Movie Reviews: West World Season 2

Westworld is an American science fiction Western television series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Produced by HBO, it is based on the 1973 film of the same name (written and directed by Michael Crichton) and, to a lesser extent, the film’s 1976 sequel Futureworld. The story takes place in Westworld, a fictional, technologically advanced Wild-West-themed amusement park populated by android “hosts”. The park caters to high-paying “guests” who may indulge their wildest fantasies within the park without fear of retaliation from the hosts, who are prevented by their programming from harming humans.

Around 2058, Delos Inc. operates one of several themed parks, including the American Old West-themed Westworld. Each environment populated by “hosts”, androids indistinguishable from humans programmed to fulfill the guests’ every desire, including violent and sexual ends, but unable to harm the guests. The operators create narratives for these hosts to repeat each day while interacting with guests, but wiping their memories each cycle.

In the first season, Dr. Robert Ford, who had developed the host technology along with Arnold Weber, implements a new “Reverie” update that causes some hosts, including Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay, to gain sentience. As Delos programming lead Bernard Lowe and executive board director Charlotte Hale try to debug the problem, the “Man in Black”, William Delos tries to find “the maze” he believes Dr. Ford left for him. Bernard discovers he himself is a host-based Arnold, killed in an earlier attempt to protect the hosts of Westworld, whom they both wanted to see become sentient, from being abused by Delos. The season ends as Dr. Ford announces a new story just as Dolores kills him.

Dolores’ revolution continues in the second season as she and other enlightened hosts massacre other human guests and Delos employees stranded in the park. Dolores takes an exceedingly confused Bernard to locate the Forge, a databank where Delos had secretly been recording all behavior from human guests to create algorithms for them as an attempt towards human immortality. Maeve seeks out her “daughter” despite knowing she is a host, and helps her and several other hosts to escape to the Sublime, a virtual space that humans cannot access. As Delos forces secure the park, Bernard creates a Charlotte-host for Dolores, who subsequently is able to evacuate from the park with the cores of several other hosts, including Bernard’s. William struggles with his human identity after killing his daughter Emily, unsure if she was part of Dr. Ford’s challenge.

Within the third season, Dolores has recreated her host body and others, including Bernard’s. She seeks out information on Rehoboam, a strategic planning artificial intelligence system created by Incite, Inc., which she plans to use against humans. Bernard, whose is still believed human to the rest of the world, is blamed for the Westworld massacre, and he takes on a new identity while trying to fight Dolores.