Westworld Season 2 Discussion (Spoilers)

This thread is going to have spoilers for whatever the latest episode is.

I know there's a thread on here about if the show is boring or not, but I'd like to talk about this current season and discuss what's going on. I didn't like the first two episodes of this season, but tonight's episode in Shogun World and last week's episode were very good. I was about to wait until the season was over and then marathon it since I wasn't feeling the earlier episodes, but a friend said things were getting better. I've been thinking since last season that Maeve might end up being the hero and Dolores the villain, or at least a villain, since they're somewhat opposites.

Dolores is controlling and killing her kind just like humans would, while Maeve actually has the power to control hosts but only does so when in danger, plus she appreciates all life (human & host) as well as freewill. If Dolores had that power no host in the park would have freewill and she'd use them like pawns in her army. I don't see how Dolores is going to be likable again after what she did to Teddy. The last two episodes have been great, I hope they keep the momentum going. It eventually building up to Maeve vs Dolores wouldn't surprise to me... they'd both probably love to kill William/MiB.

A few other thoughts:

• The way bullets work makes no sense to me. So bullets used to only sting humans and kill hosts - now they'll kill either. I just don't see how that's feasible.
• The "battle" scene at the fort looked awful and seemed unrealistic. A bunch of guys with P90s just walk a straight line to a fort where they have rifles and cannons. Seems like they would've led the way with their cars and have things like drones that shoot missiles since this is the future and we have stuff like that now.
• The shogun's men cut off their ears so they couldn't hear, but when the shogun would say something like "come here" they'd do it.
• Bernard being so confused and pathetic got old a while ago. He was my favorite character in season one, now I don't even want to see him. Hopefully he gets his stuff together soon - feels like they're wasting their best character and actor.
• The idea of visiting a reenactment of colonial India seems appealing to me as visiting the American south during slavery or apartheid in South Africa. I see the appeal in Westworld and Shogun World but the Indian one would just be weird and awkward to me. They probably wouldn't do a dinosaur world because that's copying Jurassic Park, but that would make a lot of sense if the tech was real.

So what's the deal, if I'm a tourist who wants to visit Shogun World, I have to fully learn to speak Japanese first? I know it's all a moot point now but still, the park as a whole seems to cater to English speaking guests looking to blow off steam, so who is the clientele for this very genteel, very spartan, very Japanese-language-only park?

Also it's weird that it's called Shogun World and not Samurai World, especially since their canonical shogun is now dead. That'd be like if Westworld was called President of the United States World, and Rutherford B. Hayes showed up as a character and was beheaded.

In short, I love samurai movies to death, but the notion of Shogun World doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

@kevin_cogneto: As for the first part: I guess they would actually speak English to you if you spoke English to them. The dude says it towards the beginning of the episode. He points out that they didn't use English when spoken to, likely because they are all also malfunctioning/whatever like Westworld was.

And your second point has me a bit confused. The Shogun being killed is not something that would normally happen in the narrative I guess. None of this is going according to how it was designed based on them saying it a bunch and the whole premise of the show.

The reasons I imagine the colonial India park make you uncomfortable are exactly the reasons that I 100% buy that it'd be an option that the humans in this world would absoluetly pay to visit. I mean, the very nature of the attractions to begin with (fuck/rape/pillage/murder robots for delight) says it all. Slavery and apartheid might be toxic for the park owners from a PR perspective, but colonial India? Just obscure and palatable enough for rich assholes to feel okay getting their jollies off in.

It also fits insofar as Westworld's thing is adventure and freedom, Shogun World's thing is violence, and whatever-the-Indian-park's-called's thing is privileged exoticizing shit.

Anywho, this episode was good. Some lulls, mostly with the Dolores stuff. Maeve was fun in season one and lost that along the way, but now her story's fun again. Thankfully Dolores's story seems to be on the cusp of being interesting again.

Last weeks episode was great, and this week's gave me hope (or cautious curiosity, let's say) for these storylines going forward.

I've really enjoyed this season so far. It feels a little disjointed with the different parks and all, but ninjas and samurai are fucking rad, so I'm not complaining. The episodes seem a little more self-contained this year, for better and worse. I was hoping for someone to break out and start tearing shit up in the real world, but that's looking more and more like that will have to wait for Season 3. I agree with the OP that Dolores re-programming Teddy was the turn on her villain arc. RIP sweet Teddy. Nice guys never win.

I will say that I'm not too crazy about Maeve's newfound mind-control powers, as I'm concerned that will lead to some issues later on. It won't make much sense if/when Maeve doesn't enter god mode when it would clearly serve her interest to do so, and if/when she does, it will be a fairly cheap way to allow her to just blaze through what opposition she encounters, uninterestingly.

It does feel like we're headed for a Dolores v. Maeve showdown, and smart bets are on the latter. I'm curious to see how Bernard factors in at this point. I, too, am tired of him simply being a broken robot, as that feels like a disservice to his very interesting storyline in season one. I'm quietly hoping he's a dark horse candidate to deftly seize control of the park somehow, perhaps as an as-yet-to-be-revealed part of Robert's plan.

It seems like a bunch of people are nitpicking the fuck out of it, but this show is still easily the best thing on television right now, IMO. I can't wait for next week.

Giving Maeve "Thr Force" is kind of pissing me off. The whole Maeve character is actually. Maybe it's because I never liked these omnipotent /all-powerful characters, maybe it's because I'm rooting for the humans and thought giving her those power/abilities were fucking stunting begin with.

[edit] and the humans keep doing stupid stupid things in order to keep the story going.

@bill_mcneal: the powers make sense though. In season 1 it was said that all of the hosts are connected to eachother as a way to make sure narratives don't stray too far off their paths. So if she has special access to hosts she should be able to control them without saying anything.

So that Train totally smashed into a reinforced steel gate right?

Nothing especially mindblowing this week. The fight between Hiroyuki Sanada and the other guy wasn't great, but the ending was pretty rad. Nice to see Maeve finally find the kid, and of course there's a replacement mother. Hopefully we get more of Moses next week.

Watching Dolores maybe start to get a hint that she's doing some monstrous shit on account of altering Teddy is fun, as is new cruel Teddy. Figure he'll be more like the Gunslinger going forward. Fun twist with the Bernard stuff at the start, which potentially puts all of that interviewing stuff from season one out of place timeline-wise.

Man-o-man was it a brutal crawl to revealing what we all surely already figured out with the cradle (or CR4D-LE/whatever it was) that it was actually a Ford duplicate that Bernard created and used.

@bill_mcneal: Cept the techs gave her super user level access to every other robot at the park. If all my smart appliances were actually hooked up to the network, the moment Alexa became sentient, she could decide to turn all my lights off and log me out of every signed in service.

She is the computer on the corporate network that someone went to Giantbomb.ru on, looking for Truck Simulator money hacks with an old version of Java with an admin account so that Cuddle Puddle could get sweet truck horns.

Like a machine with wannacry, she can transmit to, and infect every other machine with SMB enabled on the network. And THAT is why you keep SMB v1 disabled!

Akane definitely showed us the meaning of "home is where the heart is".

Not a fan of the direction they have taken the story threads. They set up loads of interesting plot points in season one but I don't think they have capitalised on any of them and have even actively made some worse. The only character I care about anymore is Bernard.

Man, Season 2 has really hit its stride. This week's episode, Kiksuya, was arguably the show's best yet. We followed the road to discovery for Ake, and it was both gripping and gut-wrenching to watch him try to comprehend his "purpose" as a cog in the wheel and change his path to try and get back once-known happiness, akin to Maeve's goal with her daughter. This futile effort (at least to this point) due to overwhelming forces beyond his control hit especially hard due to the tragic real-world parallels with Native American culture historically, and the show seems to be at its best when we as viewers "learn" some more of what's going on along with the robots to better understand their motivations and empathize with their struggles.

The scene when Ake gets himself killed to try and find his love was exceptional. Wandering the empty facility in search of her, only to find a lifeless husk, was brutally affecting. It was aided by a truly great cover of Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box that I'm going to link below because it's incredible. Ake comes to a realization as to the breadth of the sadness in this place from looking around at all the husks and stating that they're someone else's love and memory. We later see an encounter of his with Ford as he tinkers with the narrative. Ford eloquently calls Ake a "flower growing in the darkness" in a terrific bit of dialogue.

Meanwhile, Ake's words to his love of "take my heart when you go" echo throughout the episode, as he kidnaps and reminds her of who he is through the words. Ake's story is told via a tale he's recounting to Maeve's daughter that he has similarly kidnapped, and we learn that Ake is actually trying to return a favor she has done him in a past life by saving her from Dolores' onslaught. Maeve spends the episode being repaired, and we get a rare and fairly poignant moment of humanity from the typically self-serving weasel that is Sizemore, as he laments what he's done to her with his narratives. A near-death Maeve uses her powers (pointedly, to my relief) to communicate with Ake, who promises to protect her daughter. To bring the episode full-circle, Maeve's response is "take my heart when you go".

10/10.

The show is getting uncomfortably "Lost-y" to me. Weird things happen with no explanation. The scenes jump around and there's no way to tell where or even when it's taking place. Adding to that the Battlestart Galactica "everyone could be a robot or another copy", plus now the fact that everything you see could be in a computer, it's pretty hard to try to care what's happening. It's still a fun ride, and the acting is top notch, so I'll keep watching for now. But I can't be bothered trying to figure out what's happening.

@notnert427: I think I needed that episode to remind myself why I liked the show in the first place. Yup 10/10 sounds about right.

Most episodes even tangentially related to Maeve are, naturally, the good ones.

I wish it felt more like Lost, that's one of my favorite shows. I'm not sure what you mean by "weird things happen with no explanation", it could be you missed something or maybe they haven't explained it yet. I don't think "everything we've seen is in a computer" is a real possibility, that's like doing a lame "it was all a dream twist", the creators of the show are too good for that and I doubt HBO would allow it.

I think this season going more towards Maeve and other characters, while getting a little bit away from Dolores is why I've liked it a lot. Dolores doesn't do anything for me. Her changing Teddy is the pretty much the only interesting thing I can think of her doing. The show has built her up as special, but Maeve and now Akecheta feel way more special. I don't dislike Dolores, but in season one she felt like the main character, I think this show is better off without a main character and if it was someone was, I think Maeve or Bernard are better choices.

Just got caught up and episode 8 was the second great episode of the season, and so far my favourite.

Maeve and Ake and the others like them make a good counterpoint to Dolores. Where Dolores' group is driven by hate, spite, and a certain sense of manifest destiny, these characters are driven by their bonds across their histories. Dolores actively mutilated her bond with Teddy, but Maeve continues to encounter and grow with those who instead cherished theirs, all of whom empathize with, and extend those connections to, other hosts as well, punctuated perfectly with Maeve quoting Ake's lost love.

Episode 8 is easily my favorite of the series. Ake's journey has a very religious/spiritual/mythological feel with him basically going to the underworld for his love and the "ones down below" or whatever they called humans almost sounded like demons. The twist that he was talking Maeve the whole episode was great too. Episode 9 broke momentum a lot for me, but I liked it overall - a lot of the info was a rehash though.

Really liked episode 9, wasn't really for the "O your such a bad person" look you killed all these androids. Like if he was the only one living out his dark fantasies in Westworld, kinda underwritten imo. Can't wait for the final episode.

The first two episodes and last two episodes of this season were pretty weak to me. The season finale had its moments, but the way they needlessly have so many timelines and so much skipping around just feels like a convoluted way of keeping people guessing and to be unpredictable. I think the show is at its best when its character driven and emotional, like the Japanese storyline, Ake's episode, and so on. When the show is trying so hard to be clever, it sometimes comes across as a little pretentious instead. I assume Felix and whatshisname will repair Maeve and the others in her crew. The head writer guy dying for Maeve felt a little too far and unrealistic for him and the story. Holding them off was fine, but dying felt silly.

The idea that these humans are going to live forever makes no sense to me, because they're copying consciousness, not transferring it. So Ford, William, etc are all going to die and be dead whether there's a host out there or not that looks like them. In order for there to be human immortality the consciousness would need to be transferred, like in Black Mirror's San Junipero episode or the dead wife being in the husband's head like in the Black Museum episode.

I still think it's odd the show hasn't created any likable or even fully dimensional human characters (excluding Ford, who is written more like god than human). Elise maybe could've been the first but she's dead now. Hale was very one dimensional even though I liked the actress in Thor 3 and other stuff. Stubbs could be okay if they ever did something with him, but now it looks like he's been a host this whole time anyway.

I do wonder what's going on in the other parks. All the humans are focused on Westworld, but Shogun, India, Roman, and whatever other parks have hosts going on a rampage too.

@deathstriker: Yah that finale had a lot of skipping around that made it a lot more convoluted for the sake of being convoluted.

All in all Elsie was one of my favorite characters because she seemed to have her wits about her unlike everyone else, and then they just kinda dispatched her very unceremoniously.

After episode 9 I knew that the last episode is just going to be a big ol' cliff hanger because this deep into it they were still keeping all their cards close to the chest – and this continued onwards through to the very end.

Overall I think the season started a little sluggish, got real interesting halfway through, and then meandered in obscurity into a very "wait till season 3" finale. I can only imagine unless you rewatch this entire season right before the premiere of the next one you'll be absolutely lost as to what is going on.

I just watched this last episode not even being aware it was the season finale. Now I just feel weird coming off it. This season felt like a confusing mess and didn't give me the same satisfaction and "ah hah!" moments I had from the first. I kinda don't think I understand wtf is going on anymore.

Also very sad that Elsie appears to be gone. She reminded me of a girl I had a thing with somewhat recently. Was always happy and depressed whenever she was on screen. Blah

That whole daughter story had me cringing through the whole season, make me at least care about about here don't make here generic daughter number 52354. I think the best part of this season was that humans aren't anything special, and them try to thrive through eternal life.

I shouldn’t be surprised that another J.J. Abrams produced show is dissolving into another confusing, overwritten, time-jumping mess.

That was okay! Some real hokey shit like all the hosts escaping to that field and some characters getting REAL cheezy (with a "z") treatment (pretty much all of Maeve's crew and Hale). But the stuff inside the thingie with Not-Logan was all great stuff. It's no shocker that one of the two best episodes in this overall very disappointing season was the one that dealt with the efforts towards achieving lasting fidelity for the human/host hybrid.

The best stuff of this finale was the conversations around human sentiment regarding free will, and the invisible walls of their very identities that invariably keep them from it. Really appreciated that stuff, and was glad to see the big tease at the end seemed primarily focused on that, from the perspective of the Man in Black.

Kinda confused about the Dolores escape. Not plot-wise, just... were they really trying to make us feel happy for Dolores in that moment? And that reveal that Mug-Man Security Bro was a host (probably) just felt cheap, kinda like the reveal that Hale was a host felt cheap. But the Dolores scene was like the opposite of Ex Machina, where the ending there came across like it was going for a kind of horror angle when instead I'm sitting there like "no, this is a good thing she got out, what's scary about it, cause humanity's dooooooomed now? pfft." Meanwhile with Dolores I'm sitting there with hands reaching out to the screen in disbelief, saying "how about fuck off."

And boy that exchange between Dolores and Bernard at the end was just the cherry cheeze on top of it all. "You have to fight me" or whatever the shit. So silly.

But back to that stuff with Not-Logan, loved the way William's father-in-law's defining moment reframed his crazy mumblings about being "all the way down now." I like how that particular story about a couple of side-as-fuck side-characters is told in a sort of passive, almost scattered way, kinda like logs in a video game. You know there's a lot more to their relationship we don't see, but we get enough to understand the type of story theirs is. The pieces of where they end up that were learned of before ending up elevating them as characters, as well as their story and its place among the human side of things, with respect to the whole "Westworld" mythology anyways. Also great when they unabashedly condemned the Man in Black as irredeemable. As someone who loves a good "FUCK FATE" story, the insinuation that he may be trying to find a sequence where he didn't kill his daughter is particularly exciting.

Totally don't give a shit about any of the Bernard vs. Dolores stuff though. It's not beyond shaping into something interesting, but right now it seems determined to head down an unexceptionally blunt path.

While I can't say I enjoyed every episode this season, I really enjoyed the season finale. I particularly enjoyed the last conversation between Bernard and Dolores. Now that the majority of the human antagonists are out of the way, there seems to be a more clear divide on sides. Either you're on the "Kill all humans" Dolores camp for the sake of protecting all Hosts or you're in the Bernard camp of trying to find a middle ground of coexistence. Both have compelling reasons and both are pretty justifiable when you look at what they have been through. They are now two characters destined for conflict over their ideology and I enjoy that sort of character conflict.

I'm not really into the whole Man in Black story though. For one, there's nothing really compelling about William's story now. When you show a family of assholes, it's hard to feel bad for them during key scenes and both he and his daughter were pretty awful people. Arguably, you could say they were both at fault for pushing the wife to suicide. To me, the whole point of William's story as of now is that he started from nothing and now that he has worked his way up the totem pole, he has come up with the idea that he is a crucial piece of the puzzle in Westworld. Throughout this season though, Ford both strokes his ego and takes it away from him to basically drive him towards the brink of insanity, like a punishment for all the bad that he has done towards the Hosts in Westworld in the name of solving the "game". Much in the same way that he unleashed Dolores on the park, just his plans for William are more personalized. It just seems to me that his story is less about his "fate", but rather how one's ego goes out of control. Which is interesting, but not really crucial in the grand scheme of Westworld.

Also... did anyone else kind of get the feeling that this was a series finale? Obviously it's not, but by the end of it, I almost got the feeling that they really could end the show here and leave the rest for the viewer to decide what happens. We know Maeve is going to come back along with many of the Host characters that were killed. Whatever conflict between Bernard and Dolores will happen in the real world. The Man in Black is either a Host, human, or somehow a successful version of the two. I'm almost satisfied just accepting this as the ending of the series and hearing different theories than seeing it play out.

I just hope they conclude it early instead of dragging it on.

Well, it's not like he actually works on the day to day of the show or has creative control of Westworld (or did for Lost if that's what you're referring to). The showrunners of each show and the writers are the main creative forces. Lost is way better than Westworld to me and Lost never forced five storylines at once then randomly blended them together for the sake of drama and to be unpredictable. One of the showrunners of Westworld is Jonathan Nolan and considering he helped write Momento and Interstellar he seems to like time a lot, but they play with time too much here.

I seem to be in the minority based on all the "this season sucked" crap I keep reading on the internet from people who want to play hipster critic and be the "cool" person who finds ways to claim an obviously pretty great show isn't actually any good, but I really enjoyed Season 2, even moreso than season one. The time-travelling did get to be a little much at times and wasn't always easy to keep up with, but it did eventually help fill in some plot holes. William/Man in Black's story kind of whimpered out a bit, but they can still do some interesting things with him going forward in either the real world or the park (or both). Maeve seems likely to be resurrected to somewhat "rule" the park, and you have to think she's going to try to "find" the elysium she sent her daughter to, which may eventually lead her outside the park to track down Dolores in an effort to figure that out. I'm also curious who Dolores brought with her to the real world. Bernard remains the most interesting character, so I'm glad he was allowed to live. That said, Dolores' explanation for doing so was fairly lame and hard to buy, because it was both out of character for her and illogical to willingly keep someone around whose goals run counter to her own, but fuck it. Bernard rules, and I'm glad we'll see more of him seemingly trying to make his own way in the real world and foil Dolores.

William's "reveal" as a host fell pretty flat because it was fairly predictable and it seems likely that "real" William still exists in some form. Even if he's been "dead" for a long time, that doesn't even really matter because the show time-travels so much and because his arc is already centering around the idea of eternal life as some human/host hybrid, which he could at this point already be (or fully one way or the other). They didn't really close any doors there, which means there's a lot of directions they can still take his character. I will say I hope they don't dwell much on his daughter "torturing" him akin to what he did to James Delos, because that's ground the show already kinda covered there. The idea of her pulling the strings isn't particularly interesting, mainly because Ed Harris is rad and makes for a better villain. I hope William tries and struggles to redeem himself from his "moment" via various journeys through the park (or parks, as this is a decent excuse for the show to feature some of the other parks). Robot Stubbs and/or Maeve seem positioned as in-park adversaries, and I'm on board with that. A real-world William would also still be uniquely positioned to "business battle" with Dolores/"Hale"/Delos corp. I wouldn't be surprised to see any of this.

I hope we haven't seen the end of Akecheta on the show, given that his story gave us the best episode of the series. While it was a bit refreshing to see a "happy ending" of sorts for he, his tribe, Maeve's daughter, and Teddy, I want the show to at least peek into the lives they make for themselves there. I'm curious about Teddy especially, as in terms of his non-modified form that Dolores seemingly sent to freedom in robot heaven, his raison d'etre was to be a chivalrous knight of sorts trying to save Dolores from peril, so what the hell is he going to do in a place without her that doesn't need protection? Then again, maybe it will need protection if Maeve comes back for her daughter and brings some outside problems with her. Maybe the show goes there next season, or maybe they're just done with everyone who "escaped". Having Teddy "ride off into the sunset" is a decently fitting end for him (and a fun nod to old Westerns), but I'm not sure I'm fully ready to say goodbye to him and Ake as characters just yet.

Anyway, I'm still really enjoying the Westworld ride overall. It's been a fun plug-in during the Game of Thrones wait, if nothing else. The highs are really high and the lows have been tolerable and only temporarily irritating for me. I like that the show isn't as hand-holdy as most, even if it's occasionally arcane and frustrating. It's not anywhere near as unintelligible or pretentious as people make it out to be, and even when it leans that direction, the generally terrific acting and cinematography dwarf its shortcomings. I'm already waiting for Season 3.

I really like the whole God/Lucifer thing going on with Bernard and Dolores in the last episode. Pretty interesting twist on it too, having Dolores bring Bernard into existence to act as a balance to her.

Overall I think it was a pretty good season with mostly average episodes mixed with a couple of great episodes (and maybe a clunker or two). The Eastworld episode was definitely my favorite.

There were some really cool scenes this season, but overall I found it to be disappointing. I didn't like the different timeline stuff, seemed to rely too heavily on a mumbling and blindly stumbling Bernard. I lost all interest in Dolores this season and William's story (which I liked the most) just fizzled out by the end. Also the amount of incompetence on the humans side to push the story forward was ridiculous.

They somehow turned every character from season one into unlikable assholes and obfuscated any kind of engaging narrative behind ten layers of convoluted time-skipping and word salad.

I hope they where all on the Lost island all this time :D. "We need to go back"

But yeah sleeping some few nights over it, i thought Season 2 was kinda alright had some good solo story's like the the one from epi6. Where there trying to recreate the big boss guy. And those twists at the end where okay i didn't see them coming. Also all most that end credits scene ( why would you do that).

I'm not sure how anyone could dislike Maeve. Teddy going evil wasn't his choice. I was always neutral on Elsie and Stubbs, I still remain so, I don't think they ever turned into assholes. Bernard got annoying to me since he was confused and/or panicking the whole season.

This show is getting too multi-faceted and weird for its own good now. I'm getting The Leftovers vibes.

Not every show needs to be as deep as they are trying to go for. Hurting more than helping.

Easy, she's annoying. Dolores is not that interesting anymore but I don't find her grating.

Westworld is a sucky show, and season 2 was miles worse than season one, but I guess it was worth it for every time Ed Harris would end a scene with muttering “Fuck you, Arnold” and shooting whoever was next to him.

@49th: To be fair, that writing was on the wall early. Episode 1 had me disinterested. Episode 2 brought me back a little. I bailed for good maybe 10-15 minutes into episode 3.

I’ll always have season one...