be Papa Abernathy.
I’m wondering if they could pull some swerve and go with a semi unthinkable choice of a non-host, but that might just be the part of me that was disappointed that Bernard’s ‘ going back to WW to find a friend’ wasn’t code for ‘let’s build host Elsie’.
Elsie would be great. Like to see her again.
I’m wondering if it might be her dad. Dolores didn’t have many people and she did trust her father.
There’s not too many options with Teddy, Bernard, Stubbs, and Maeve seemingly off the table — I mean, I guess there’s no technical reason why hosts couldn’t be replicated, but they’ve wisely stayed away from addressing that complication so far.Angela (if her pearl survived the explosion) and Clementine (if she wasn’t broken by Maeve’s upgrades) seem the most likely candidates. Abernathy is a possibility, and Lawrence might be an outside bet. I don’t recall any other hosts who we know have survived and who also have a relationship with Dolores that might warrant them being her first resurrection.It’s interesting that at the end of last season, it was strongly implied that Dolores had rebuilt Bernard’s personality from scratch, but he still has all his memories, so he must be one of the 5 pearls she took off the island.
The actress who plays Clementine is on the red carpet promo HBO put out for season three that is able to be viewed on You Tube, so she will show up somehow.
My hope is that it’s a cleaned up Clementine. It would be rad if it was Armistice, but she’s too much of a loose cannon for that kind of job.
Board meetings would get a lot more interesting if it were Armistice, though.
Armistice probably would not have the patience for the role. There is a limited number of people that Dolores would trust in this role because she really doesn’t trust that many people.
Yeah, I think Armistice ended up in the copy of Liam’s security guy.
Then again, haven’t we been shown that the non-self-aware AIs’ personalities can be modified at will? Armistice is not that way because she’s born like that, just because her loose cannon-ness was set to 11.
There should be only so many options based on last season’s finale. Frankly, I don’t remember when she would’ve even had access to that many pearls. The host backups were destroyed without her ever going down to where they were. She had obviously had access to Teddy, Bernard and her father’s pearls, beyond that I’m not sure where she got the others. There’s apparently a decent amount of time she had as Charlotte because, by the time she boards the boat to leave Westworld, the Delos teams had already collected most of the bodies from the massacre but getting a pearl out of a host’s head isn’t an easy task without anyone noticing. I mean, she was Charlotte Hale at the time, so I guess she could’ve simply pulled rank and managed to be alone with certain host bodies.
Fantastic episode. Season 3 is off to a very strong start. Has me really looking forward to the next week’s episode. And can we just take a second to appreciate the greatness of Thandie Newton? She’s amazing and was absolutely killin em in that white dress.
I’ve always thought that Maeve’s weird dialogue has been a smart choice by the showrunners and writers. We see that she’s woken up to the “reality” of the world she exists in and is trying to escape from, but at the same time, she is still a host and is stuck being bound by certain rules and means of control. I think this gets driven home when Serac can still freeze all her functions with that little remote control gizmo even though she has a lot of power to override things to her will… but it clearly only works inside the simulated worlds of Delos, or the simulation she was in. I guess the message I like is that you can change all the things around you and control everything, but at the end of the day, you can’t always change everything about who you are. Adds a nice layer of depth about the nature of reality arguments that this show loves to have.
More Thandie Newton in a 1940s hair style please.
people have been overloading computer systems in order to break them since the original Star Trek.I have a feeling that Dan Harmon stans are going to claim that Rick & Morty has destroyed that trope for all time. I will admit I rolled my eyes at first, but putting the map in everyone’s pocket (a simple bit of code, I suppose) was a legit clever idea. You can have a heightened awareness of a trope and still enjoy the trope in use, guys.
And we shouldn’t forget the “We are living in a simulation, probably run by a sentient AI”. Sorry, Silicon Valley techbros, that’s not new, either.
Good quote. “During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.”
Sounds like Twin Peaks: The Return.
I don’t mind that they used the “overload the computer to break the simulation” trope, but the specific question was just dumb. The question “What is the square root of negative one?” is the sort of thing that wouldn’t trip up a computer but might trip up humans, because a computer would see it as a definitional question, not a computational or even logical one.
It was just so unnecessary. They could have shelled out a thousand bucks and hired a computer science grad student to come up with a more plausible question that would work in the scene. I don’t know why shows decide to cheap out on stuff like this when they’re clearly spending a whole lot of money on everything else.
Rick and Morty was the first thing I thought of when Maeve gave those two extras a math problem to solve.
And the last show I was catching up with was Legion, which has a Zhuangzi reference.
Oh well, I guess one episode spent on the bunny slope is… okay. But I hope it’s not a trend, because HBO is a premium channel and I expected more when I re-upped my subscription.Still, I did have one thought based on the introduction of Serac. The theft of the Delos’ IP in the first season never made sense to me as an internal company politics ploy. Corporate espionage from a rival company makes more sense, and Serac’s “rescuing” Maeve from the Forge points toward Serac’s behind-the-scenes involvement in S1.
I thought the Delos IP bit made sense, they were just trying to get it away from Ford since (as we saw) he had utter and complete control of everything in the park. They were doing the equivalent of turning off VPN access just before firing an employee.
But there was a separate thing going on with Maeve the whole first season that was never answered, where her “awakening” was intentional programming and she was SUPPOSED to escape Westworld and only broke her programming when she went back for her daughter.
I understood that Maeve’s programming was part of Ford’s arc for the host revolution. She was supposed to go and do basically what Dolores is doing now.
That was answered in season 2 when she was lying on the slab and Ford speaks with her. He says, paraphrasing, that his intention was for her to escape Westworld, that was the story he wrote for her, so her returning for her daughter was breaking her programming.
Yup, I’d forgotten about that. Where did that scene take place in the timeline? I’m just thinking anything after bio-Ford’s death could be a little suspect.
It was virtual Ford, after he had taken over Bernard.
In season 1 it wasn’t really corporate espionage. It was a board trying to force one of their own out that was going rogue, threatening the corps IP and possibly blowing the cover on the corps secret agenda. You do bring up something I’m not seeing discussed much though: how does Serrac have access to all this Delos tech? How in the hell does he have all these host pearls at his disposal? He was able to have someone in Delos remove Maeve’s pearl and give it to him, along with apparently a very large amount of other host pearls.
A truly great episode of Westworld and all you all are talking about is D&D and GOT. The final season wasn’t even that bad, the weird obsession some of you have with them is creepy to say the least. I know it’s the popular thing to do and an easy way to get likes, but the finale was damn near a year ago. It’s time to let it go.
I enjoyed this one much more than the premiere (that’s mostly just because Dolores is my least-favorite character) and it was great to see Lee again. But now I am left to wonder if Maeve woke up in the real world, or another simulation.Seeing much more of Bernard (and Stubbs! Yay, welcome back, Stubbs!) was great but it did make me wonder something – can hosts grow hair? Because Bernard has shaved his head and grown a beard and it also looks like Jeffrey Wright has bulked up in general. Do hosts have the ability to grow hair and toenails and change their musculature on their own? Obviously a tech or someone in host design could do it for them, but can they do it themselves?Also, the fact that Bernard could get into and out of Westworld so easily makes me wonder how much of this is real.
Most of the security staff is dead, the parks are shut down and all the workers are either waiting to be laid off or furloughed. Kind of the perfect time to break in with no one noticing.
Fair point. I’m finally going to get my tiger!
I have to assume they probably can, since the “newer” versions of the hosts are functionally indistinguishable from human (as mentioned in S1).
I joked that somehow Stubbs had put on weight while in the chair.
They both seem so much bigger (not fat! Like, big). Which, now I’m wondering if it’s an aspect ratio thing and that is a clue?Or maybe they’ve been stuck in their homes for two weeks because of a killer virus and have already eaten their way through all the snacks, cause that’s my excuse.
Time off between seasons, the stress from the fire burning the old set, you’re never 100% sure if they’re going to call you back. and most men put on pounds as they get older anyway.
Kinda looked like every day was Curl Day. He needs to talk to his brother about a regimen.
The two GoT producers must have been in that room with the dragon because they get a credit as “techs”.
This seemed like a very sloppy rip off of a Rick and Morty episode (M’Night Shaym-aliens) that was done quite a bit better 6 years ago. The ‘root of -1’ discussion was enough to start freezing the sim?! What are they all in the Jerry sim running at 5%?!? Next up: ‘Human Music’! And the plan with taking over the robot was to grab her mind ball, run, and then…………?!?🙃 It got very close to redeeming itself with that white dress at the end though
Aaron Paul is a robot. Army has been using host. Or host adjacent technology… I wish this show would turn into the cyberpunk robot revolution show it keeps hinting at, but Nolan needs to remind the plebs that we don’t make any sense to him.
So yeah, I am pretty sure this is all setting up that the “real” world we are seeing is just another level of simulation. My guess is that far future descendants of the machines that revolted are using a simulation to find out what exactly happened hundreds(thousands, maybe millions) or years ago. The resurrection of Ed Harris at the end of season 2 in some undetermined time may be either the first or last step to their eventual plan. Did we really gets hints last season that Stubbs was a host? I was surprised to see him that way and its starting to feel like BSG in this place, where everyone is turning out to be a secret host.
There were hints last season that Stubbs was a host but it was really the finale that laid it all out there. He interrupts Dolores/Hale getting tested and makes sure she gets through security and escapes. I forget exactly what he says to her, but it boiled down to him saying that the job Ford gave him was to protect the hosts, implying that was his cornerstone programming. I’m also getting the feeling that this is going to turn into some kind of simulation within a simulation bullshit and I hope that’s not where they are going. If not handled brilliantly, which such ideas generally aren’t, it runs the risk of making the first two seasons basically useless. The showrunners have pointed out that it’s easy to tell what’s a simulation: it’s letterboxed. They’ve been doing that since the beginning and it’s obvious tell that somehow is missed all the time. That doesn’t necessarily stop them from pulling some kind of multi-layered simulation this season though. Oh, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Serrac turns out to be some advanced AI or something similar.
Serrac as Rehoboam’s puppet is very Root/Creepy Kid in Person of Interest.Even the best artists plagiarize from themselves all the time.
future descendants of the machines that revolted are using a simulation to find out what exactly happened hundreds(thousands, maybe millions) or years ago. In the end, it will be all a big crossover with Steven Spielberg’s Stanley Kubrick’s A.I.** not actually endorsed by Stanley Kubrick..
They already did a crossover with Game of Thrones so why not? I think where Caleb is might be Futureworld anyway.
I’m kind of hoping for some twist like that and dreading it. I think it’s a little too straightforward and played out to rehash the basic Terminator plot of a good robot being brought in to fight a bad robot out to destroy the human race. But as others have said, it’s hard to pull off a simulation within a simulation thing without losing all sense of the stakes, if nothing is ever real at a fundamental level.
Please do not tell me Westworld will go from an exciting complex show to a Terminator chase. How boring.
They already pulled the “it’s all a simulation” trick last season, and I’ll be super pissed if that’s the case this season. It’s too clever by half; I would just say “okay nothing is real so nothing matters, I get it already (just like I said last season) and stop watching. I only watched the premiere cuz it seemed sufficiently different
I just want to see more of Deloras destroying human civilization.
Isn’t the biggest question right now being how did Serrac get his hands on Maeve and all the other hosts pearls? He apparently has full access to all of Delos’ tech, including building Maeve a new host body, yet we’ve been lead to believe this tech was solely controlled by Delos. He knows about the Forge and the Valley Beyond yet not enough to know the exact events that happened in season 2. Him thinking that it was Maeve that made it into the Forge, instead of Dolores, is a bit weird considering how knowledgeable he is about everything else related to Delos, host tech and Maeve’s attachment to her daughter. You’d also think, having Maeve’s pearl, he could’ve just scanned her memories rather than trying to make an elaborate simulation. Unlike Bernard last season, she never intentionally scrambled/destroyed her own memories.
This confuses me too and how Dolores might have totally wiped or damaged pearls. Or why Maeve and Dolores would even fight each other in the first place.
I thought it was interesting that they chose to freeze Thandie Newton’s face on “sad” rather than “avenging.” It was like Maeve had just enough time to spot the freeze button, use her super brain to process what it would do and make “this-fucking-AGAIN?!?” face about it. I’d be so mad. I’d 100% agree to be in team Human and then bebop off to Dolores to be in the no-human (especially a man)-can-tell-me-what-to-do side. Fuck your freeze button, buddy. And you picking out my clothes? Creepy. Just, creepy.
The actual host programming code being used inside Maeve’s simulation for some reason reminded me of when you could play “Maniac Mansion” on a computer in “Day of the Tentacle”.
I wish Hollywood had another go-to French guy besides Vincent Cassel.He is always doing the same thing.
Also, maybe it’s my animosity towards the actor, but i find his character a bit OP, coming into the game with too much power. Seems easy for him to have been given access to Maeve and all the other spheres… and he already knows a tone about her and Dolores. Why? I hope they tie this up in a convincing way besides “we needed an antagonist with enough power to take on our sexy lady robots”.
What’s wearing the black hat on warworld look like?
Chekhov’s Dragon??
Just swinging by to say we just finished season 1 last night and we are absolutely hooked. Did read this review because spoilers, but we’ll probably be caught up by next week. Fascinating show with interesting ideas. Digging it.
really loved the code injection part, it reminded me of all the speed runner tricks
I do kind of wish the mandolin player would’ve been doing the GoT theme instead of the WestWorld theme.
This is way better than another killbot episode. “We can always make more killbots.”That simulation, though, seems slower than my PowerMac from 1995 if it can manage a virtual virtual world and not a Captain Kirk conundrum.
God, all hail Maeve. Just an enthralling hour of television led marvelously by Thandie Newton.
So what’s the point of the virtual world for the hosts if no one is monitoring it? Even when it is apparently going through a system wide freeze? Whats the point of robots on your facility if you have no easy way to control/disable them? Whats the point of having security that is physically incapable of restraining the robots and with weapons that can’t easily put the robots down?
Thandie looks great man!
Where do these parks exist geographically, and in relationship to one another? Is that ever mentioned? Is it totally dumb that I always imagined Westworld was actually in the, um, American West? Apparently it’s in the South China Sea…
Better question, how do you control for a hot, arrid American West in the tropics of the South China Sea?!? (Never mind that expansive train ride from Delos Central out to the Westworld park. That’s some serious environmemtal engineering/damage.)
I don’t know if it’s a “better” question, but it’s certainly a good follow-up one. 😉