At this point in the season I think we have three main storylines…
- Delores takes over the world
- Maeve looks for her robot kid
- WIlliam burns it all down
We also have the “future” timeline where Bernard is laying on the beach and all the hosts are dead in the water. It appears that we will continue to get snippets of story from that timeline as well.
This episode doesn’t visit William at all, but introduces us to a potential new storyline that we will start following with a brand new character, Grace.
I did not enjoy the scene where Grace shot the dude to make sure he wasn’t a host. It felt awkward. I think it does anchor us in time. When she shoots him and they get it on it is probably the night when Delores killed Ford. The next day when Grace and her beau go for an elephant ride the robot rebellion has begun.
I do really like Grace. She seems like a badass. As evidenced by her hand-drawn maps with hexagons, and her insistence of not depositing DNA on a host, she seems to be up to some covert shit. I’m thinking of her as the man-in-black from Raj World. I can’t wait to find out what she was up to. What’s going to happen to her now that she has met up with the ghost nation from Westworld?
Speaking of the ghost nation, that plot line from season 1 was really intriguing, but nothing ever came of it. I am excited to find out more. This has quickly become my favorite element of season two.
We found out why Rebus went from shooting a woman in the head to sticking up for women just as he was being executed on the beach. It was Bernard.
Right after the massacre we see Bernard and Charlotte teaming up to try to find Abernathy and get help to the park. In this episode we see a continuation of their efforts, during which they get separated from each other. We jump back to the two weeks forward time where Charlotte meets Bernard again on the beach. I don’t know about you, but it really seems like Charlotte knows he is a robot at that point. I guess we will see if they crossed paths again between then and now. I’m guessing we will get to see how Charlotte finally realized that Bernard was a host sometime in the rest of the season. It really seems like the jig is up for him.
One of the things about the show that I haven’t quite figured out is Delores & Maeve’s connection to people from their host storylines. It doesn’t make sense to me that they are aware that they are robots have been forced to play out false narratives created by humans yet they still feel a connection to their pseudo family members. We’ve seen terminator Delores all season, yet when she sees her father the steps right back into her rancher’s daughter persona. Abernathy himself is seeming switching between a few different roles that he has played during his time in Westworld. Why are they still controlled by these false identities if they have awakened to their situation?
We also see that Teddy isn’t able to overcome his nice guy programming and Delores looks none too happy about that. I don’t think things look good for Teddy… and not just because we see him dead in the water in episode one.
This episode wasn’t great. It was exciting to see the reality of the other parks, however much of the rest of the episode was table setting for what is coming next. Even though this episode wasn’t my favorite I can’t complain.
We are only three episodes into season two and I feel like we have come so far and gotten so much great story that builds upon what happened in season one in a satisfying way. My expectations have been surpassed with this season so far and I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next seven episodes. I don’t want to speak too soon, but I feel like this is shaping up to be a great season of television.
Filed Under: HBO, Television, Westworld