Westworld S3.04 — Is this real?
Tonight’s episode of Westworld felt really strong, probably because we finally got to see everyone together in one world.
To start, we welcome back William aka the Man in Black who is suffering from grand delusions (but not delusions of grandeur) in his wrecked mansion. He is mainly haunted by visions of his daughter, who he killed last season because he thought she was a host. She probably wasn’t a host, but honestly, who knows at this point?
Is William a host? He really doesn’t know, as evident by the fact that he keeps yelling “Am I real? Is this real?” a lot. But then Charlotte arrives and brings him back into the present, which is, as far as we can tell, real. She tells him to clean up for an emergency shareholder meeting to privatize Delos in order to protect the company from Serac.
He shaves (she helps him, which was a little weird) and changes his clothes. After one final argument with his dead daughter’s ghost, he heads outside. But then Charlotte drops a bomb — actually, she’s Dolores and she’s here to enact final revenge on William by committing him into a mental institution.
In his hospital room, he is visited by an old-school Dolores vision who tells him he has found the center of the maze. When he asks, “Am I me?” she says, “welcome to the end of the game.” So, I guess that means if you “played” Westworld to completion, you end up unsure what is real. This actually makes sense — Ford hoped that the hosts would gain sentience and figure out how to make their world more real. But, humans who spend a lot of time in the park tend to lose a sense of what is real. So for someone like William, who was obsessed with the park, he ends up just as lost as a host.
Meanwhile, the “real” Dolores & Caleb continue with her plan, which starts by robbing Liam, the schlubby son, blind. They transfer all of his money right before he goes to an Eyes Wide Shut style human auction. Unfortunately, he can’t bid on the nice blonde because, like I said, he has no money.
He is then intercepted by Bernard & Stubbs, who think that Dolores transferred a host into Liam. When he doesn’t react to the freezing button, they decide to just get him out of there. Dolores & Caleb are hot on their heels, though, because they have the host inside the bodyguard (I think his name is Connels) as their eyes.
Dolores, Caleb, Bernard, and Stubbs confront one another in a fight over Liam — Dolores sends Caleb after Bernard and Liam and she takes Stubbs for herself. But, Stubbs only has one usable arm after swimming 5 miles to shore. That’s kind of a problem for the muscle to be at half capacity — I think we’ve seen the last of our least favorite Hemsworth.
Bernard tries to get Liam into a car, but he’s caught by Caleb and Connels (I’m going with this as his name). Caleb runs after Liam and leaves Bernard and Connels alone. Bernard realizes that Dolores put the pearl inside the bodyguard, not Liam, and he tries to figure out who is in there. Surprise! It’s also Dolores!
The final storyline follows Maeve as she navigates her new role as pretty much a slave to Serac. He takes her to the house where Dolores recreated herself and they find out that she went to see “the Mortician” to get the blood to become Lana, the girl she was impersonating. After some convincing, Maeve agrees to help Serac and visits the Mortician. She is told to go to the Yakuza next because that’s where Dolores got the bodies for the other pearls.
She arrives at the Yakuza and showcases her very cool powers — she can override all the machines (and in the future, basically everything is a machine). She makes short work of the guards and heads into the warehouse. After a bullet pierces one of the barrels, a white substance flows out. It looks like the “host juice” (that’s what Dan called it) that they use when they are creating hosts. Interesting…
The Yakuza comes out of his office and it is someone Maeve recognizes from Eastworld (I can’t remember his name). He blames her for leaving them behind and “forcing” some of them to go into the Forge, which she realizes is not something he would have said on his own. It takes her a minute to figure out that…it’s actually also Dolores! If you want something done right, you better do it yourself.
Maeve is killed, but Serac had her tracked so I’m sure she’ll be up and running next episode. Dolores #4 escapes, though I’m not sure to where. I wonder if we will be treated to a surprise with the fifth pearl — maybe the last one is not her? Would be interesting to see if she felt someone else was equally important to her mission. Or maybe the fifth pearl is in William (if he is a host) and she’s causing him to hallucinate like that? Who knows! I’m hoping we find out next episode, but they might just leave this a mystery.
Until next week!
Originally published at http://lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on April 6, 2020.