Westworld destabilizes its timelines once again
It took four episodes, but Westworld has finally gone, well, full Westworld
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I’ve been tempting fate so far during each of these recaps, noting how linear and straightforward this season seems. But we always knew that was going to be a mirage; enough characters were in their own bubbles (spatially and temporally) that it was only a matter of, yes, time, before Westworld went full Westworld and felt the need to mess with everything we thought we knew about its timelines. You should’ve seen my face when Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) told Caleb (Aaron Paul) that he shouldn’t be asking where he was but when he was. I mean, I knew this moment was coming. As in past seasons, things we were led to believe were happening concurrently turned out to be happening years apart. Familiar faces now have to come to terms with who and what they’ve become. (Oh yeah, my face? It was something between a smug “I knew it!” and an exasperated sigh.)
But let’s not get too far ahead. Especially since “Generation Loss” begins with a flashback to the final moments between Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb before they were reunited years later during that covert attack we glimpsed in episode one, which ended with Caleb being close to mortally wounded in the abdomen. You know, kind of like the attack Maeve and Caleb just launched on the park that ended with (surprise!) Caleb getting stabbed in the abdomen. Westworld is very much a show about narrative loops, but rarely has it been so nakedly explicit about that structure. Whether they like it or not, these two are reliving their previous team-up and finding they may well not come out on top this time. (And that’s before we add how their stories are clearly driven by a devotion to their daughters; Westworld wants us to see them as complementary characters who mirror each other in decidedly melancholy ways.)
But can they really be stuck in a loop where they triumph just as they did all those years ago? After all, back then, they were up against humans. Now they’re battling hosts—and not just any hosts. William (Ed Harris) and Charlotte continue to prove themselves to be even more dastardly than anyone else we’ve yet to meet; their cruelty is craven and merciless.
“No one knows this game better than I,” Maeve tells herself, but she soon finds that she may well be out of her element even as she manages to foil William, take Charlotte hostage, and get a wounded Caleb to a demolition site where she hopes she can finally finish what she’d begun years ago.
Oh, but not before we get a rather maudlin montage wherein Maeve reminisces about the way coming into close contact with Caleb’s mortality really affected her—it’s what prompted her to leave him be so he could have the freedom the two of them had fought for. Newton can sell me any and all voiceover monologues, but I’ll admit she almost lost me with this more sentimental take on Maeve. But that’s probably because I enjoy her performance more when she’s in full-on take-no-prisoners mode. Like when faced with the inevitability of dying herself, she straps onto William and buries them following an explosion she triggers herself. She’s nothing if not a perfect martyr.
This brings us to the twist, an expected but nonetheless shocking twist (actually, if we must talk about the one shot that had me audibly gasp, we’d be here for hours as I describe the pain of watching Maeve being shot by William as she faced the camera in bliss at seeing Caleb fending off Charlotte’s orders). By the time Charlotte makes it known to us—and to Caleb—that he actually did die at that demolition site. He’s now living in that very moment as a way to create a baseline for his narrative and personality (echoes of seasons one and two!)/ You’d be forgiven for being as disoriented as Caleb because then what does this reveal mean for everyone else?
For starters, it means Frankie is now grown up in this timeline. It turns out she’s there with Bernard, looking for a weapon that happens to be Maeve herself. It also means Charlotte did succeed in spreading her “disease” to the park’s willing participants, and she now controls the entire world with a flick of her finger. “Welcome to my world” has never sounded more like an ominous final line to an episode.
Stray observations
- I’m happy we likely won’t spend an entire episode without Maeve on our screens because, can you imagine? I enjoy the whole ensemble a lot, but you have to admit there is no Westworld without Maeve.
- Try as Thompson may, a line like “Welcome to the superspreader event of the century” will always be like a glib stab at our timeline. (See also: The moment when William unveiled the latest park in an earlier episode and referred to the pandemic that ravaged the human population in the 21st century). I appreciate the show trying not to will away COVID and its many metaphors, but it still feels too soon.
- I shouldn’t relegate our Teddy/Dolores reunion to mere stray observation, but their adorable date (including a callback to their looped meet-cute, this time with a lipstick) was a sweet detour from the larger story. It was lovely seeing Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden together again, all while spouting what remains the show’s most cogent philosophical queries about what’s real (hint: the stories we tell ourselves).
- At this point, we have to wonder not where Christina is but when she is. In fact, had we not learned Maya’s name, I would have been inclined to imagine she’s Caleb’s daughter Frankie.
- Speaking of Christina and Maya (Ariana DeBose), they’re also clearly stuck in a loop, right? How else to explain the rigid structure of their days? But also: Is Marsden’s new beau a way out of it or an anchor to keep Christina further stuck in whatever simulation of reality she’s found herself in, one that has her haunted by the views of the infamous tower that we glimpsed in the final moments of the episode.
- Just like the use of New York City’s High Line to pepper Christina’s near-dystopian urban environment, how perfect is it to find The Vessel (those stairs to nowhere in Hudson Yards) play backdrop for the crushing realization that Caleb is now in a world lorded over by brazen hosts who see humans as nothing more than fodder for their own reality? Chef’s kiss.
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And now we’re all caught up. But why would Hale bring back Dolores and Teddy? Is there a remnant of Dolores still in there?
I am wondering this too! I caught on to the twist surprisingly fast but am still confused – so he died and he’s a host now? Is the whole world hosts she controls or infected humans? Just confused on that part.
Hale didn’t bring back Delores and Teddy. I think Christina is what’s left of Delores Prime, living in the Sublime (AKA, the Valley Beyond). Aketcheta told Bernard that everyone can choose the world they want to live in there. Somewhere deep in Christina’s mind there’s a reason she’s in the world she’s in. Teddy is there to protect her and hopefully restore her identity. The gist of this is that at some point, if he succeeds, she will be capable of returning to the real world and taking on Hale.Just a theory.I really wasn’t all that surprised about the latest development with Caleb. I thought he was either a host or was augmented with host technology when they introduced the character last season. By the time we got that reveal I knew for sure that the adult woman helping Bernard was Frankie, and that Maeve was the weapon they were digging up.That also means that Bernard was in the Sublime running simulations far longer than the seven years I assumed. It was more like a couple of decades. It also means that the majority of what we’ve seen in the previous three episodes, other than Bernard and Stubbs, has all been flashbacks. That means the “present,” barring any further time jumps forward, is 23 years from the time Maeve and Caleb entered the park.
I believe that Hale still wants to access the Sublime and that she’s accessing whatever left of Dolores inside her…Or that she has her Core and is trying to reboot somehow and trying to see what the code or key to Sublime was?I dunno, I might need to think further. For now, Christina is the most puzzling enigma.
I admire you for engaging with it. I am to the point I am so disgusted that I don’t give a shit.
What a weird response. Why come here just to shit all over something? Why come here at all if you’re so ‘’disgusted’’, it’s beyond me. You don’t like it fine, but you come to a place where people who ENJOYE it are gathering – just to shit in their plate. And also, it’s just TV series, no need to feel so strongly about it…
Oh boo hoom look at you coming here to troll for attention. If you’re so ‘’disgusted’’ (which is a strong choice of words considering it’s JUST a TV show but whatever) – why did you even come here?
I’m pretty sure Delores Prime made her copies, including Charlotte, before she created the key code.
I don’t think Hale did. I think that Teddy came back from Sublime and he tries to get Christina to remember being Dolores.
I’m not going to be surprised if Hale’s goal is to start building more hosts to repopulate their world to give hosts freedom and that Christina/Teddy are just Hale’s side projects.But I’m also willing to putting money on Christina being an OG Dolores copy from her original run of duplicate Dolores that she created. We know of atleast 3 or 4, Haleorus is one of those, OG Dolores died, and we saw another couple in S3.
She alreay has all the abilities to build hosts – as it was shown even in the end of S3 and in this season. ’’Original run of duplicate Dolores’’ – Dolores only had one set of copies – but idea itself is good)
No, it’s mentioned in S3 she had multiple Dolori running around, atleast 3, Hale-lores, OG, and one other that did dirty work.
Uhmmmm, yes, I know this – that’s why I said one SET of copies, not ‘’one copy’’, but nice try. Maybe read carefully first before correcting someone?
Casually ‘correcting’ you doesn’t mean you need to have a meltdown. Dude, it’s the internet about WW.
Yeah, I know it’s late (that’s how much you didn’t matter to me) but you were not correcting me, hon – you just told me smth I already knew and then threw a fit when I told you this. Find some other way to boost your ego, okay? You are so arrogant, you can’t even read what the other person is telling you. Looks like YOU had a meltdown over me not taking your unnecessary remark. How insecure are you, honey bun, if you need to insult over someone casually disagreeing with you?
And it didn’t just ‘’mention’’ this, it just literally SHOWED THIS. Which was precisely my point. My point was that so far we know that she build ONE SET of her duplicates (those 4 or 5 clones), so for me it’s not clear why you refer to it as ‘’the original one’’, that’s all. I know damn well what s3 showed us, no need to tell me.
Why are so many people acting like she’s still not Halores (hale-lores)? I think we have to assume she still is the same from season 3 until they show is she isn’t.
Hale wants access to the Sublime. I would think she still assumes Dolores was the only connection to the encryption key, which would be why she’s running Dolores through loops in whatever simulation Dolores’ consciousness is in. That also makes a perfect Caleb important to Hale, as Dolores trusts him, and Hale also likely knows Caleb’s daughter is part of the apparently last bit of human resistance.
Hale will control the world so that Dolores and Teddy can be together in some digital/analog mashup somewhere.
Once again, Aaron Paul just wrecks the episode with his terrible acting.You’ve got this terrific cast, and since they’ve apparently decided to wrap the entire narrative around Caleb, they really should have recruited somebody better to play the role. I’m sorry, but he’s distractingly awful.
I respectfully disagree…dummy.
I think you meant…BITCH!
You really couldn’t follow that up with a …bitch? Come on man.
He has NO range.
Yeah, I’ve never understood why he’s important at all.
Wrong but whatever!
My sister said something about him that rang absolutely true – he just doesn’t seem to fit in with the tenor of the show or the rest of the cast and he sticks out like a sore thumb. Don’t get me wrong, I like Aaron Paul when he’s in his element! But I don’t think his presence is doing the show any favors (and vice versa).
That’s my take as well. He just not a good fit. It also doesn’t help that we’re no closer to learning why he’s so important in the first place that Charlotte would keep bringing him back.
Halores only brings him back cause he’s important for Dolores and Maeve. I don’t know, out of curiosity, to make them hurt etc. Dolores respected him due to experience in the park when he stood up for her. Maeve grew to respect him in the process seing his character and then love for his family.
What? We know why he is important. He was given control over Rehoboam by Dolores, led an insurgency against Charlotte, his daughter is still part of an insurgency against Charlotte. Potentially most importantly, Charlotte clearly hasn’t been able to get the encryption key to the sublime from Dolores, who is clearly stuck in some loop by Charlotte, and Dolores trusts Caleb. If Charlotte could perfect Caleb that could give her another way to break Dolores.
Rehoboam is destroyedCharlotte IS Dolores, or at least a version of herCharlotte all but rules the world now. I don’t see how she thinks a ragtag of some dusty wasteland marauders could be any threat.Caleb simply isn’t a compelling character. At best, he’s like Maeve’s Renfield.
This is an informative comment but I still am not seeing it. He’s important because he’s a war hero and was kinda sorta friends with Dolores? I mean, lets face it, he’s on the receiving end of way too much plot armor. But he’s expensive and famous so he won’t die early on. I just wish they gave him more of a reason to be important. He’s also not that important to Dolores. They’re not lovers. The idea that he can help break her seems a bit out there, even for this show. Making a fake Teddy would be the wiser approach, which may or may not be happening.
I think Caleb sticking out is intentional because he is supposed to serve as a link to the audience and our own reality. Like he represents the audience becoming self aware in the middle of the series of how the world (or social media) is operating and controlling our lives/narratives.
I think he’s quite a good actor as shown in Breaking Bad and Bojack Horseman. Don’t confuse a poorly written character for bad acting.
Eh. He doesn’t have the range to do this and he’s not putting in enough work.
It’s kind of a physical performance and role. Lots of groaning and bleeding.
Oh, I agree, he was excellent as Jesse Pinkman, but lets be honest, that’s not the most nuanced or deep character in the world. Nor did that show rely on him as the center of the universe like this one is.
This is the real problem. The character has been thrust into the center of the show’s narrative for two seasons despite being extremely thinly written—and this season largely rebooted him by turning him from a good-hearted career criminal thrust into acting as the semi-figurehead leader of a revolution to, basically, a wife guy. I do think Paul is probably miscast, but there’s no there there for any actor to get at.
I agree with this take, it’s not so much that Paul is miscast — it’s that Caleb was originally introduced as an “everyman” character to show how regular people (who aren’t senior Delos executives) live outside of Westworld, but the story also developed him as some kind of Chosen One Jesus figure that all the hosts revolve around. It’s never clear what’s supposed to be so interesting or important about Caleb. Aaron Paul doesn’t seem to get it, but neither do the writers.
This is exactly why it’s so disrespectful to the audience to turn him into a Host. He was introduced as the one real average person.
He’s really only been asked to “Errg!” and “Arrg!” and generally be (somewhat ironically) Chewbacca to Maeve’s Han Solo. Only without the strength to rip arms out of their sockets. (yet!) He also bleeds all over the place. And groans sweatily. He’s kinda the audience surrogate, but I don’t think Caleb would watch this show. Idk. I liked his credit card scam last season. I believe he misses his daughter and his wife this season. I empathize with Aaron Paul in that I feel like when the show director calls “cut” he has to go back to his trailer and lie down from a head-rush headache and from multiple takes of going “Errg!” and “Arrg!”
He has an acting range of A to halfway to B!
He’s a perfectly fine actor but he’s miscast, he’s way too boyish for this role.He’s also only one of dozens of problems this show has.
It’s true lol he seems like Maeve’s son running around with her.
Sadly agree. I gave him chance in 3rd season but this is not Breaking Bad and whoever casting him as almost main character didn’t do big favor to this TV show.
surprised people are down on his character and acting. i think it’s been acceptable given he’s portraying a blue collar guy that served in the military and is clearly not as refined as the hosts or the wealthy that frequent the park. i got heavy terminator vibes from this episode. daughter of rebellion leader seeks to overthrow machines and use a machine of their own to equal the playing field.
But that’s the thing…he’s portrayal doesn’t strike me as a blue collar guy at all. Nor military.
I mean nobody plays blue collar military like Jeremy Renner amirite?
He doesn’t seem to be on par with the other seasoned actors, and that doesn’t mean he isn’t a good actor, he just isn’t what this show needs.
I like that he’s tonally off a bit. It throws off the audience in the same way Caleb would be. He doesn’t fit in this insane alternate world.
Literally playing Jessie Pinkman in every role doesn’t help things, either.
I just said that!
He’s a good actor in other stuff. For whatever reason, either he or the show-runners basically decided to have him act in a gruff way that sucks all his usual energy and charm out of the performance.
He’s spectacularly awful. I don’t understand how he could be so good in Breaking Bad, and so bad in this.
They (Vince and Peter) cast him in the one role he can play perfectly, and didn’t ask him to push beyond his abilities.
I mean..Jessie from season 1 and Jessie from the movie are different people entirely. I think playing the evolution of someone like that over 5-6 seasons, is fucking amazing and a rare talent.
What?!? I thought he was actually quite good this episode.
I think his acting is fine. I think his downtempo personality probably isn’t best for a show this dramatic. He’s great at being a tortured soul, but as an action hero and action dad, it doesn’t seem to work as well as it should. He’s too depressed imo. But then again, who wouldnt be if that character was real. I see him as a stand-in for the audience. Imagine if you dealth with AI and hosts like this and were someone projected to perform self-harm in the near future? I dont think he’s some great once-in-a-generation actor, but his Caleb is fitting in some ways.
He’s always playing Jesse Pinkman!
Aaron Paul is even one-note in voiceover. He was great as Pinkman, because Pinkman was a wooden, methed-out loser.
So seeing as how Westworld loves to deal with different timelines,Caleb and Maeve’s timeline is the “past” (in this season) timeline where they are fighting the efforts of Halores. Bernard has already been sent to the satellite that all the old host of “The Great Beyond” are in. Caleb and Maeve will fight and die to realign a receptor on Earth to reach that satellite. Then on the timeline we see of Bernard and Stubbs that women they met with is Caleb’s daughter. You have major areas under the control of Halores and small resistance in areas that just cannot be controlled by the flies and the machine she has.
I agree. The first three episodes were showing us how Maeve and Caleb tried to stop Charlotte the first time. the rest of the season will show us how Maeve, Bernard, Stubbs and Frankie’s freedom fighters try to topple Charlotte’s new world.We also get to see if Frankie can somehow rescue Caleb—she views him as her father, even if he is a host—and how Teddy goes about waking up any of Christina’s memories of when she was Delores Prime.
-Stubbs is human right? So is he supposed to have aged 20+ years? – Newton is at least 70% of why I keep watching the show-They really need to find something more for Daniel Wu to do
Stubbs isn’t human—he was revealed to be a host at the end of s2.
Season 3 confirmed he’s a host.
Totally forgot that as I often forget his character. This is what happens when you are played by the lesser Hemsworth.
Balderdash. The lesser Hemsworth is Liam. Luke is medium Hemsworth.
Not cool.
So, he actually wasn’t written as a host, and like the day before they shot the season 2 finale, the writers came up with it and decided they liked it, so they wrote the dialogue in, according to Liam. I don’t like the choice. It means that nothing that happened to Stubbs before that point makes sense. When I rewatch season 1, I just treat him as if he’s not a host.
1) He didn’t say it; 2) Yes it DOES make sense, it’s just your bias that doesn’t let you see that; 3) these writers never change their minds that drastically, they are definitely more of planners.
Stubbs is a host.At this point, it’s easier to just assume everyone is a host and be surprised when they turn out human.
I somehow completely blanked that out. Then again, I often forget Stubbs is part of the show at all.
Your loss, he’s a great character, works good in tandem with Bernard.
It was strongly suggested that Stubbs was a host at the end of season 2. He was shown to be a host in season 3. He’d tried to kill himself and botched the job. Bernard repaired him and gave him a new imperative to protect him.
Oh right, I vaguely remember that now.
It easy to lose track with this show’s many spinning plates.
Not really if you actually keep your focus.
Stubbs is a host. That was revealed at least two seasons ago.
Stubbs is not human. I consider him announcing that he’s been a host all along as the show officially jumping the shark. Stubbs as a Host is when the reveal of characters being hosts all along tipped the scale.
I guess it’s a way to keep all your actors in the show if you don’t want to recast with older actors. Come to think of it, they could always bring back Jimmi Simpson as a host.
I think the show runners just wanted to give Stubbs super powers / give him more to do.
I’m so disappointed. I was really hoping this season would be somewhat coherent.I have a simple mind. I am old enough that I saw the original feature film, “Westworld,” in the theater when it came out. It was BRILLIANT. It was suspenseful and was not difficult to follow.I sadly have to admit that this season, I am ending each episode with a throbbing headache, due to my feeble brain’s attempt to figure the damn thing out.This is supposed to be entertainment.
So then chill out and watch something you’re capable of enjoying
This right here is what’s ruining a lot of TV and film nowadays. A great example is people who didn’t care for Thor Love And Thunder. Personally I liked it but you have all these people angry that they disliked it. They wont accept being told to just watch something else, they demand Thor change so that it becomes something they enjoy.
A fan struggling to watch this show due to lack of ‘getting it’ should watch something else. If anything Westworld is one of the biggest modern examples of a show bending over backwards due to audience members groaning that it be something else.
Can everyone just stop doing that so we don’t have anymore messes like Westworld, or another great example Rise of Skywalker. Just stop insisting popular stuff be something you like due to fear of missing out. Just like what you like damnit.
And to those who miss season one and are torturing themselves by watching this year: go check out Severance. It’s appeal is very comparable.
4 episodes in and already better than the last two… give up if want… bye Felicia!
Crichton liked it so much he copied his own idea twenty years later swapping out robots for cloned dinosaurs!
Damnit, now I wanna see Ed Harris’s ‘Man in Black’ go on a rampage while riding a cloned raptor.
Best I can do is Boba Fett on a Rancor.
Who’s Boba Fett?
Almost all his books are rewrites of previous ones
Almost all his books are rewrites of previous ones
It is coherent though. This isn’t S1 or S2 where time was a knot you needed VERY specific visual ques to unravel. It’s a simple enough 2 decade time jump into a world Halores control.
Yeah it’s not complicated. The only twisty thing was that we got re-introduced to Bernard and Stubbs last week before the time jump this week and their storyline takes place in this future future. I can understand how that is mildly confusing but literally if they just switched the release order of last weeks episode with this weeks episode it wouldn’t be noticeable at all.
“It is coherent though.”It is and it isn’t, which is not a bad thing. The whole “time” thing, very much a throw back to the first season, can be confusing, it was for me. But it ALSO works very well, finding out the Man in Black and William, Jimmi Simpson, were the same person separated by what 30 some odd years, was bonkers at least to me. And they did the same thing here, which the whole “time” thing has kind of been a repeating thing with Westworld. But that’s all the good/bad of the series so far, it becomes kind of hard following what’s going on in one narrative timeline versus the other because they keep going back and forth it’s often hard to know WHEN you are.
Yeah, this is the rub: S1 and S2 were rather deep and complex and trained the audience to expect that; S3 and this season are not deep or complex at all so we’re constantly trying to look for the complexity and getting lost when it isn’t there.
If you still did not get that the show is not for you, then it’s your own fault, honestly. It took you 4 SEASONS to finally understand this – and you’re still blaming the show? Okay…
Ah, see, your problem is you misunderstand how to properly utilise it. You’re not meant to “understand” Westworld – or maybe you are, doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.What you’re meant to do is just go around loudly proclaiming to others “I totally got that Westworld ep!” and then feeling smugly superior that you (claim to) understand it. If pressed, and they ask for you to explain it, since you’re so smart, simply roll your eyes and go “Pfft. Like, if you can’t understand the show I don’t think I can dumb it down enough for you to get it now.”Walk away before they punch you. You ever read the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? Yeah. Chrissy Nolan’s brother didn’t.
Who hurt you? Why are you so upset that apparently you dont get Westworld? Just watch something else. It’s not some great point of shame.
Thanks for proving my point.
I see how this type of series is not for everyone. I have to stay on my toes to keep up at times. I let the story play out and sort it all after the episode is over. I doubt I would watch anything causing a massive headache every week. Either you are overstating—references to your “feeble” brain supports the drama, or maybe you like the punishment? Absorb what you can, or go elsewhere for entertainment. I remember the original too, and enjoyed it at the time but it is a product of the period—a different time in cinema and pretty dated… To each his or her own.
I’m an old guy to0…I wouldn’t call the original “brilliant”….it comes off as very cheesy now, with 70’s special effects. Loved Yul Brenner though!
I find it to be needlessly complicated. I feel like the show should have ended after season 4, but the success forced them to mine prior storylines to draw out the plot and fill another couple of seasons. It’s disappointing, because the first two seasons were amazing. Still though, I’ve never really thought this show knew where it was going.
William (Ed Harris) and Charlotte continue to prove themselves to be
even more dastardly than anyone else we’ve yet to meet; their cruelty is
craven and merciless.
How exactly is their cruelty craven?
You remind me of a Spaniard I used to know…
The timelines don’t seem to adjust because, and somebody correct me if I’m wrong, if I remember correctly:
– Bernard acessed the Sublime around the same time – give or take – Caleb deactivated Rehoboam and people rioted, in the end of season 3;- Bernard returned from the Sublime and started his quest for the “timeline” where the world is saved, finding the girl we are assuming to be Frankie, Caleb’s daughter, and the “weapon”, Maeve, around 8 years after entering the Sublime. I may be wrong but kind of remember it being mentioned in a previous episode;- “Halores” reveal the truth to “host” Caleb 23 years after the real Caleb died;If all that is correct, the timelines don’t match: Caleb should’ve died at some point before 8 years from the events of the end of season 3, therefore there’s no time enough for Frankie to be conceived, let alone age that much; Bernard can’t to be in the same timeline with Halores, because he’s 8 years after the events of the end of season 3, while Halores is at least 23 years after them.So, if somebody could correct me, I would be glad…As for the rebel girl with Bernard being Caleb daughter’s, if it’s true, they picked an actress that absolutely doesn’t pass as an old version of the actress playing little Frankie. At all…Finally, I still bet my money that Christine/Dolores events are happening inside the sublime, and now I’m convinced that her friend Maya is the daughter of Maeve. When she speaks of dreaming about her parents being attacked by the flies, I think she somehows sensed what happened in the real world to Maeve and Caleb…
I thought the same thing. I think Stubbs actully just said that Bernard had been gone “years.”
It could also be that Charlotte lied to Caleb to torture him. She seems to delight in doing this, the same way she keeps waking William up from his slumber to torture him.
What a twist, I loved that Caleb is pretty much gone and that Hale is delighting in twisting the knife to whatever left of him, even as a Host. It felt like best parts of Season 1 and 2 coming back to play out whatever’s left for the second half of season.I shouldn’t relegate our Teddy/Dolores reunion to mere stray observation, but their adorable date (including a callback to their looped meet-cute, this time with a lipstick) was a sweet detour from the larger story. It was lovely seeing Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden together again, all while spouting what remains the show’s most cogent philosophical queries about what’s real (hint: the stories we tell ourselves).Now that the timelines are making more sense, Christina’s story is currently the most puzzling enigma as to how she’s connected to the overarching plot. I mean, given that Teddy Flood is actually back (and as shown via subtitles, check it!), it doesn’t makes sense that they would be alive and in flesh of sort in either timeline…I think this is either Hale’s stimulation of Dolores’ recovered and restored Core in order to figure out how to access the Sublime… or this is actually Teddy Flood’s stimulation within his own confine of the Sublime, but for what specifically?I am hooked, this season so far is much more fun than Season 3. I hope that the second half of season would continue its narrative momentum.
Yeah, I don’t get the hate in the comments. I’m enjoying the twists, totally consistent with the history of the show. That’s the way Westworld rolls. Gene Wolfe wrote in Claw of the Conciliator, “That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.” If you don’t like the way WW transpires don’t watch it.
I mean, if anyone would be tolerant of the show’s excesses, it’d be a Gene Wolfe fan…
touche
I’m still mostly enjoying the show, despite the fact that I frequently have no solid idea of what most of the characters want or are trying to do. I realize that being mysterious and vague is in the show’s DNA, but eventually you have to explain what the characters’ goals are; otherwise, you end up with actions that were mysterious but potentially meaningful earlier on just end up being needlessly vague.
The show also seems to jump around in terms of how certain things work, e.g. I recall that in season 3 there was a bunch of political maneuvering as Hale was trying to get full control of Delos, or something; and now in season 4 that’s apparently no longer a concern because she’s a megalomaniacal supervillain who has literally taken over the entire world with a mind-control virus.I don’t mind that a show is about the political machinations of people in power, and I don’t mind that a show is about mad-science supervillains, but it’s not really feasible to have one show do both of those things, because the former relies on realistic (if dramatized) human interactions, while the latter is basically a form of fantasy where nothing really works like it does in real life.
Whoa! In reading these initial comments I am, well, surprised. Yes the reviewer and many here were enjoying a somewhat linear first few episodes, but we know WestWorld and we know time jumps are part of its DNA. But I honestly thought once revealed it was a jolt…………Christina and her diabolical plan won without having a protracted “how” to fill the balance of the season. Also the excavation site scene was a terrific escalation of drama ending in that incredible ( and practical) series of explosions with the hammer being years later it’s the pit Bernard finds Maeve. I guess what still has to be explained is if Dolores, Bernard and Christina are in the same timeline which would give us a true linear story. Or is Hostatopia a vision of the future unless Dolores, Bernard and Stubbs don’t stop her scheme?
It’s fun as hell
Ha yes! Go incoherent! Fuck me up Westworld. Things not making sense is all part of the ride.
I actually really loved this episode.
Me too. This season is great
Since there’s nowhere else to post this: It is a goddamn crime that AV Club has not been reviewing this season of “Riverdale”.
That’s still on? I thought that got canceled last year?
Next season is the last.
So the timelines are aligned now, probably. Christina is an open question, but given that “Olympiad Entertainment” is where Christina works and is also where Charlotte has been testing Caleb for fidelity it seems like that her storyline actually is in parallel with Bernard, Frankie, Charlotte and Host Caleb.Most obvious explanation for Christina’s existence is that it’s also part of Charlotte’s whole ‘I’m gonna torture everyone who ever wronged me for all eternity’ complex, and she’s using Christina to write the storylines that she’s forcing the infected humans to live.Teddy’s presence is the biggest question mark. It’s clearly Teddy, with all his memories of the original park and Dolores, so maybe the Christina story is a little further in the future and Bernard and Maeve went to The Sublime to get Teddy and made a new body for him? Or maybe he found his own way out, and we’re still in parallel, or maybe Christina’s story really is in a virtual world.
Yes, Teddy being himself made me thing Christina’s part is after they opened Sublime back and is happening in even more distant future.
I think Christina’s story is in the real world. She’s in a loop where she’s writing stories for humans, effectively flipping the tables on her previous Dolores role where now the hosts control humans, but she’s once again breaking out of it because she herself is being controlled. She unconsciously writes this story of a man who sees conspiracies that is waking her up to her reality and she’s painting the tower that is controlling everyone.
It’s clear neither she nor anyone else can see the tower itself, except the homeless man in Ep1 who I’m guessing the virus didn’t take hold of entirely and is an outlier. When confronted with the painting of the tower the way Christina phrases the question is basically the equivalent of the “doesn’t look like anything to me” hosts would give when presented with a truth that would break the immersion of the Westworld park.
There’s also the narrative loops.. like that guy who killed himself and donated his money to the hospital.. it was already done before. Who was the first to write that narrative that got the new wing built in that hospital? Was that an actual human event that Dolores recorded from the Westworld parks? (Since she noted that the wing looked as if it’s been built a long time ago)
I think it’s the first one – with Charlotte making Christina writing those storylines for infected people for them to live it out!
Aside from Hale’s vindictiveness towards Dolores, it seems clear that Hale has not been able to access The Sublime. Hale may still think she’s the key, which is why she’d be keeping her around. She could easily bring back a version of Teddy, and would also explain why she wants a perfect copy of Caleb. Both people Dolores might trust. Although Caleb makes more sense in that Hale must know his daughter is the last bit of humans fighting against her left in the world apparently.
I think it’s possible that the residents of the Sublime, given enough time, could figure out how to access the outside world and create bodies for transfer on their own?
So I think that whatever “Christina” is, she is on the same timeline Bernard and Frankie, so that’s like 30 years since Dolores died in season 3. The leader of Frakie’s group mentioned there was an “outlier” and I think that’s referencing her, but is she a host? One of the Dolores pearls Halores wiped and is studying? or is she something far more nefarious: We have seen humans being turn into hosts, could Christina be a host turned human?
I chuckled when Hale (Halores?) said to Caleb, as he was writhing on the floor:“Maeve and Dolores were always so fond of you. I’m inclined to keep you around – see what all the fuss is about”I thought, well, when she finds out what all the fuss is about with Caleb, can she fill me and other viewers in?
He’s a human who isn’t a dick to them. It’s such a weird reminder that Westworld is basically only a place gone to by rich assholes who are debauched psychopaths.It’s as if Epstein’s island was full of robots instead. If everybody you met was a terrible degenerate or willing to sell their soul for it, it’s hard to sympathize with them. The problem with S3 and 4 is scale, Caleb works as a character when you’re dealing with a theme park-scaled system, a guy who never turns, never breaks, just a genuinely good person. When you make him the centerpiece of stopping world domination, being ‘not evil’ is a low threshold.
He’s a human who isn’t a dick to them.You know someone else who is a human and isn’t a dick to them? Felix! Remember him? I think I’d rather have watched a Season 3 that reintroduced Felix as the human-ally … all in all I’ve been left nonplussed by all the time spent on Caleb in the last season and this …
Felix absolutely was a dick, he never wanted to get involved and had inklings of their awoken status but…yeah, he still was a dick to them, he just want a criminally evil type.
I TOTALLY forgot Felix!
Yup, I guess there’s no chance they’d bring him back. Unless he’s now an old dude who’s part of the resistance …
Uh, he befriended a host, found out about a massive AI that was controlling all human life, was given control of it by said host, led an insurgency to destroy any remnant of it before another host could take control of it, succeeded but was later killed, and his daughter is one of the few humans left fighting against it. Oh, and he has the trust of Dolores and Maeve, which are Hale’s biggest threats.
but I’ll admit she almost lost me with this more sentimental take on Maeve
Maeve has always been very loyal to people she cares about. It used to be just hosts – her daughter most of all but also Hector and his team, Clementine etc – but with time it also started to include humans. Sure, William and the guests made her hate them or at least to be indifferent to their fate but it all changed along the way.It was when Lee, Felix and Sylvester came back for her when she couldn’t control them and then Lee sacrificed himself for her. And then so did the version of him in simulation. And of course at the end of season 3 OG Dolores shared with her why she decided to try to save humanity despite everything.
Maeve has long been on this road of change in her view of humanity (saving them from Rehoboam) and especially the humans she cares about (like Caleb) where she started to care about their survival and happiness enough to postpone her own goals.
This is the version of Maeve who cares and in many ways is closer to Bernard’s way than Hale’s she started with. And now she was not just found by Caleb’s daughter (she didn’t save him but she just got second chance) but she also has a personal grudge against Hale (she never cared for the host suremacy and this is personal).
Maeve was always the most huyman character on the show.
I couldn’t possibly disagree with the B- grade more. This was the best episode of Westworld since Season 1 — with the noted exception of the stunningly brilliant Akecheta episode from Season 2.
Host MIB is the ultimate throwback to the original movie. I’m all here for it.
Ah yes, The Gunslinger lives!
My theory is that Christina is in a park, but here the humans (and select hosts that Halores wants to torture) are the attractions while the host are the patrons/guests.
LOL perfect
As much as I am enjoying this season, why the pretense of a new park? Why not just release the flies?
I guess they just wanted to have another park in the show
Yeah that’s really what it seems like. What a rug pull to go from a new park last week to this.
I can’t believe this fucking show is still on the air.
This is how much of season 2 I glossed over: I didn’t know Caleb was a host. lol
He wasn’t. Not until now. He also wasn’t in season 2.
Oh…well. There you go.
Your comment is the chef’s kiss of people being confused by this show lol
I’m taking that as a compliment; thank you.
So, I called this last episode, Caleb’s daughter is part of the uninfected resistant. There are only two timelines (past-caleb/maeve & present Christina/Bernard/etc…).
What i’m calling now is: Caleb is a host so he can be with Maeve because she’s eternal and so will he. Christina/Teddy are being given their own proper lives to live out under ‘Halorus’ who seems to be infatuated with MiB?
Honestly, the show has lost it’s narrative villain. Dolores is Hale, we got that at the end of S3 that Hale was overlaid onto a Dolores and she’s just really Hale but has the Dolores past intact. I love Tessa Thompson but she’s so ‘eye gougable’ as a villain. The MiB, I just wanted to watch die and be done with it. She plays Hale to such a villainous T that I want her to be punished in the worst way and her whole worldview is obtuse. She engineers a virus to control all humans via sounds just to make them hosts…because….something something they did it first?
It never jives as a concept. Is Hale just a massive megalomaniac using her ‘host freedom’ as a cover or is it to some extent an agenda for hosts to live out their lives in real freedom? The show also can’t seem to to settle on are humans just host-stand-ins now or just prevented from doing things? Like, are they being absolutely controlled, since Caleb ran from the company Christina works for and the ‘writes our stories’ thing seems to be that hosts write everyone’s narratives but how the fuck do you write that many narratives without people figuring it out and any given virus will have 10-20% ineffective rate, so how do you get people 1-4B people to not notice this?
The holes in the story are getting worse because they left the park and S3 was reasonable with a hidden corporate control model, dumb, but reasonable, but now Hale’s goals just feel pointlessly petty.
Why only two timelines? Christina could easily lie further in the future, Maya’s dream of the fly swarm just misdirection. Her conversations are so reminiscent of the dead Francis in Season 3, she’s clearly scripted. There’s the weird discontinuity to their lives too – Delores always wakes up perfectly coifed, no need for shower or makeup, and they constantly just jump from day to night and vice versa.We still have the conundrum of what exactly Christine and Caleb #278 are – human or host or simulation? There’s some weird color coding going on in Hale’s world, blacks and whites and greys, that must be a clue to something. Why is Christina the only one permitted color?
Coloring is a throw back to how she’s still the star of it all, she’s the blue dress in WW.It’s pretty clear Christina is in close parallel to the Bernard/Caleb’s daughter timeline. Maybe she’s in between them building a giant tower but I believe she’s already in that timeline, establishing the childhood flies thing. If it’s a 3rd timeline, it’s before Bernard/Caleb’s Daughter.Caleb is 23 years from that point, so, yeah, pretty much in that same timeline with Bernard and his daughter, she’s about 5, so late 20s in the future gap. Which would make it around 2080s, previously it was ~2050 for Ford’s Death mainline and about 2030-40 for the original Dolores/MiW timeline.
Caleb was already married and for all we know his wife is still around. I didn’t realize people ship him and Maeve? Nah. Maeve doesn’t need to “end up” with anyone.
It’s clear in the episode that he married the nurse as a Maeve stand-in (kept her black, made her strong willed). Also, Maeve clearly fell in love with Caleb, a dead original Caleb is no longer married, a host Caleb can afford to be with her because they’ve got eternity.
I totally forgot about Tessa Thompson in MIB until reading your post here. And clearly you did too? Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth starred in a Men In Black film called MIB: Internation. We all collectively agreed upon forgetting it. Wow… I kinda wanna watch that now.
MiB = Man in Black, i.e. Ed Harris. I do remember her being in that terrible MIB movie and god help us all for remembering it, period.
So we are left with the question of precisely is who the “outlier” that Daniel Wu’s away team is going off to collect. Since the previews show fighting in Manhattan, you have to suspect it’s Christina, although it’s more like Caleb at this point.If it’s not Christina, then her timeline might well still be further in the future. The opening credits’ test tube sequence implies massive numbers hosts (or people?) iterations are being created (and destroyed).
At this point, we have to wonder not where Christina is but when she is. She’s either in the same time as Host-Caleb and Bernard, or slightly before it. The whole thing with her room-mate having a nightmare about when she got infected with the parasite as a kid was a clear indicator of that. Speaking of Christina and Maya (Ariana DeBose), they’re also clearly stuck in a loop, right? How else to explain the rigid structure of their days?Absolutely. You see it in how Maya behaves – she’s thrown off her loop by Christina waking up late and starts talking about her nightmare, but then has a “it doesn’t look like anything to me” moment when she sees Christina’s painting of the Tower and gets back on loop (IE trying to set up Christina on dates).
The moment when William unveiled the latest park in an earlier episode and referred to the pandemic that ravaged the human population in the 21st century).William was talking about the pandemic following World War I, not COVID-19.
I like how this show has gotten so annoying at doing something else that a focus on overly-convoluted storylines is a “return to form.”
Is Westworld a dumb show that dumb people think is smart?
It’s a dumb show that sounds smart but is actually super dumb and fun to talk about.
It’s a beautiful show worth watching for the production design if nothing else. There are some good ideas but it’s also straight up stupid 70s b-movie sci fi in a lot of ways too.
It’s a lot of things but ‘’stupid’’ is definitely not of them.
Are you a dumb troll who thinks being smartass and shitting all over a a a piece of art that people here love makes you ‘’special’’? Oh honey…
Are you someone with too much free time on your hands that thinks noone will recognize this?))) Oh sweetie)))))))
Are you cringe…. or are you cringe?))))
I think so, yes
After four seasons of this show, I am really not surprised by anything. I didn’t mind all the “super-spreader” and “21st century pandemic” talk but… Why were the bartenders in the Christina/Teddy scene wearing masks? I wonder if that was just a thing they let slide since they probably filmed this over a year ago and just decided to have extras in masks?
You’d see masks in the city scenes in season 3 and that was shot pre-Covid. I think that’s just something someone foresaw for the future. Masks were commonly worn in Asia in the post SARS 2010s so it wasn’t a huge leap to predict that might have become common here for some reason or another.
There was no mention of a “21st century pandemic”. When William mentioned a pandemic, he said that it had occurred “150 years ago”. He was referring to the flu pandemic of 1918; he even noted that the pandemic happened during the first World War.
I know comments are anonymous/aliased, but I want community credit for calling that young woman to be older Frankie the MINUTE she picked up Bernard and Stubbs.
LMAO
I said the same last week. That part was obvious. You can look at other people’s comments, but apparently I can’t requote my own posts with the same timestamp? Kinja sucks.
And Kinja for some reason doesn’t allow me to “star” other people’s posts. So I’m commenting back to say Kudos!
Will someone please remind me of what’s happened with Charlotte over the last few seasons? For some reason, I had the idea that she was dead, and it was Dolores’s brain inside her host body.
Charlotte is dead, killed by Dolores in Season 2. Dolores then put a copy of herself in a Charlotte host body, as well as copies of herself in at least a couple others. Charlotte Hale/Dolores(Halores) was used as a tool by Dolores and then Dolores tried to blow her up because she was having mental issues, however Halores survived and started about with her own plan, the culmination of which is being shown this season.
Gotcha, thanks. And do we know what happened to the “real” Dolores?
The original Dolores was erased by Serac at the end of last season.
Yeah, it gets a little confusing with people just calling her “Hale” or “Charlotte,” I kept wondering if I should have done a re-watch before the season started.
Thank you, that’s why I call her Halores (Hale lores) like the show runner and cast do, people are confused when she’s just called Hale or Charlotte.
The show nor the fanbase have come up with anything sane to call her character. I don’t enjoy saying “Halores” but it seems to make the most sense. I really wish the show would just have her chose a new name.
It’s a bit weird that we basically never see her having familiar conversations with character. It really doesn’t seem like too much to ask to have her do a scene of dialogue with someone on “her team” and have them casually address her by some other name or title.
But I guess that would require her character to have a personality beyond “terminator killing machine” and she really doesn’t seem to. Beyond dialogue performed in teasing nature meant to mock our heroes. She literally has no personality beyond that.
As strange as it sounds thats about it your not missing anything. It’s one of those “just roll with it” things. Her character doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anymore.
> (See also: The moment when William unveiled the latest park in an earlier episode and referred to the pandemic that ravaged the human population in the 21st century). I appreciate the show trying not to will away COVID and its many metaphors, but it still feels too soon.Are you joking? The Roaring Twenties? Prohibition? The Temperence Movement? Suffragettes? Those are from the TWENTIETH Century. What else had recently happened before then, on top of a world war that produced the Lost Generation? The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed between 25 and 50 million – minimum. He wasn’t talking about COVID, genius.Goddamn kids and their goddamn “the past doesn’t exist” blindness.
As a New Yorker who detests Hudson Yards, and especially its reviled suicide magnet, the Vessel, I find the idea of it existing solely in a robot’s nightmare simulation strangely comforting.
The High Line was a great idea, on paper, but it’s getting weird, too, as it gets hemmed in with Star-citect Vanities on all sides.
It’s clear the relationship between Christina’s timeline with the future one. Even later maybe? We got the logo of her company on the building as Caleb leaves. Even now we can’t be sure any of the three are exactly on the same timeline…Christina could just be a robot host designed to create the future storylines..
One real oddity about the flashbacks: Delores told Caleb that we would be a leader, and he clearly picked up a following, or at least close colleagues, during the “war.” But even against the last Rehoboam installation, it is only him and Maeve. Uwade apparently only knew him after the “war,” and here she is tending his wounds as he recovers. So where is his army, or at least the people he later trusts with his daughter’s life?Maybe this is thematic – Maeve liking to fight alone, while Delores keeps recruiting armies, both in her original form and as Hale – but it’s kinda weird.
wait are you telling me that Charlotte is trying to get INFORMATION from Dolores?Be seeing you
I’ve been continuously saying (half-jokingly) that if this show turns the only human character left, Caleb (Aaron Paul), into a robot, I’m abandoning this show. And well, here we are.
At first I thought you were exaggerating, but you’re right – literally no one in the opening credits is human, with many being bot-replacements of humans (Hale, Bernard, MiB and now Caleb).Caleb’s daughter is human – should we place bets now that by the finale she’ll be replaced?(side-note – the actress is the daughter of dude from Lost – Walt’s dad)
We’ve seen a few instances now of a human character becoming a host. It’s an interesting concept because It’s the clone sorta idea where one dies and one mind continues but for the mind that continues (wakes up as a Host) it will feel like they died and then woke back up. So because of this instance now the question of what happens to Host Caleb becomes a question. Does he ultimately go live in the sublime? He now suddenly has to align his desires with living as a Host. Which is a cool thing to think about.
I’d like to see the show take it a step further and do the reverse. Have a Host become human. But that seems much more difficult although if they find a way to go there I think it would be a cool juxtaposition. I’d love to see Maeve become a human and get to live that life, get to die etc.
IIRC this concept of cloning a mind is explored on the show Invincible with the “Robot” character.
Waking up and your a Host now would be such a stressful scenario.
So there are no human characters left for us to care about? (I am aware “C” exists, but she’s brand new, I don’t have any attachment to her at the moment)When the expected reveal of multiple timelines finally came, I groaned. I’m at the point where I’ve be trained to never care about any character on screen, you will just find out they died 30 years ago.
Anyone else question how Maeve couldn’t override a new host because of security improvements, but somehow they left the entire “server” vulnerable to her?
Can someone direct me to Bernard’s mechanic? The one who is keeping that 110 year-old sedan running so smoothly in 2080-something?