We decrypt HBO’s ultra-complex stunning new thrillerincluding THAT scene
Ready, player one?
Switch off awareness of your surroundings and focus your attention exclusively on this EW recap.
We’re booting up our Analysis Mode ofHBO’sWestworld, and there is alotof data to process.
Credit: HBO
One thing we know for sure is thatWestworldhas some major twists coming this season.
Dolores is asked, “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?”
and we should question the reality we’re seeing, too.
It’s a striking graphic image that hooks you, and is 100 percent HBO-y.
This is Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), our plucky immortal heroine.
She doesn’t sing an “I Want” song, but might as well.
What follows is perhaps a typical day in Dolores' life.
That’s Dolores' story “loop.”
A train of guests arrives in town.
The cost of visiting Westworld is $40,000 a day.
We also don’t yet knowwhereour story is taking place.Westworldwas shot in Utah.
But it’s probably a safe bet that Dolores, we’re not in Utah anymore.
The train is stocked with guests and hosts.
This tells us a lot about the guests and the park in a couple of economical lines.
We follow one visitor, the handsome Teddy.
But Teddy is designed as Dolores' counterpart, so he’s disinterested.
Teddy is a Good Guy, a believer in True Love.
Teddy sees Dolores, and they reunite.
Dolores recognizing Teddy means he’s written into her permanent Story.
Once back at the Abernathy ranch, however, the Horror begins.
The outlaw host Hector and his gang kill Dolores' parents.
Teddy kills the outlaws.
Then a guest arrives, the Man in Black (Ed Harris).
He’s a twist onYul Brynner’s gunslinger terminator from the first film.
I don’t think I’ve ever known a scene to provoke such a wide spectrum of reactions.
“(It’s not shown, after all, but strongly implied).
While others somehow didn’t even realize it happened.
On the first level, the scene supports the show’s plot.
you better show cruel abuse to establish the stakes of the story and the plight of the protagonists.
Well then, one might fairly ask: Why does this need to be a man-on-woman rape scene?
Why not something else?
The writers could have crafted some other horror, sure.
Shying away from that depiction arguably does a disservice to the character and the world being depicted.
Now hold on, because here’s a second level, one that’s unique toWestworld.Dolores is a robot.
So how do you get viewers to quickly emotionally sympathize with android heroes?
Honorable lovestruck Teddy is murdered.
That’s one way.
The showrunners want to put us through a reverse Voight-Kampff Test.
We’re challenged here because we’re continually reminded the hosts are not human.
So the scene effectively raises the question: “Is thisreallya crime?
If Dolores thinks and feelsyet is also a mechanical creationis this still wrong?”
The show’s most obnoxious character is the park’s vulgar hack-y writer.
Next week has a scene where his violent taste is slammed by another character.
The show all but asks: Is our traditional storytelling machine broken?
Can it be fixed?
After this rough sequence,Westworldpulls way back to the control room.
We see aHunger Games-like massive interactive map of the town.
They’re noticing a new class of gestures made by the hosts dubbed Reveries.
As you make changes, every so often the document is saved to the latest version.
Westworld’s hosts are built the same way.
Does that, sort of, make sense?
Bernard exits, and Elsie has a moment alone with Clementine.
She kisses the brothel host when nobody’s lookingthe Delos company equivalent of stealing some office supplies.
Suddenly there’s an urgent issue down in “cold storage.”
Westworld’s tightly wound operations leader Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is concerned.
He’s reminded there hasn’t been a “critical failure” with the bots in 30 years.
Stubbs isn’t taking any chances and wants to be armed.
“Kids all rebel eventually,” he says.
Apparently, Stubbs is the only character onWestworldwho knows exactly what kind of story he’s in.
They go down to Level 83.
TheWestworldfacility is built like a massive skyscraper that goes down into the ground instead of up.
So there’s far more to the park below the surface than above it (like Disneyland again).
We don’t know much about this area, but what we see is intriguing.
There’s an old Delos globe, escalators, and water breaking through.
Clearly, this level had some grand use many years ago and has now fallen into ruin.
It’s used for the storage of decommissioned hosts.
The “dead” hosts stand at attention, naked row upon naked row.
But it’s visually effective and totally creepy even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The cold storage hosts are like hundreds, maybe thousands, of Chekhovian Guns.
Cullen admits thereisa plan and puts Sizemore to the test, asking him what he thinks it is.
He confesses he’s clueless and she’s contemptuousher writer can’t figure out the plot.
She even corrects his grammar for added humiliation.
(I don’t know what Delos' secret plan is, but I have a suspicion.
Back in the park, the MiB captures a Native American host and scalps him.
It seems the inside of his scalp reveals the map of a maze.
The MiB reveals there’s a “secret level” (more levels!)
to Westworld that he’s questing to access.
He’s a sociopathic gamer hunting for the park’s ultimate Easter Egg.
But what is this Egg, exactly, and what’s the prize he’s searching for?
It’s not just going to be a high score on a leader board.
Meanwhile, several bots get buggy:
The sheriff has a malfunction in front of some guests.
One of the outlaws has a breakdown of a very different kind.
He goes on a psychotic rampage in the saloon, spilling milk and shooting host after host.
He also says something very odd: “Not gonna die this time, Arnold.”
We haven’t met an Arnold.
Also, “not gonna diethis time”?
The hosts are not supposed to remember that they’ve died before.
Dolores' father has a breakdown triggered by a photo that’s unearthed on the ranch.
The picture shows a modern-day city.
He’s transfixed by this snapshot of an impossible future.
Dolores, true to her programming, doesn’t see anything when she looks at it.
It’s just like when the young guest tells her “you’re not real.”
She just gives a peculiar look and then goes about her business.
The hosts are seemingly programmed to ignore reality-disrupting information.
Her father whispers something to her.
She rushes into town looking for a doctor.
All of these “glitches” alarm the Westworld staff, particularly Cullen.
Therefore, the new code is to blame, right?
That’s why Sizemore orchestrates this big saloon shoot-out.
Hector and his capable right-hand woman Armistice (Ingrid Berdal) take out bot after bot.
Of course, the guest wants to get an old-timey selfie with the corpse.
The shoot-out kills poor Teddy, once again.
Dolores is tearfully at his side when the tech-team clean-up crew arrives.
We transition backstage as the bots get interviewed in Analysis Mode.
A virtual subconscious, if you will.
There are no close-up shots of text written on screens.
Robot, reading lines of code isn’t interesting.
Programming in Westworld is largely done with verbal commands.
Bernard, Ford, and Cullen interview Dolores' father, Peter.
He’s panicking, saying he has to protect his daughter from the Westworld programmers.
“We’re miles beyond a glitch here,” Bernard says.
Abernathy says he wants to meet his maker.
Ford notes there’s a logical explanation for this speech.
A previous version of Abernathy was a professor from a horror story that quoted Shakespeare.
Abernathy and the deranged milk bandit are marched down to Level 83’s dark hell of cold storage.
How much does he understand?
Before he’s entombed in the darkness, Bernard whispers something to him.
Is Bernard enabling these glitches, somehow?
Would she ever hurt a living thing?
No.She reveals what her father whispered: “These violent delights have violent ends.”
But the words might mean something very important to our heroine.
Suddenly it’s morning again in the Old West.
Teddy wakes again on the train.
Notice how he faintly touches his upper chestthat’s where he was shot during the saloon massacre.
Does he remember that?
Dolores wakes, too.
She looks rather different.
She chats with her replacement father, seemingly unaware that anything unusual has happened.
Remember, in the show’s opening scene, we saw a fly crawl across Dolores' unblinking eye?
Midway through the episode, a fly likewise crawled undisturbed across Teddy’s face.
Now here’s another fly.
Without hesitating, Dolores smacks itkilling a living thing; a robot smacking a “bug.”
Her core code is no longer intact.
As we move beyond the first two weeks, this repetition will slip away as things… change.
What’s the world like outside of this park box we’re in?
What was the malfunction 30 years ago?
What’s causing, exactly, the “glitch”?
Is the glitch really accidental, or is Ford advancing the hosts' consciousness on purpose?
How much does Dolores know at this point?
What did Bernard whisper to Dolores?
And what did he whisper to her father before putting him into storage?
What is the meaning behind the “violent delights” phrase?
What’s the corporation’s secret plan for Westworld?
What is the Man in Black’s actual mission here, where is he going?
Is anybody else that we assume is a human actually a robot?
