Westworld S3.01 — A new path
The future looks bright on Westworld — literally. The new season starts where we left off, with Dolores continuing her reign of terror, but this time she is in the real world (we think — what if it’s a simulation inside of a simulation??).
After reading a great (and brief) recap of season 2 by Vulture, we remembered that Dolores escaped from the park in a copy of Charlotte’s body (the real Charlotte is dead) and found the safe house where there is a host-making machine in the basement, so she was able to re-make her Dolores body (so that Evan Rachel Wood could keep her job). She also had 5 host brain systems (they look like little metal balls) in her purse, but we don’t know who they are yet.
The episode begins with another rich schmuck yelling at his wife and staff. We know he’s a bad guy and apparently, he came to the park, which means Dolores has access to basically all of his memories thanks to Delos’ data collection scheme. She primes him for info on Insight, which is this season’s big company to hate (basically Google if Google actually knew everything). Dolores steals his money, gets some valuable documents, and then orchestrates his death.
So, her next move is obviously to find the top guy at Insight and learn more about their AI that knows everything. Unfortunately, we find out that she picked incorrectly and had to pretend to be interested in the schlubby son of the machine’s creator who has clear daddy issues because his dad loved the machine more (and named it a very ridiculous name that I honestly can’t remember and didn’t want to be bothered to look up).
The moment that she realizes this guy actually knows nothing and was wasting her time, the guy’s bodyguard realized she who she said she was (she stole the tissues from a dead teenager) and drugged her. Luckily, it seems like drugs don’t work on hosts, so she was able to pretend while he took her to an undisclosed location to kill her.
Enter Aaron Paul’s new character, Caleb. While they were telling Dolores’ story, they were cutting back & forth to Caleb’s sad, sad life. A former soldier, Caleb is now trying to make ends meet (and pay for his sick mom’s hospital stay) doing a mix of construction work and late-night crime. He doesn’t do “personals” (he said it at least 4 different times in the ep) but he does basically everything else on this app called Rico, which has an awesome “Get paid, motherfucker” Myspace-like opening sequence.
We see him do a few of these crimes with people like Lena Waithe and Marshawn Lynch before he is called to duty in the meet-cute of the century. He delivers a car and package of what I can only call “killing drugs” to the guys at the undisclosed location and he gets a little too curious, though the henchman pointing a gun at his head did not disturb him at all. Turns out he has already been shot in the head once before.
It seems like they are trying to make us think he is also a host because he always wakes up in the same way and he is very unafraid of death/has experienced really bad bodily harm before (being shot in the head) and came away seemingly unscathed. It would honestly be a little lame if he was a host though, it’s so 3 seasons ago. It is better to think that they are just trying to show us that all human life is mundane and inconsequential. Nice!
Throughout the episode, we hear back & forth conversations between him and his army buddy Francis (who is played by Kid Cudi! I knew it sounded like the opening to Man on the Moon), but we find out at the end (though we guessed it before that) that Francis died in the war and this is an AI-version of Francis that is part of his therapy. He cancels that before he returns to the scene of the crime and finds a very injured Dolores, who had just killed all of Insight’s henchmen with a copy of the main bodyguard by her side. Who is in that host? We don’t know, but I’m sure we will find out soon enough.
The final storyline in the show is Bernard’s. He is working at an industrial meat factory somewhere in Asia and he shaved his head (Dan had to tell me who it was — hello, face blindness). He is on the run because whoever is in Charlotte’s body framed him for the mass murder at Westworld last season. He tries to smile at a couple of his coworkers and they realize it must be the nerd in the wanted photo, so they jump him. Luckily, Bernard can return himself to his factory settings and fucks those guys up. He packs up and jumps on a boat, pointing out a remote part of the map, which he says is Westworld.
Post-credits, we see Maeve wake up in Nazi Germany with a gun and bruised knuckles. In her house, she finds 2 very bloody men and outside, general Nazi Germany mayhem. As the camera zooms out, it looks like Nazi Germany is actually somewhere in the tropical mountains — obviously, this is where Bernard is heading. His one goal is to stop Dolores and I assume he and Maeve team up in that venture.
What is Dolores’ plan? She mentioned that “real gods are coming now” so I’m thinking it’s going to be a lot of Old Testament-like punishment for the humans. That being said, if she only does it to the rich, they probably deserve it. Let’s see where this season takes us!
Producer who loves TV, looking for my next opportunity to be creative & pet dogs. View all posts by lizziekreitman
Originally published at http://lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on March 16, 2020.