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Never forget, the very existence of the theme parks in "Westworld" is an act of vexation against the protest of a black man. Arnold (Jeffrey Wright), the co-creator of the Android hosts, took his own life next to the first generation of his creations to prove how serious he was in his insistence that the park never opens.
He believed that the potential for evolution of his creation and to come to knowledge meant that he would condemn them not only to a lifetime of bondage, but to infinite lives. Burning all that was not enough; Arnold throwing himself on the pyre – a figurative self-immolation to send a message.
The problem with kamikaze acts is that those who commit them do not see if their mission succeeds. Often they do not do it, at least not in the immediate future. In "Westworld", the park is open anyway, more amazing and more cruel than before – and Arnold's partner, Ford (Anthony Hopkins), has simply created a doppelganger of his missing partner.
Bernard is smart and loyal, at fault – kill on command, die cleanly and come back confused, scared and still unable to escape a creator who has survived the use of a conscience. Bernard, like Arnold, has the synthetic soul of a benevolent father who has imagined a splendid paradise but who has left his greatest work in the hands of a man eager to play first. the emperor in the shadows, and later, a god.
"Westworld" is a series that lends itself to as many interpretations as the viewer, and like the park itself, the hidden inspirations and veiled meaning in its intrigues, clues and Easter eggs hide the brush of meadows. . In its second season of ten episodes and the first, the creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have established that we must not trust what we see.
Now, as this second season of "Westworld" draws to its conclusion on Sunday at 9 pm. on HBO, a new recurring phrase joins the potpourri of "Is this real?" and "Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?" and the question of who really owns this artificial world. And that is the one that many viewers can relate to, especially now: "This world is wrong".
If the first season is a braided tale that will ultimately prove to be the prospect of the sweet-eyed Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) emerging in consciousness, as well as the slow dawn of the awakened mind and the l & # 39; Maeve's exacerbated ego (Thandie Newton), these second-year episodes have brought us to new parts of the map that are both predictably and imaginatively familiar.
Humans, in the end, want to capture immortality. Delos Incorporated has extracted data from the minds of its wealthy clients, sealing memories and identities in a massive backup storage facility known by several names: Forge, Glory, the Valley Beyond.
It turns out that the park is a gigantic data mining operation operating without obtaining the consent of its customers. Now, why does this ring a bell?
The hosts under Dolores' leadership believe that they are made to conquer this valley. Maeve, in her own journey, exercises a power that she realizes is her birthright, and control on a massive scale, spreading the gospel of choice to those chosen to accept such a concept.
What begins as a series that questions the nature of humanity, the fragility of memory, and the tenuous, malleable nature of reality has become a definite commentary on a rekindled interpretation of Manifest Destiny and a question of ownership. What is at stake here is not the territory or the material resources, but the very soul of the place, of Westworld and the other parks that were upset by the wake-up call of mass of Ford which provoked the rebellion of the hosts.
But that can apply to us too.
The creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan draw on countless film and literary resources to create each episode of the series, but one element hard to ignore this season are the choices of producers and writers whose animators are allowed to operate with Open eyes. .
Exercising one's free will, which Ford falsely contests Bernard is a mistake, has advantages and consequences.
Maeve, the mother who hangs so fiercely at the memories of a girl from an earlier life – a person programmed into her memory by a human – that she risks death to return to her. in a way, evolves itself into a deity.
Dolores, the hand of Ford's sword of wrath, is seeking a vengeful refund for the abuses visited on all the hosts. Seeing all that Dolores endured from William (Jimmi Simpson), whose mind shriveled up to become the Man in Black (Ed Harris), part of Dolores praised us, tearing the meadow on horseback, shooting down the humans.
The surprise, and welcome, is to see how free will took root in Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), the head of the ghost nation whose painted face strikes terror in the hearts of border dwellers, cowboys and visitors .
From the beginning of the series, the public is conditioned to see the riders of the ghost nation as joyful nightmares that descend on travelers who are not careful because it is the story of a culture conditioned to childhood to see well the Native Americans.
But remember that from the beginning of the series, one of the Native American children wears a doll that skips the memory of Maeve; it is an effigy of the assorted workmen who seem to carry the hosts to serve and replace. The first surviving occupants of this world remember the truth, remember the story, despite many efforts to crush their code. But because they are what they are, hosts and visitors ignore their warning.
And Ake's role was largely a non-talk, except for a rollback to a meeting with young William and his brother-in-law Churlish Logan (Ben Barnes). This too plays on the stereotype. But in the 18th episode of "Westworld", "Kiksuya", we see the truth of Ake: that he loved, that he had a family, that these real things were removed to him with a slice of that spark that we would otherwise refer to as his humanity.
America's history books have burst at their thorns with stories of families forced apart to serve the goals of the dominant culture. It's happening right now. These episodes were written and produced several months ago. Yet our short memories confirm the coincidental but poignant relevance of these characters' stories, whether it's Maeve's maternal horror and the bloody sorrow of seeing her granddaughter ripped off and taken away by a stranger or to watch an engineer explain that Ford wanted strong but silent type, something brutal, dehumanized, "as she is about to reprogram Ake." They probably want the guests to feel better when they kick her ass, "she says.
As the world goes on, so does "Westworld": a part of the story, presumed extinct, remains nevertheless, throbbing under the surface and emerging despite the desires of powerful potential masters. Two women, a black man and a Native American hold the keys to the destiny of this place at the end. Because they know, in their bones, that something is wrong, that a better place is waiting, but for what purpose they can not say it.
It may be, of course, that the cultural identities of these characters matter little to most viewers, but nothing we see in "Westworld" is aimless. That includes these signifiers, and the bold notion that the drama is galloping toward the finale of Sunday's season, Dolores is just as bad as the Man in Black, and for similar reasons.
The mysterious symbol of Arnold, the framework of the labyrinth to build an evolving consciousness, appears throughout the series; now we know why. And yet, the labyrinth is misinterpreted, ignored. The Man in Black murders again and again hosts to go to his center, even if it is repeated to him again and again that it is not for him; Dolores, one of the women for whom she was created, misinterprets her message to assume something that appears to divine right, believing that she can choose who deserves to enter the paradise and that does not do it.
Dolores and The Man in Black are both the source code for all that is wrong. the first is so driven in her aims that she is torturing all that is good and kind in the only connection with her humanity, Teddy (James Marsden). The man in black, meanwhile, is so convinced of the singular importance of his own experience that he can not tell the difference between the narrative and what is important, which is real : her daughter. The cost, of course, only happens to be everything.
(It is difficult to identify the hidden intention of Joy and Nolan in the construction of Tessa Thompson's character, Charlotte Hale, another black woman, but who holds the highest administrative power in the administrative offices of the park she may be just the version of an Omarosa from this show.)
Regardless of the outcome of Sunday 's convergence, when we finally see why the valley has been flooded and find out who survives, and how, that' s the part of "Westworld" that remains the most haunting, this idea of ". to be so caught up in a dominant story of conquest and conquest that we forget the fact that peculiar suffering is selfish and distracts our attention from the greatest threat.
"It's not about you," Ford, resurrected in the machine, tells Bernard when he tries to fight his orders. "There is the origin of an entire species to consider."
The survival of one, too. We can each deserve to choose our own destiny, but our culture has a surprising inability to recognize that individual concerns are closely related to those of the whole. The question is whether the public who receives the drama's warning message in its elegant and oddly designed setting can recognize it for what it is. But then, it 's not as if many of us choose to analyze our own timelines with such context. In fact, I would bet that for most, this aspect of the "Westworld" scenario looks like nothing at all. This leaves you feeling that it is wrong in this world.
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