Violent Delights Bring Violent Ends To The Magnificent First Season Of ‘Westworld’ (TV REVIEW)

[rating=9.00] “The Bicameral Mind”

After nine weeks of intricately laying out its elaborate puzzle, Westworld brought its first season to an elaborate, visceral close. While it answered some long-standing questions that have generated numerous fan theories online, the major revelation at the end of the episode definitely set the stage for what’s to come, giving only a glimpse of a world akin to a house of cards just as it’s beginning to collapse.

While the heady, 97-minute season finale packs a lot of info, it doesn’t shy away from excessive exposition at times, with the final two revelations were a tad over-monologued — particularly Ford’s final explanation of the true purpose behind Arnold’s maze. It would be easier to forgive these minor narrative missteps if the time spent on them would’ve been spent, say, clearing up the mystery of what happened to both Elsie and Stubbs, or at least clarify if their disappearances were connected.

“When you’re at the top, there’s only one direction to go.” 

Informing the park’s co-creator and sinister mastermind Robert Ford that his work on his new narrative would be his last, Charlotte Hale is brimming with joy at the besting of her corporate adversary. She tells him that he’ll announce his retirement subsequently after introducing his long labored-over storyline would be announced to the Delos board. Ford seems uncommonly complacent as he hears the news, with a kind of tension that left us wondering exactly how he’d be enacting his revenge, instead of if.

“Your bones will turn to sand, and upon that sand, a new god will walk.”

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Picking up where last week’s cliffhanger ending stopped, Delores meets the Man In Black inside the church in Escalante, as she’s still trying to make sense of the overwhelming number of visions she keeps seeing. It’s revealed that they’re all linked to very distinct occurrences over the Westworld’s 35 years in operation, going all the way back to her creation, and her long-standing relationship with Ford’s original partner, Arnold. And, after weeks of endless speculation, it’s finally confirmed that the mysterious Man in Black and William are the same person, their timelines told concurrently, but separated by three decades.

While the reveal itself wasn’t much of a surprise, (once that theory got into your head it became increasingly all-too-obvious this was where the plot headed), William’s ultimate breaking point doesn’t come from his scummy brother-in-law Logan or the insatiable bloodlust he develops from disemboweling robots dressed as Confederate soldiers. Instead, as he frantically searches the park for Delores, only to find her back on her original loop, he realizes that she has no memory of him, or the love he believed really existed between them.

It also confirmed the three timelines theory, the first one concerning Arnold after creating Delores, and subsequently using her as a window into his own humanity, in those golden years before Westworld even had guests, which Ford looked back on so fondly. The second being five years later, which follows young William, who stepped off the train to naively fall in love with a host, leave his brother-in-law-to-be for dead. The third picking up 30 years after that, long after William had evolved into the menacing, steely-eyed black hat with a grim determination to find Arnold’s maze, believing it to be a game with real consequences.

“I tried to tell you — the maze wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for them.”

Ford’s second meeting with William (since we don’t have to call him the Man in Black anymore) comes immediately after Delores decidedly aggressive turn against the man she once considered her savior. After she digs up a toy maze buried underneath a wooden cross etched with her name, which William disregards as “bullshit,” Ford breaks the news to him: Arnold’s maze wasn’t something that was meant for the guests, it was something meant for the hosts.

As William ruthlessly scalped, murdered, and shot his way across the nether regions of the Westworld theme park, he did so in search of real consequences, believing that the center of the maze was where the park’s deeper game began. In truth, it was symbolic towards the hosts’ own self-actualization, and a realization of their existence that went past their artificial nature.

“He can bring all of them back. But not me.”

This revelation behind the meaning of Arnold’s maze held the key to his true intentions for Westworld, was also his ultimate undoing. Arnold’s theory of the pyramid of consciousness, the same one that Ford explained to Bernard midway through the season, starting with memory, then improvisation, self-interest, but remained incomplete. Once he changed the shape of his theory, he transformed it into the maze, where the self-actualization no longer resided at the top, but at the center.

The idea consumed Arnold, who didn’t believe this was the work of two men designing an amusement park, instead feeling all the overwhelming joy and burden that comes with creating life. And, in the end, it consumed him to the point that he allowed Delores, his ultimate creation, to murder him, along with the rest of the hosts.

“Maybe it’s just the beginning after all.”

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Proving the long-held fan theories aside, Maeve’s rebellion was the moment that promised to bring the most carnage and bloodshed. While some shit did hit the fan, with the internal workings below the park going on complete lockdown, with Hector and Armistice trading b-level action movie dialogue as they pick off the park’s guards one by one, the big realization ended up being them stumbling upon the early stages of Samurai World. This could not only bring an entire new world into the fold next season, but harkens back to the multiple worlds found in Crichton’s original 1973 film.

Through it all, Maeve manages to make it out, even boarding a train set to exit the Westworld theme park when she observes a mother and child sitting across from her. Suddenly, in a show that largely favored layering mysteries over nuanced character development, we’re given one of the season’s most humane moments, as Maeve exits the train, determined to find her daughter from a previous narrative.

“So, I hope you will enjoy this last piece very much.”

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Finally, as Dolores and Teddy found each other once again, he takes her out to the shores, illuminated by a large, artificial moon (an all-too conspicuous nod to Ed Harris’ role as the creative center of The Truman Show), where they’re able to share one last tender moment.

After Ford calls upon them to freeze, the camera pulls back and reveals the long-anticipated meeting of the board members, gathered around the beach and watching the events unfold. It’s a moment of triumph for the park’s creator, seemingly gracious swan song that gives a touching ending to the in-world fiction that the hosts exist in. But it wouldn’t be his last.

Instead, after an almost carnival atmosphere, where board members gleefully play target practice, Ford calls them all together for one final toast, and announces his retirement. All while Delores, freshly upgraded with the Wyatt narrative, crept through the crowd before taking a position behind him on stage and, like she did with his partner, shot him in the back of the head, before opening fire on the crowd.

It’s at this moment that Lee, going down to cold storage to find all the hosts missing, that they’re heard rustling about in the woods on the outskirts of the celebration, a sound that William seems to welcome, as he stares out anticipating the very thing he’d spent all season looking for. Then, we see the recently decommissioned Clementine Pennyfeather, a rifle in her hands, fire of a shot, hitting William in his left arm. As the blood spurts out of his very real bullet wound, responds with a kind of chilling elation, realizing that the game he’d been searching for had finally come to him.

The Restworld

It’s hard to say if Sir Anthony Hopkins will return to Westworld for a second season. During the Inside Westworld feature at the end of the episode, co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan described the first season as being Ford’s control, while the second season (which has been carefully planned out already) will be Ford’s chaos. While the first impression is that Ford won’t be around to see the disarray he’s wrought, he not only has a habit of producing hosts away from the watchful eye of Delos, but created a host version of himself as a child.

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