Collision Is Imminent This Week In ‘Westworld’
Just as Westworld started to grow and expand, writer Carly Wray (who also penned the second episode of this season) brings things back down to Earth. The trajectories of Dolores, Maeve, and the Man in Black are definitely picking up speed, and I’m beginning to suspect they will collide a lot sooner than we may be expecting. This episode doesn’t offer up any answers, but it provides a sort of cohesion to the questions we have all been asking, and that perhaps the questions apply to each part of the trio struggling to decipher Westworld and existence. Spoilers ahead…
Time and memory are both still very fluid in Westworld, especially when it concerns Bernard and Dolores. This may be a huge reveal, as it seems Dolores may have had hand in Bernard’s programming. This scene builds upon one we saw at the beginning of the season, where Bernard expressed fear over what Dolores could become. Dolores is testing Bernard the same way that William tested James Delos in the fishbowl. In fact, Dolores engages Bernard in an almost mirror demeanor of William engaging the host version of his late father-in-law. We know Dolores has control over other hosts, but this would suggest that she’s quite deep into the network of the park and the plan she’s putting into place has a whole other dimension we are just finding out about. Jeffrey Wright’s portrayal of Bernard/Arnold was in exceptionally fine form this episode.
Back in Sweetwater, we see exactly what Dolores had done to Teddy at the end of last weeks episode. Meet bad Teddy. James Marsden seems to be channeling Christopher Reeves portrayal of bad Superman in the otherwise forgettable entry in the early Superman franchise, as the good nature of Teddy has been obliterated. It also had an echo of Kylo Ren declaring he destroyed Ben Solo, as Teddy refers to his old self as “weak and born to fail”. Dolores seems to be having a tinge of regret, possibly realizing that old Teddy’s mercy may have been a grounding force in her quest to break the bondage of Westworld. That is in no way meant to vilify Dolores, but I got the sense that she may be nervous she created a monster. The irony of taking away Teddy’s choice to be merciful seems obvious to Dolores.
There’s also resolve in Teddy, since his uncertainty about killing those that stand in their way is brushed aside. Teddy doesn’t hesitate to put a bullet in the a Westworld technician as they are about to board a train to their next destination. As soon as Teddy realizes the person doesn’t have the information they want, Teddy snaps the trigger. By this point, Dolores seems less nervous and more concerned that this new version of her pre-programmed ‘knight-in-shining-armor’. I’d keep my eye on bad Teddy, as I get the impression there is more going on up there than we are being lead to believe.
We rejoin Maeve in the samurai/Edo-peroid park, just as she’s finished massacring the Shogun and his guards. There is a serenity about Maeve as she knows now that she can control the hosts around her. This doesn’t stop Tanaka, a soldier under the Shogun who seems to feel disgraced, from challenging her and Musashi. Maeve proposes Tanaka let them leave peacefully and she’ll let the Tanaka and his men live. Tanaka calls her a witch, though his hesitation would suggest that’s more than hyperbole. He’s trying to save pride and honor in defeat, and Musashi seems like he wants to help – by challenging Tanaka to a duel. The martial arts choreography is top-notch here, but the fight itself if brutal and gritty. Despite dirt being kicked in his face by Tanaka, Musashi triumphs, but allows his defeated foe to perform harakiri – the most honorable form of death in samurai culture.
Before the big showdown, there’s a gut wrenching moment where Akane cuts open her daughter, Sakura, to retrieve her LITERAL heart. It’s not clear why she’s doing this, but it becomes so after Maeve and her crew arrive at the lake where Sakura was born. Akane burns the heart of her daughter, putting her spirit at peace. Akane resolves that she will not go with Maeve, even though Maeve encourages her to choose freedom. Akane tells Maeve that choosing to remain, even though it is a road that will certainly lead to death at the hands of Delos or others, is a way of honoring her home and daughter. Musashi reaffirms the decision by staying with Akane. And just like that, our time in Edo-peroid Japan appears to be over. Yeah, I’m not happy about that. I really hoped these characters would join the fight in Westworld, but their ending by remaining seems pretty cut-and-dry. I doubt there is a big twist where they’ll pop-up out of nowhere, but who knows, it’s Westworld. Hiroyuki Sanada (Musashi) and Rinko Kikuchi (Akane) left quite an impression on me with their powerful performances in such a short amount of time. Let’s hope they hope again in some form. It seems a shame to have only included these characters and actors in just one episode.
Well, I’d be lying if I said the wheels haven’t been turning in my head the last couple weeks wondering why Emily – the Man in Black’s daughter – took the Westworld plunge to come find her father. It’s no surprise that the Man in Black and his daughter are estranged. Where as the Man in Black feels he’s pushing himself to his limits, Emily sees a sad and tired old man who is marching toward his own death. They are both prideful and you can tell stubbornness is the foundation of their relationship. Emily concedes that she didn’t want her father to die without knowing she didn’t blame him for her mother’s suicide. The excessive amount of time and energy William poured into Westworld seems to have cost him everything. Emily is his last connection to the world outside of the park, but it doesn’t seem like the Man in Black has any interest to return. The Man in Black never says it, but it’s pretty obvious he feels he’s killed William, or Westworld has. The only thing that keeps this vigil moving forward is to best Ford’s game – and not even his own daughter can bring him back. The Man in Black pretends to accept Emily’s invitation to rebuild their relationship by offering to leave with her the next morning, only to leave her in the dust of a burnt out campfire when she awakens.
Emily’s recollections of visiting the park as a child are interesting. She has memories of “life with no consequences”, which seems to sum up perfectly what the guests are after. Between carnal and wicked desires, that base truth of no consequences allows humans to explore every aspect of themselves in a controlled environment. It’s as if Google were hardwired into your subconscious, your thoughts, and everything you couldn’t enter or delete from a search engine. Makes me wonder if people in Silicon Valley are taking notes. Emily wants her father back, but the Man in Black has forsaken fatherhood, but she doesn’t give up and leaves the abandoned camp in pursuit. Katja Herbers is great as Emily and I hope she’s a regular addition to the cast.
Maeve has reached the pinnacle of her journey: find her daughter. As soon as she arrives on the prairie, everything comes back to her. We’ve seen it before and she wastes no time getting to the house and finding the host who was once programmed as her daughter. Programmed as her daughter has little meaning to Maeve, who prepares to reveal herself to the little girl as her mother, only to find another host has taken her place. There’s a real problem here for Maeve, and Thandie Newton does a great job at capturing the predicament of it. Does she take the girl for her own, ignoring the very real bond that she knows the two hosts share? Where does she go from here? The fact that Maeve and her daughter were separated because of the Man in Black made the scene ominous for me, since Maeve is dressed mostly in black. I thought for sure she was going to plug the new host mother, but before that decision could be made the Ghost Nation Warriors appear.
Akecheta seems to think he and Maeve are bound to the same destiny, but in the similar vein of her encounter with Dolores, she renounces him. Maeve and her daughter escape, while the rest of her crew are dealing with the warriors. Lee, the smarmy engineer of Westworld, takes out a mobile he swiped earlier and calls for help. It will be interesting to see where Maeve and the daughter end up and to what basis their relationship will have. It’s not stated how devastating this must be to Maeve that her daughter doesn’t know who she is and that the programming tells her she’s got another mother. I wonder how far Maeve is going to go to get her daughter back. We saw Dolores make Teddy into the person she wanted him to be and I can’t help but think that’s not the last time we’ll see it happen.
Meanwhile, shit is getting real in the innards of the park. Peter Abernathy is the nexus of everything Delos wants to get their hands on in the park. No one knows what Abernathy’s importance is, but Charlotte and Ashley are desperate to secure him. They even go so far as having technicians nail him (yes, with a nail gun) to a chair. It’s brutal and shows the disdain the techs and Charlotte have for the hosts, while Ashley seems to feel sorry for Abernathy. As the episode goes on, a group of Delos engineers arrives to try and plug into the software aspect of this process. They are greeted with the same algorithms that go nowhere. Just as they bring the park map online, they see a train is headed straight for the Mesa. Who’s driving that train? Dolores and crew, and just as soon as it cuts to them, they break off their carriage car from the speeding locomotive, sending it smashing into the Mesa while they safely continue their journey toward it.
Bernard and Elsie, now we have travelled to a different point in time, have entered the Mesa and are face to face with the Cradle. The Cradle is what stores all the data of Westworld and Bernard’s discovered he must interact with it in the tactile sense. Whether it’s Clementine’s programming or data on a guest, it’s all here in the Cradle. Elsie helps Bernard hardwire into an out of date interface, which extracts the CPU in his skull and immerses Bernard in the Cradle. Once inside, Bernard finds himself in Sweetwater. He passes a benign and benevolent Dolores, who is fulfilling her programming as she did when we met her in the first season. Bernard wanders into the tavern, to find his late friend Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) at the piano, playing the music. Yes, I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Robert Ford has become the programming he devoted his life to, and the game is not just of his making – Ford is the game.
Collision and cohesion…those are the words that still swirl in my head as I think of Sunday’s episode. Director Tarik Saleh did a great job of keeping the momentum going, especially when there were so many chances the pace could have been bogged down. Everything was short and direct, with just as much information crammed into this episode as ones that have been twenty-minutes longer. Things I’m going to keep my eye on are bad Teddy and the connection they same to be cementing between Dolores and Ford. Dolores was seated, playing the piano, just as Ford was when we met him. The first and last scenes were almost a mirror, so put that in your Westworld notes. I’m not going to even venture a specific guess, other than I think we have no idea the complexity of the relationship between Arnold/Bernard, Ford, and Dolores. There are still four more episodes in this season, and if one of them happens to illustrate that, I’m sure it will only do so to raise a dozen more questions. And that’s why I love Westworld!
Kyle Larson lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s also a contributor to Star Wars News Net. When he’s not writing about Star Wars and movies; you can find him trail running, roasting coffee, or working on his science-fiction novels.
