The 2nd episode of season 2 is up there among my favorite episodes of the entire series. In a show that presents us with so many mysteries it is nice to get some of the back story. I actually felt like I knew what was going on in most of the scenes.
There is a lot to process here. We go all the way back to the beginning of Argos, the company that Arnold and Ford created. We see Delores is among the first hosts ever created, which we probably already knew. It was so neat to see the hosts in the “real” world, which appears to be somewhere in China.[1] Delores looks completely different in the tight white dress, but she still has that farmer’s daughter demeanor, unlike the Delores in current time (which has a pretty serious God complex).
We were introduced to a few knew hosts that I am sure we will see more of later. We got to see the cool sequence where they initially convinced Logan (Delos) to invest in their technology and start the Westworld experience. We got to see the fallout from William & Logan’s trip into the park in season 1, and how William came out with confidence and a purpose. It is still unclear exactly what that purpose is, but I think it has something to do with figuring out a way to make peoples’ consciousness live forever.
I really enjoyed the callbacks to last season. It reminded me to why I love the show so much. The sequence with Lawrence and El Lazo was pretty neat. I loved seeing Giancarlo Esposito in Westworld. That scene was a lot of fun.
Overall we didn’t move the plot forward a ton. We got a good view into some of the backstory of our main characters as well as setting them all up to be heading for “the weapon”. I don’t think it is a literal weapon, but I really don’t have a good theory of what it is. I think it is a place, and it is one of William’s biggest mistakes, but it’s not clear what that means.
I think the most powerful thing from this episode was to see just how connected William & Delores are. It wasn’t clear last season how deep their relationship was or how far it went back.
The worst thing about this episode is seeing Delores in badass cowgirl mode, telling everybody she is the Messiah, and the only way out of this place. I’m not sure how long this Delores is going to last, but it will get old really quickly.
Did we get any answers to our questions?
- Delores is taking Teddy to the host repair facility so he can see his history of deaths. Another nice callback to Teddy dying nearly every episode in season 1.
- It isn’t an answer, but I really believe that all the hosts floating in the water (that Bernard said he killed) are going to come back alive. Delores showed how easy it was in this episode.
What questions are we left with?
- What is “the weapon”? Where are they all heading?
- Is Maeve ever going to find her daughter. Will her daughter remember her?
- Why exactly is everybody recruiting an army?
- What was Delos’s real end-game with the host technology? What did William pitch to Jim Delos that worked so well?
- Why is Logan so pissed off about whatever they are doing?
- How many more times is the Man in Black going to get shot before this is over?
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There is plenty of evidence now to suggest that Westworld is somewhere in the South China Sea. ↩
Filed Under: HBO, Television, Westworld