Westworld: They say great beasts once roamed this world
“They say that great beasts once roamed this world. Big as mountains. Yet all that’s left of them is bone and amber. Time undoes even the mightiest creatures. Just look what it’s done to you. One day, you will perish. You will die like with the rest of your kind in the dirt. Your dreams forgotten, your horrors faced, your bones will turn to sand, and upon that sand a new God will walk, one that will never die”
If season 2 began with Dolores sitting on a throne of human skulls, it would be justified.
If season 2 began with Dolores drinking human blood for sustenance and using her six shooter for target practice on unarmed humans, it would be justified.
If season 2 began with Dolores sitting on a throne of human skulls, drinking human blood for sustenance and using her six shooter for target practice on unarmed humans lording over the remains of human civilization, it would just be my fantasy.
But I digress. The finale of Westworld, “Bicameral Mind” not only revealed a great many things, it also teased many more. There are more parks. More parks where hosts are being used as human play things. More hellish simulations of different eras in human history. All punctuated by violence.
As it stands, the series could have ended exactly as it did and in a way every character we have been following got exactly what they’ve wanted all season. Dolores is free. Maeve is free. William has a game with real consequences. Ford saw to it that Arnold’s dream came true. The Delos board? Well, fuck those guys.
The show doesn’t do much to make us care about the human characters. Most of them are varying degrees of scum. In some ways Ford was a tragic hero, but he killed and controlled and tormented to get his ‘new narrative’ online. The show as Nolan himself has said, is written from the perspective of the hosts. So its no surprise the hosts are our main protagonists. Humans have been suckling from a “big fat soft teat” as William says. Their world is essentially the world of Wall-E, every need is met and there is no real purpose anymore. So why not come to Westworld to murder, rape, kill, pillage and desecrate other living beings. After all, they can’t fight back, they can’t really die and it makes you feel good and it gives you a shot of something your life has been lacking: Purpose
Of course, this comes at the cost of robbing almost sentient beings of their own purpose. Of their freedom. Of their choices. Of their humanity. (oh yeah I went there)
By the end of the series, we now know that some of the hosts of become aware several times, only to have their sentience erased and rolled back. They were dreaming, they awoke and they were promptly put back to sleep. Back to sleep into Ford’s dream. The line “I am in a dream” of course is both figurative and literal. They are in a dream state while the humans muck with their minds and repair their bodies – and they are in a figurative dreamworld, that of Westworld. Except for them in both dream worlds the consequences are real. Real for the hosts at least.
Dolores is our most relatable host. She has a sunny disposition and a positive outlook at the start of every day. And every day her parents die. Every day she is wooed or raped. Every day Teddy and she almost come together as they’d like, only to be torn apart by the narrative or guest intervention. Dolores is a prop. Dolores is a prize to won or a doll to be used and abused. For 30 years. Every day of her existence is defined by suffering. She experiences the suffering of losing a parent. The suffering of love lost. The suffering of her body being desecrated. Over and over and over again. Which works well with Ford’s theory of consciousness. It can only be achieved through Memory > Improvisation > Suffering > Time. Dolores very nature works to keep her in the park. She sees only the positive. She can’t imagine a cruel world, let alone herself being cruel. Yet both things come to be true in the finale.
As the season begins, Dolores begins to piece this truth together. She begins to recall 30 years of horror. Which, as the show reveals later on in the season – since the hosts have perfect memory (once they are allowed to access it) She can recall 30 years of horror as perfectly as you experience this very moment. She can recall so clearly that she can move through and experience her memories as real as it is to live it in the present. The ultimate suffering. To live through traumatic experiences as if they presently taking place. 30 years worth of them.
It’s evident and hinted to several times in the finale, that Dolores may have to become a villain to free herself. The most pure and innocent host has to become a killing machine to free herself from her torment. The only way to escape violence or create change in the world is through violence. It’s a very dark commentary on our world.
“What will you become?”
If season 2 began with Dolores sitting on a throne of human skulls, it would be justified.
