TV
Westworld
It’s a great time to be alive if you’re a fan of sci-fi on TV. There’s such a wide variety of shows from The Orville to The Expanse that explore much of the same story territory yet are polar opposites in terms of tone as well as series like Black Mirror and Doctor Who to name a few. So, for one of the best series on TV a few years back Westworld to be as good as it was is ironic, since before it even premiered a lot of people, myself included, were ready to write it off before they’d even seen an episode.
Westworld was originally set to premiere back in 2015 but various problems on the set forced the delay until late in 2016. There were reports of parts being recast and at one point the entire production was shut down in order that series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy could catch up on scripts that had fallen behind. None of which is a good sign but I was still willing to check the series out when it premiered and am glad I did. The first season of Westworld is one of the finest seasons of television in the last few years and is one of the best sci-fi series out there these days.
Westworld takes place in a theme park of the same name in the future. This park is inhabited by robots dubbed “hosts” who live their lives within the bounds of the park thinking they’re real people really living in the wild west. Into Westworld comes the “guests,” real people who pay obnoxious sums of money to visit the park wherein they can do anything they want to the hosts. ANYTHING. But because the hosts are reset when they “die” and at regular intervals they don’t know all the horrors the guests do to them over and over again.
That is until one day after a software upgrade makes it so that some of the hosts do start remembering.
The question in the first season becomes at what point do you recognize that what you originally though were just automatons are a new form of life, and what happens when this new sentient life realize this too and wants to start living free of the horrors they’ve been enduring for decades?
What happens when start fighting to take back what’s theirs?
The first season of Westworld ended on a perfect beat, so much so that it the series would’ve ended there it would’ve been one of my favorite endings ever. Luckily, though, it wasn’t and the second season of Westworld premiered on HBO last Sunday.
The first season of the show played out in a non-linear fashion, with events taking place in its past as well as present and the second season does this too. This time it’s events from just after the conclusion of the first season up until a few weeks later.
If the first season ended with the “hosts” fighting back against their oppressors, in the second the “hosts” have totally rebelled and any software safeguards they once had that made harming the “guests,” or any living thing really, impossible are gone. And while the guests might like playing cowboys when they’re on vacation, they’re no match for the hosts who some of which are programmed to be killing machines and now practice their savage skills on living people.
But the park is still worth billions in its technology alone so Delos, the park’s owners, have come with a small army in order to secure their intellectual property. Which, ironically, they’re more concerned with their IP than for the people still left alive on Westworld on the run from the hosts.
It’s interesting to see just how the dynamics of Westworld have shifted between the seasons. In the first, host Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) was a sweet farmer’s daughter who just happened to be the oldest host in the park. As the season progressed Dolores’ programming shifted and she slowly began to see what was really happening around her. Now, in the second, she’s changed to a murderer who, along with host Teddy (James Marsden), are hunting down all the guests they can find. And the characters who were the uncaring people of the first season who took their aggression out on the hosts when they weren’t treating them like slaves are on the run for their lives.
So who are we to root for in the second season of Westworld? Is it the Dolores and the hosts who are murdering people as fast as they can find them or will it be the host’s former oppressors now trying to stay one step on the run from their murderous creations?
Will we pull for Dr. Frankenstein or his monster this season?
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