Season Three of Westworld started with hope as a lot of what made Season 2 battle was scuttled for a extra user-friendly season. Gone was the way-too-complicated storytelling that was designed to remain forward of viewers who used their collective consciousness to smell out twists earlier than they got here. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), the collection’ important protagonist (or antagonist?), was given extra dimensions after spending 10 episodes slaughtering people in a boring match of revenge. All the Westworld park and Delos’ different points of interest had been deserted — despite the fact that there have been nonetheless loads of tales to inform inside these partitions — in favor of transferring to an out of doors world the place synthetic intelligence ran the world.
However past these adjustments, Season Three withered away with loads of its personal issues, with Sunday’s Season Three finale mercifully ending a disastrous second half of the season with the one constructive factor to return from it being a promising set-up for Season 4. That is the cycle of Westworld every season. Hope for the most effective early on, watch it collapse ultimately, and get your hopes up for the following season, as a result of gosh darnit, I’ll watch something about robotic revolutions, apparently.
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“Disaster Concept” was the top of a saga that noticed Westworld flip its script as soon as it bought outdoors of the park: Robots had been slaves to people inside Westworld, however in the true world, it was people who had been slaves to robots! Effectively, one robotic, the tremendous synthetic intelligence Rohoboan, which used a complete lot of collected knowledge to plot paths for each human being to create a way of order at the price of free will. People who did not match inside its equation had been deemed “outliers” and entombed in a secret facility the place some had been reprogrammed to rejoin society as drugged-up gophers that carried out the A.I.’s plans to assist preserve order (the criminal-for-hire app was a part of that convoluted course of). There are some high-quality factors in that concept, and ones that warrant some type of exploration on a extremely budgeted premium cable community drama, however it wasn’t the story that was problematic. It was the storytelling.
Within the finale, Dolores’ true plan was revealed after seven episodes of her evading any questions that might inform anybody else, together with us, what it was: She truly wished to save lots of humanity, not destroy it, by, uhhh, type of destroying it so it could possibly be rebuilt. For some motive, Westworld‘s writers although it was higher to maintain that secret than inform us early on, which is in keeping with how Westworld has all the time operated — the much less we all know, the extra we’ll be intrigued, the idea supposedly goes. To not point out the truth that it left us not understanding easy methods to really feel about Dolores, which could be a downside for the principle character going into the finale.
Her rationalization for her plan to save lots of people was primarily based round one precept, I suppose: that people, regardless of raping and murdering their manner round Westworld and placing her by way of the hell that compelled her to slaughter them by the tons of in Season 2, confirmed her magnificence and kindness typically, and people had been the reminiscences that she selected to recollect. (Regardless of her continuously remembering being tortured all through the collection.) We noticed this in Season 1 flashbacks as she and a baby performed with a ladybug (aww) and young and old William picked up a can for her (double aww).
Evan Rachel Wooden, Westworld
“So a lot of my reminiscences had been ugly,” Dolores advised Maeve in some mind-meld dream simulation of Westworld towards the top of the episode, earlier than Dolores’ mind was erased and uploaded into Rohoboan, successfully killing her (however that is Westworld, and dying ain’t what it appears). “However the issues I held onto till the top weren’t the ugly ones. I keep in mind the moments the place I noticed what they had been actually able to. Moments of kindness, right here and there. They created us. And so they knew sufficient of magnificence to show it to us. Possibly they’ll discover it themselves.” She continued, “There may be ugliness on this world. Disarray. I select to see the sweetness.”
So yeah. I wrote out that complete quote as a result of that was the smash-on-the-brakes second that supposedly bought this new perspective. (To be truthful, she’s been far more chill this season than final season, and this was how she thought in her Season 1 days of naiveté.) It is per Dolores’ fixed and irritating inconsistency; she’s good, then she’s not, she needs to save lots of people whereas additionally killing so many people, she needs to save lots of hosts by additionally killing so many hosts. Dolores is all about the long run targets, even when it means doing the precise reverse within the quick time period. Dolores is so inconsistent that even copies of Dolores, just like the new-and-less-improved Charlotte Hale, find yourself eager to kill her as a result of they cannot agree on something.
The season’s different huge plan belonged to supervillain Serac (Vincent Cassel), who wished to get the “key” — which was supposedly inside Dolores’ robo-brain — to Delos’ huge trove of information that mapped the human thoughts and will assist Rohoboan predict human conduct even higher. However that went down the bathroom when it was revealed by Dolores that she by no means had the important thing in her thoughts within the first place (it was truly in Bernard). Ooh, gotcha! The villain’s huge plan the whole season was for naught. Nothing like castrating an enormous dangerous of his efficiency by making all his actions, on reflection, nugatory as a result of he by no means had an opportunity. At the very least he was actual and never a hologram this time.
Maeve (Thandie Newton), realizing that she wasn’t going to see her daughter and that Serac was a software, flipped sides and attacked Serac and his goons even after Serac tried to freeze her motor capabilities along with his distant management, which did not work as a result of Maeve out of the blue determined that the distant management did not work anymore. I’ll want individuals to clarify that flip of occasions to me, as a result of I handed out twice pushing my mind to make sense of it. It labored earlier than and now it did not work. Was that purported to be her utilizing FREE WILL to disregard it or overpower it? I do not know. There have been moments like this peppered all through the episode, however this was the one which broke me.
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With Serac out of the way in which, Caleb (Aaron Paul) had Rohoboan erase itself to proceed the mass chaos that was occurring in riots on the streets of Los Angeles because the sheeple on the planet woke as much as the fact that their complete lives had been being pre-determined by an evil A.I. Maeve walked out with Caleb as Los Angeles was burning to the bottom, and if you happen to’ve seen the top of Battle Membership then you recognize what it seemed like. “Are you prepared, darling? That is the brand new world,” Maeve advised him, “and on this world, you could be whoever the f— you need.” People have as soon as once more achieved free will. And apparently the very first thing we need to do is struggle cops and burn issues. Actually, that half felt fairly true.
The precise villain of the season grew to become Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) — who I will remind you was a replica of Dolores and who I’ll refer to easily as Charlotte — who turned towards her creator as a result of she thought she had a household, principally. That slight change of their experiences sending them on completely different paths was, once more, an concept price exploring, however it wanted greater than half of Episode 6 to drag it off believably, particularly when it is destined to change into such an enormous a part of the collection. (Higher Name Saul spent a complete season, if not a number of seasons, to drag off its unbelievable character transformation of Kim Wexler, by comparability.) There are various arguments that Westworld Season Three ought to have been greater than eight episodes, and character flips like Charlotte’s are the largest. Recreation of Thrones suffered the same destiny in its late seasons. If each tales had extra time to breathe and persuade us, they’d hit rather a lot higher. As a substitute, fingers had been crossed that viewers would purchase it.
Within the post-credits scenes, which had been the most effective a part of the finale by far, Charlotte was nonetheless alive and dealing within the basement facility of a Delos outpost in Dubai, the place she was plotting her personal violent robotic revolution by creating a military of hosts. Amongst these robots was a brand new copy of the Man in Black (Ed Harris), who killed a nosey William after he stormed down there to proceed his demented effort to save lots of the world. (William’s storyline this season was an actual stinker, btw.) It seems that whoever makes it into the following season should go up towards Charlotte, who appears to be a continuation of Season 2 Dolores.
Jeffrey Wright, Westworld
After spending many of the season zig-zagging across the globe with out a lot objective besides to offer Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) a while to be hilarious, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) bought an opportunity to attach with Arnold’s spouse and remind himself that every one these emotions he is having relating to his deceased son are OK, as a result of hosts are additionally emotional beings. He ended the season in a resort room jacking into the Chic and staying there for fairly a while earlier than waking up far off sooner or later within the second a part of the post-credits scenes, indicating that one thing pulls him again to actuality, and given the layers of mud or soot throughout him, it is not good. Bernard’s all the time been a spotlight in Westworld because the thinker attempting to wrestle with what it means to be human, however in Season 3, he was a bit participant regardless of the present telling us in any other case. If his huge contribution this season was to be a locker for Dolores to stash the entry key in, then that is not a lot.
Westworld‘s third season was loaded with good concepts however had no concept easy methods to use them because it bought misplaced with lazy deception or creating puzzles with disappointing solutions. (The ultimate pearl that Dolores smuggled out of Westworld? If Bernard is to believed, it was put in a replica of Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.), whose one-minute look felt like a throw-in, very like the transient returns of Clementine and Hanaryo within the earlier episode.) Free will is a theme that sci-fi is presently in love with — FX on Hulu’s Devs additionally not too long ago tackled free will however did a much better job with it — and its repeated appearances in TV has worn down its efficiency, particularly when nothing new is delivered to the dialog. Sadly, it is perhaps time to train a few of that free will and quit on Westworld.