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Westworld 2.1 Review – ‘Journey into Night’
Image Credit: HBO
Loading...[Warning: spoilers abound for those who have not seen Sunday’s season premiere of Westworld.]
It’s fair to say when it premiered last year, Westworld was HBO’s biggest gamble since Game of Thrones. The ambitious longform adaptation of Michael Crichton’s cult classic sci-fi thriller was hyped up (and budgeted out) to be the premium cable network’s successor to their critical and commercial giant. It’s a bet that paid off, as the series became a new cultural phenomenon (sure, it’s not yet at the size of the Seven Kingdoms…but then again, what show is). It also earned an astounding number of Emmy nominations and other critical accolades as fans scoured every hint of the dense, philosophical-yet-violent series for clues about its twisting narrative. By the time Dolores shot her creator Robert Ford in the season finale, fans were already bemoaning the fact that the show wasn’t going to return for a year and a half.
Well brace yourself, folks, and make sure to start questioning your reality because it’s finally back. The season two premiere of Westworld arrives just in time as the regular broadcast season ends, giving fans plenty to scour over in search of clues to support their personal pet theories about the show. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy return to the hallmarks of what made season one distinctive: a twisting narrative across multiple timeframes, themes of identity and empowerment, a touch of sci-fi body horror and a hell of a lot of mystery.
That said, one thing that Nolan and Joy should immediately be lauded for is avoiding the dreaded “reset.” Many shows, after achieving success, end up returning to the status quo in some way for season two. Not so much with Westworld. In fairness, the explosive season one finale made such a return difficult. But Nolan and Joy could have found a way to try and contrive things and bring the tempo back down. Instead, they strike a balance between drawing the tension back and pushing things logically forward from the host rebellion and gala massacre. That’s achieved largely by delving back into the multiple time interview plot device. It’s a narrative format that brings its own contrivances, of course, but it’s also part of Westworld’s identity. And it works well here in keeping a sense of mystery as it changes its subject from Dolores to Bernard.
The switch in unreliable narrators is an interesting one, particularly in context of the new power dynamics on the screen. One of the overarching themes of Westworld is power and its misuse. Inherent in that was the way the guests and park victimized the hosts — largely the women. The men suffered too, to be sure. But gendered violence was a major part of last season. Male hosts tended (though not always) to be shot or executed in other ways. Female hosts were sexually assaulted, victimized and kept in their place, playing with the genre conventions of the Old West.
In season two, this power dynamic has been flipped as the hosts (and women) take control. The narratives primarily follow Maeve, Dolores, Charlotte, William, and Bernard. The latter three are taking charge of their destiny and guiding the men — Dolores with Teddy, Maeve with Hector and Lee, Charlotte with Bernard. Bernard is primarily a reactionary character, stumbling after Charlotte and finding himself under Delos’ thumb. And William is still lost in the game, now of Robert’s rather than Arnold’s design. It’s an interesting twist but one that feels logical coming out of how last season ended. It offers ample opportunity for these morally questionable characters to be put in new quandaries.
We see that moral greyness rear its head most clearly in Dolores here. Having been apparently been given free will by Ford, Dolores is moving quickly. Evan Rachel Wood has perfectly sunk into the synthetic skin of Dolores, and that’s clear in the premiere. She’s taken the two parts of the host — innocent Dolores and psychotic Wyatt — and contextualized them into what is ostensibly the “real” her. That makes her loyal to her people and ruthless to her enemies. To be frank, it’s hard not to root for her even when she’s putting guests in nooses they’re sure to die in. Late in the episode she tells Teddy, “They never gave us a choice. Who said they will now?” She’s got a point.
That said, it’s also a little chilling to hear her talk about guests in the same monologue using othering terminology. “Creatures who walk like us and talk like us, but they aren’t us,” she calls humanity. That sounds straight out of propaganda manuals, and it’s clearly meant to feel that way. Dolores has a lot of good and a lot of evil inside of her. She’s talking a lot like a freedom fighter, or like a cult leader needing to depersonalize an enemy to her follows. Thanks to Wood’s deliveries and Joy & Roberto Patino’s writing, it’s hard to figure out which way she’s going. That’s intriguing to me.
Meanwhile, Maeve’s arc is more straightforward. This isn’t surprising, though. In season one, Dolores was the character with the more complex story arc of the two. This let Maeve’s be the more immediately satisfying. That continues in “Journey Into Night,” where she continues her quest to find her daughter. That includes a rescue of Lee, the slimy pretentious writer guy we all loved (or didn’t love) to hate in season one. I’ll admit that Lee wasn’t a character I was looking forward to seeing again. But pairing him with Maeve gives him a chance to be confronted with his bullshit in a well-deserved comeuppance. Simon Quarterman and Thandie Newton are clearly enjoying bouncing lines off each other and it pays off here. Adding Rodrigo Santoro’s Hector to the mix should also be fun.
While Maeve and Lee are full of quips and sniveling, there’s also the emotional resonance of Maeve’s quest. It isn’t easy to sell an audience on the hunt for a possibly non-existent daughter. This, however, is where season one’s occasionally-frustrating table-setting pays off. The show spent a lot of time grounding itself in the idea of memories as identity. Thus, when Lee tries to argue that Maeve’s daughter isn’t real, her snappy threat easily gets us on her side. The question now here is, how much is Maeve being genuine with those around her? Does she really care for Hector, or is she just using him? Is Lee a dead man walking once he’s of no further use?
And then there’s William. (No need to call him the Man in Black anymore.) If I’m being honest, this is the least interesting story in the premiere. Ed Harris still does fine work in the role, to be sure. But William feels like a character whose value was over with the season one finale. As the show expands its scope, Delos seems to be a better villain (to say nothing of possibly Dolores herself). While everything else is pushing forward and exploring logical extensions of the plot, William playing “Robert’s game” now feels like the one forced subplot to keep the online clue hunters searching. Nolan and Joy likely have a plan here, and I’m certainly willing to extend them some faith. But this arc seemed to add one too many plots amidst the multiple narratives we’re already dealing with.
As I said, I’m much more interested in the nefarious doings of Delos. From the beach scene, we know they’re in complete autonomous control of the island. And from Charlotte/Bernard, we know they were collecting DNA and experiences from guests. (They’re also more interested in the IP in Abernathy’s head than, you know, human life.) There are already theories abounding about that DNA thing, and it puts an even more sinister spin on the already nasty connotations of the park. Could they be trying to use hosts to replace people in the real world? Would Westworld go that far? Perhaps not this season, but that would be one hell of an endgame. Even if that’s not it, there is plenty of mystery in Delos to keep me very intrigued…and paying very close attention to Charlotte and Strand in their respective time intervals.
Some Final Thoughts:
• Welcome back to 411’s Westworld coverage! Hope you’re ready to enjoy (and, at times, be frustrated with) the twisty time narrative ride as much as I am.
• This week’s player piano performance was the 1902 piano rag “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin, for those curious.
• Congratulations, Westworld, for making drone hosts the creepiest-looking sci-fi artificial humans ever. Well-done.
• A curious thought: Charlotte didn’t mention the secret Delos outpost until after the other board members were dead, and it was just her and Bernard. Was that just a Plan B, or did she purposely wait until the other board members were dead because she knew she might need Bernard? I’m not certain, but I’m considering it a distinct possibility that Charlotte knows Bernard is a host.
• No sign of Samurai World yet, though we do know that there are six parks and a Bengal tiger managed to cross into Westworld. That will have to do as a tease for now, at least until (reportedly) episode three. I’ll happily wait that long and more for the chance to see Katana Maeve do some slicing and dicing.
• “If you try something like that again, I will relieve you of your most precious organ and feed it to you, though it won’t make much of a meal.” Ahh, Maeve. Welcome back.
• As great as the delivery of that line is, the Best Lines of the Night Award goes to the immediate follow-up when Lee says, “I wrote that line for you,” to which Maeve replies, “It’s a bit broad, if you ask me.”
• “I killed them. All of them.” Apparently that escalated quickly.
