Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Westworld airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night. Do not read unless you have watched episode eight, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 9pm.
“Wyatt will need you soon.” With its final line a call from a dystopian doctor’s surgery, this week’s episode of Westworld ended on the brink. As Wyatt’s men emerge from the brush to surround the Man in Black, as Maeve gets ready to dash for freedom, as Dolores breaks down where the park was born, we know that the end is coming.
It’s not the actual end, because some stories will be left alive for the second season to pick over. But we can expect some narratives to see their loop closed. Will the Man in Black get to the heart of the maze, or have his heart torn out by Arnold’s dangerous game? Will Dolores uncover the truth about herself? And will Maeve escape from Westworld and get her own foul-mouthed chat show? We’ll get some answers next week I suspect.
To my mind, the most vulnerable protagonist is the Man in Black. He is alone, deep inside Wyatt territory. An injured host, saved by Teddy, turned out to be a Wyatt lover. She killed Teddy by way of making that clear, and now she’s summoned a crew of ne’er-do-wells from the undergrowth who have our gunslinger surrounded. Alone, embattled, and let’s face it looking his age (especially after being socked in the mouth by a bagful of coins), Westworld’s oldest customer might be nearing his expiry date.
He might also be ok with that, because of his guilt. In a scene that had the air of a deathbed confession, the Man in Black reveals his past to Teddy. As well as a philanthropist and titan of industry, he’s a bad husband and amoral cowboy. He treated his wife badly (though he insists he did not beat her) to the point that she killed herself by taking an overdose. But more importantly for this drama, he also killed Maeve and her daughter. This was Maeve in an earlier incarnation, back when she was a homesteader. But she died just so her killer could see how it felt. The same rationale may have inspired an assault on Dolores. Teddy remembers that particular incident and beats the Man in Black for it. Beats him so hard he knocks him out. That’s not supposed to happen.
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Since killing Maeve, the Man in Black has been on a quest to find the heart of Arnold’s maze. The latest step in this challenge requires him to find Wyatt. Instead, it appears Wyatt has found him. And with Teddy killed at the last, the gunslinger must face down Wyatt alone, wounded and troubled. It might prove one fight too far.
Meanwhile, above the Mariposa, Maeve is making like she’s meek. A pair of suits (the haz-chem variety) have come to apprehend her in her room. She has stabbed the new Clementine to death in the street – so far so normal for Westworld’s most rebellious host. But having forced Felix and Sylvester into yet another breach of protocol, Maeve is now supercharged. She has given herself administrative access to her own self and deleted the bits that might stop her leaving the park, failsafe vertebra explosive included. She might look to the suits like she’s willing to comply, but they seem likely to soon find out otherwise.
Maeve doesn’t simply want to leave the park; she wants to be the leader of a rebellion. Thanks to her upgrade Maeve can now speak in the language of narrative and tell fellow hosts precisely what they’re going to do next. To prove it, she allowed cand his gang the full run of Sweetwater. Hosts like Hector will be helpful when Maeve acts on her promise to build an army. There might be a role for that massive warehouse filled with “dead” hosts too.
It was hard to keep up with Maeve this week, such were the chronological leaps she kept making. We see her in the present and in her past as a homesteader. Both timelines involve scenes where she is brought upstairs to be reconditioned. In the latter, she is with Felix and Sylvester. In the earlier one, we watch Ford and Bernard try to placate her after the death of her daughter. The pair are unsuccessful, due to a fragmentation of her mental capabilities. But then Ford plays her some Debussy. The French composer’s Reverie has featured before, when Bernard was remembering his son for example. We don’t know what effect it has on a host, but it appears to be profound. On hearing it, Maeve instantly becomes calm. As soon as the effect wears off, she tries to kill herself.
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This week Teddy has joined the hosts who can remember moments from past loops. Maeve meanwhile is increasingly driven by her reveries, to the extent that they dictate her actions in the present (one minute she is remembering the Man in Black, the next she has killed Clementine). Ahead of them both in the discombobulation stakes, however, is Dolores.
Alongside William, Dolores undertook to venture into the land “where the mountains meet the sea”. On first sight she describes this place as “home”, which seems odd given that she grew up on the Abernathy ranch. But soon we understand what she means: the undiscovered land is the site of the first Westworld homestead, created when Arnold was still alive. Dolores was one of the original hosts and can remember her training. She can also, in an alternate memory, recall shooting the entirety of this town dead. Just to make things even more confusing for our Alice in Wonderland, the site is the epicentre of Ford’s new narrative. No wonder she’s upset.
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Finally, we leave the good guys for the company of the bad. That includes Bernard, who may want to be a good bot, but is really at Ford’s merciless command. Having killed Theresa and covered up her murder, it is revealed that Bernard did Elsie in too. He was the one strangling her as she investigated the data leaks. The leak was originally attributed to Theresa but was apparently of enough significance to Ford that he wanted it shut down. And so, he put his number one operative on the job.
The official account of Theresa’s death is that she suffered an accident as she looked to beam information out from the edge of the park (in the very same crevasse the woodcutter got stuck). As a result of everyone swallowing this account, Ford is able to reinstate Bernard as head of behaviour and stop QA’s inquiries into his practices. Whatever his greater aim for this new narrative, Ford looks set to carry it out. He’s in absolute control, and no one can touch him – unless his hosts stop obeying him that is.
Notes from the prairie
After some unfortunate flirting a couple of weeks ago, Charlotte Hale and Lee Sizemore are in cahoots. She needs a new host to store all the data that needs to be squirrelled out of the park. He needs something, anything to do. And so she tells him to come up with a back story for her new mule. “Show don’t tell, as you writers say,” she says to him, telling not showing.
Felix has a magic medicine stick. In what appears to be the Westworld equivalent of giving a small child Calpol, you can press this stick against a human and make any wound disappear. Sadly we only get to see it in action on Sylvester. Having declared himself desperate to “brick this bitch”, Sylvester had planned to erase Maeve like he had done Clem. Instead, Maeve outmanoeuvred him. And then she slit his throat. Finally she grants him mercy just to further remind the white-coated cartoon cat who’s boss. Which is fair.
Theresa may be gone, but her lieutenant Ashley is still around and smelling something fishy about Bernard. Ashley passes his condolences for Theresa’s passing, but doesn’t get the response he was expecting. He knows the pair were lovers, and yet Bernard insists he doesn’t know Theresa at all. Neither is Bernard concerned about the prolonged absence of one of his team, Elsie. It’s almost like he’s a different person.
Logan’s back. Riding out of the darkness with a gang of Yankees, William and Dolores are surprised. They thought they’d left this idiot for dead in Pariah. Logan’s take on events is different. “Boy are you two fucked!”, he says.
Questions for next week
If we assume the Game of Thrones rule that any big setpieces occur in episode nine, what do we expect for next week?
Will the Man in Black live to ride another day?
Will Arnold make an appearance?
Why did Ford have Elsie killed?
What do the board need all that data for?
