Television Shows Over Coffee : WestWorld Season Three Premiere

Let’s talk about one of my most anticipated tv shows return, Westworld.

Warning, this talk about season three will not be spoiler free!! There is trigger warnings for mentions or rape, murder, sexual assualt, spousal abuse, I can’t think of more but if you like me to ad some let me know. Also this will be a long post.

My initial reaction as soon as the episode was over was, “Hell yes, Westworld is back.” Westworld was one of those shows that I watched on a whim and quickly became one of my favorite things ever that consumed my mind. So without stalling anymore I’m just going to go ahead and give a slight recap/my thoughts about this episode.

Let’s start with who else but Dolores.

We have watched Dolores evolve in so many ways since season one, with everything she’s gone through : from fulfilling park goers fantasies, becoming self aware, murdering Ford and leading the hosts on a revolt, Dolores has been through a lot to say the least. And in episode one of season three, she is here to prove that she is playing chess while everyone is playing checkers.

She first appears extorting money from a man that physically and sexually abused her back on the park, Gerald. He has an anger issue to say the least, seeing as it led to the death of his first wife, but she’s here for his money and for the secrets he hoarded from a company called Incite when he retired. She tells him to give him the files in exchange for his life and it seemed like she was making good on her word, but with the knowledge that she has about his past, she uses a hologram to appear as if she is leaving, knowing full well that his rage would get the best of him. Charging full speed at her hologram, which he thinks is the real thing, he swings and falls into a pool, cracking his head and bleeding to death.

You then see her getting close with Liam, a tech dude with dad issues and son of Incite founder. And I am taking a quick moment to appreciate this beautiful dress change that was not CGI but actually long hard work by the talented costume designers. It is *chefs kiss*.

Unsuspecting, and in my opinion gullible, Liam met “Lara” in Burma and the two have been hitting it off for a while now. So when he’s told by Martin, Incite’s and Liam’s fixer, that there’s a meeting in Los Angeles that he must attend to, he waste no time in inviting his new love along for the ride.

In Los Angeles, we once again see Dolores playing her game of chess, getting close to Liam, tracking him and eavesdropping on his meeting, understanding who has the real information and being ten steps ahead of everyone to get to Rehoboam, Incite’s massive data collection and analyzing orb. While on a tour of where Rehoboam is kept, Liam sells the idyllic version of Rehoboam, a system helping analyze human data to “create a path for everyone,” but later in the evening, he admits to her himself that no one knows what Rehoboam is really doing.

Martin wants to dispose of ‘Lara’ when he finds out that the identity that Dolores is using a a that of a dead Ukrainian girl. But Dolores quickly dispatches of his men and when she guns him down, he admits that the person in control of Rehoboam is a man named Serac. Whatever her end game might be, she already printed a host of Martin to go back to Liam and be under her control. Before killing Martin, she lets him know that “The real gods are coming. And they’re very angry.”

Regardless of how strong Dolores is, she is wounded and after one last showdown with Martin’s men she finds herself in a tunnel bleeding out. Before falling down and succumbing to the pain of her wounds, she falls into Caleb’s arms. ( à la season one faint into Billy’s arms )

Our newest edition this season is Caleb

What we’re told of Caleb is that he is a veteran disillusioned with the world around him and fallen on hard times. He works in construction and has a mother, whose illness is unknown as of now, who keeps insisting that he is not her son. ( Foreshadowing of some sort? ) A conversation with a hospital worker informs us that it seems that medical bills have been getting too expensive for Caleb and suggest that he considers placing her in a state run facility to continue her care.

To make more money, Caleb is a criminal at night using the app RICO. An app with an aptly assigned ringtone, “Make Money Motherfuckers”. We see him blow up an ATM with sometime partners Ash and Giggles after having a conversation about getting their stat’s up on the RICO app. We also get from this conversation that Caleb “I don’t do personal,” meaning kidnapping, murder, the heavy things that can be done on the app, and so far he seems to hold steadfast to this moral line. There isn’t much from Ash and Giggles this first episode but I am excited to see more of their characters as the season progresses.

At a therapy appointment, his therapist insists that he continues to talk with his friend Francis on the phone rather than him, seeing as he “has other patients.” The therapist then tells him that he is not going to lecture Caleb about the the benefits of their program ( I am still unclear if the program is therapy itself, the Rehoboam system, or a different system entirely, so if you can clarify that up for me, hit me up!), and that maybe the program is bullshit. He also tells Caleb that “if you don’t try, it definitely won’t work.”

You can see his further disillusion in the world he lives in when he receives a call for a job he applied for. After being told that his application was strong, but that he’s just not a good fit, Caleb ask if “there is a different shape I could squeeze myself into?” After a moment of silence, he asks if the other voice is even human, which he quickly finds out is not.

Throughout the episode he is talking with his friend Francis on the phone. Which we learn by the end of the episode is dead. His voice serves as a sort of therapist for Caleb, which by the end of the episode, he unsubscribes from, wanting “someone real”.

Enter Dolores.

As he walks through a tunnel, he finds her bleeding after her scuffle with Martin’s men. Where she promptly passes out in his arms.

Then there’s Hale

She is only on screen for approximately five minutes and it’s for a board meeting. A meeting in which she makes sure that production of hosts continue again on the island. We also get exposition that one person is being blamed for the massacre on the island, and that one person is none other than Bernard Lowe.

Honestly, I have just one burning question, who the hell did Dolores plant in this host of Hale’s body? We all know that Hale died back on the island at Dolores’s hand, so who is Hale?

Bernard

Bernard is seen working on a meat farm of sorts under a pseudonym. We are unsure how long he has been there or how he got there, but we do know that it has been 92 days since he last saw Dolores. And one thing we know for sure is that Bernard does not trust himself. He’s running diagnostics daily and routinely to make sure that no one has tampered with his code.

Either way, his little safe haven has been compromised, some of the other men on the farm figured out just who Bernard is, having seen a wanted poster of him for the massacre on the island. When the two goons shake him down, he uses a button he carries in his pocket to turn on/off something inside of him to be able to defend himself. After killing the two, he leaves the farm and is seen trying to commision a boat to take him back out to the island, to Westworld, on the reasoning that he’s “looking for a friend.”

Martin

We don’t know much about Martin before Dolores replaces him with her version of him. But we do get a small tid bit before she kills him, that she has met him before and that “you were on vacation,” insinuating that he himself was a park goer, that like Gerald, most likely abused her in some way. Like Hale, I am in suspense and am dying to know who did Dolores place in him?!?!

Rehoboam

A system developed that uses everyone’s data to calculate a future/life path for them.

Liam : “My dad thought the biggest problem in the world was unrealized potential. He thought that if you could chart a course for every single person, then you could make the world a better place.” Dolores : “A path for everyone.” s3e1

Now some thoughts

When Dolores meets with Liam, a friend of his is ranting and raving about simulations and even says “None of this is real, we’re living in a simulation. How fucking ironic if they had put a simulation inside a simulation. That’s a massive fuck you.” Which I can’t help but feel like it’s foreshadowing of some kind.

There is also a flashback scene to Francis and Caleb, showing Francis with a wound on his chest and dying. But seeing as they’re in plain clothes and not in army fatigues, I am intrigued as to exactly how Francis died and why. Trailers did show him in an orange jumpsuit as well, so there’s definitely something more there to be uncovered.

While doing a job, a gun is held to Caleb’s head and he holds his ground saying, that isn’t the first time he’s had a gun to his face. The man than threatens to shoot him in the head and Caleb just calmly replies that someone else has already beaten him to that. A story I hope we get to learn later on, as I am jumping to many conclusions already about Caleb and who/what he might be, but I digress, this is just episode one.

Dolores did tell Bernard that in order for their species to survive, they would all have their parts to play but that this time she and him would not be friends. So I can’t help but think that Bernard has found himself unwillingly a pawn in Dolores’s long chess game. How? Why? Still to be seen.

Implants. At the beginning of the episode we see Gerald place a disc into his mouth, we then see this same disc again being placed in Caleb’s mothers mouth in the hospital. It’s also mentioned in one of Caleb’s conversations with Francis on the phone, when Francis asks him if he’s thought about turning his implant back on “to smooth out the rough edges.” To which Caleb replies “No some people need it, but for me, I guess the rough edges are the only thing I’m hanging on to.” What exactly these implants and what do they do? Do they produce a calm state of being? Are they antidepressants of sorts? Or is everyone just dropping acid?

Rehoboam seems to be this seasons new Forge. Towards the end of Season Three, The Forge (in the form of Logan) explained to Dolores that information was being collected from all the guests at the park, they were “decoding” the human to be able to plant them into hosts. Similar to the Forge, Rehoboam collects and stores data of all humans and even analyzes their “path”. Why Dolores want to get close to it can be straight forward but knowing her, she probably has some other intentions for it.

Then there’s (my favorite character) Maeve who we didn’t get to see in this episode besides the last one minute, which shows her still stuck on the island, this time in a Nazi overran Italy. From the trailers we know that she is hired to track down Dolores, so how does she get off the island? Is it that Bernard finally does get there and set her free? Does Serac himself seek her out?

Do you watch Watchworld ? What are some of your theories? Was there something you noticed that I missed? Let’s talk WestWorld.

#hbo #television #tvshows #westworld