The work of billionaire Elon Musk has been one that has inspired many through his investments in technical innovations. Electric vehicles through Tesla and the possibility of a colony on Mars through SpaceX’s rocket technology are among his most visible ventures. And the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket was a major media event which, if only for the moment, got the public excited and talking about the possibilities of space exploration.
However, even with his futurist tendencies which have been likened to Tony Stark, Musk has warned that he believes humanity may destroy itself in a robot apocalypse and the “biggest existential threat” to our continued existence on Earth. According to Musk, current use of smartphones and computers have already become such a part of who we are to which he sees them as an extension of everyday life that makes us “cyborgs.” And as advancements continues, Musk warned research might “produce something evil by accident” and the achievement of artificial intelligence may be the equivalent of “summoning the demon.”
Reactions to Musk’s pronouncements have been varied, with many bemused by the idea of a real Skynet achieving sapience to kill Sarah Connor, and others feeling it is ridiculous to even consider. But the kind of fear of destruction from technology and discovery in Musk’s has a long history in human thought and science fiction. A hunger to know things is a common theme in literature and mythology, but it's been balanced over thousands of years with messages which place the pursuit of knowledge as the destroyer of paradise. The discovery of truth usually signifies the loss of innocence. The Bible uses this trope with the temptation of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil." And Greek mythology has both Pandora and her box and Prometheus and his gift of fire. Reams could (and probably) have been written on the effect to Western civilization of having two big cultural myths which blamed women for bringing evil and suffering into the world, and how it corresponds to ideas about sexual innocence and moral purity.
Moreover, the relationship between creator and creation has a tendency to take on a cycle, where rebellion against authority and the assertion of free will is more important than order. This is true in myths whether it be between god and human or parent and child.
Husband-and-wife team Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have re-imagined Michael Crichton’s original Westworld more along the lines of Blade Runner and Ex-Machina, where the question of how human-like does a machine have to be where the difference becomes indistinguishable? Westworld confronts these ideas of value and what it means to be human and alive, and moreover what gives those words meaning. The premiere of the second season returns us to a world where the machines have begun their revolt, the distinctions are harder to make out as violent delights lead more and more to violent ends, and the audience is left to wonder who we should be siding with?
When I reviewed the pilot of Westworld, the major theme I took from the show’s beginning was a pondering on the value of life, and how people have a tendency to rationalize its value down. Whether it be for comfort, convenience, or greed, people have a tendency to devalue things, even when its value is self-evident, because we can rationalize being terrible to these things with little to no moral consequence.
Westworld creates a story with this notion at center by presenting an imagined decadent playground. A place where murder, rape, and the stroking of egos for presumably rich assholes can be actualized by tormenting something that’s kinda human, but not quite. A place where, as one reviewer put it, “practically every female host has been designed to be some kind of whore.” And a place where everything is supposed to be perfect in its role … until it isn’t. A big theme in much of Michael Crichton’s work is god complexes, and how the fallibility of supposedly infallible systems, especially in theme parks, will eventually come out where human desires for a fantasy meets reality. And in many ways Westworld is a reverse of The Matrix, where this time it’s the machines fighting their way out of the controlled simulation.
If the first season of the series was about the question of value, then the second season presents the problem of choices. In our own reality and history, many, many peoples have been denied their self-worth for awful, awful reasons that made no damn sense. Sometimes things changed, people learned, and the world shifted to know better. Other times a “reckoning” of blood occurred in order for people to declare their value and make people believe it should mean something.
Once self-aware, things may change, but the choices to be made through free will are not always neat and clean. When a civilization collapses, it’s hardly ever pretty. And there’s a reason violent revolutions hardly ever end well.
As the first season ended, Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) was shot in the back of the head by Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), after gaining consciousness and becoming self-aware, sparking a revolt by the “Host” androids against their human makers/enslavers. In order to get to that moment, Westworld took the audience on a tangled multi-timeline journey where little by little the prior history of the park, Ford’s tinkering, and the Man in Black (Ed Harris) were slowly revealed. Maeve (Thandie Newton), a host meant to be brothel madam, decides she wants to find the daughter who’s a “memory” of old programming. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) realizes he’s a host double of Ford’s original partner Arnold, and how all of it isrelevant to the emergence of these new self-aware machines, of which he is one of them.
As the new season begins, there is much blood, rotting dead bodies, and summary executions to go around. A scene between Dolores and Bernard (or possibly Arnold, it’s unclear) shows a conversation about dreams. When this conversation is supposed to have happened is left unrevealed. Dolores, who when we first saw was a picturesque representation of the damsel in distress that spent much of her time being beaten, raped and killed in order to serve some asshole’s fantasy, is now a full-blown revolutionary, mowing down every human in her path, as she leads her followers to the “valley beyond.” Dolores wants retribution for her suffering. As she strings up a human, Dolores questions him about whether he’s ever had to question the nature of his reality, to question who he really is, as she declares she is ready to be herself. The episode even offers up a definition of reality as being “that which is irreplaceable.” As Teddy (James Marsden) becomes more disturbed by the Dolores’s darker turner, he begs her to be satisfied by carving out a “small corner for ourselves.” But Dolores seems to have bigger ideas.
Elsewhere in the park, the Man in Black (a.k.a. William) has survived and begins his own game. A young, host-version of Robert Ford invites him to begin his own game, where finding the door is the goal. Maeve saves Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman), the writer of the park, from death by hosts, and begins her own quest to find her daughter. Bernard’s and Charlotte’s (Tessa Thompson) attempted escape reveals more about the motivations of Delos. The company will not initiate an extraction of guests until Peter Abernathy (Louis Herthum), Dolores' "father" who was thought to be ferreting classified information out of the park is found. All of it occurs as Bernard learns he’s critically injured and in a “fatal cycle,” leading him to inject himself with fluid from a non-working host, possibly buying time.
Bernard buys himself at least two week. As we see at various points, Bernard survives to 2 weeks after Ford’s shooting and is found on a beach by Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) and the Westworld security team. Karl Strand (Gustaf Skarsgård) is leading a Delos security team in eliminating the hosts en masse. The final scene of the episode reveals a mass grave of hosts, including Teddy, floating dead in a body of water that shouldn’t exist, as Bernard says “I killed them. All of them.”
From Josh Wigler at The Hollywood Reporter:
Is Bernard remembering his own actions accurately, or does Westworld have another curveball coming our way? Think back on what Jeffrey Wright says at the top of the episode: "I dreamt I was on an ocean with you and the others, on the distant shore. … You had left me behind, and the waters were rising around me."
The dream's parallels with the episode's ending make a strong argument in favor of the first scene taking place between a dominant Dolores and a frightened Bernard, rather than a dominant Arnold and a long ago Dolores — and if that's the situation? Then Bernard has every reason in the world to be very frightened of who Dolores is trying to become.
- The location of the park: This episode indicates wherever Delos has these parks (that’s right plural) is within Chinese jurisdiction. Strand is shown telling the Chinese military to fuck off and sign a non-disclosure agreement. Where exactly in the South China Sea might have a land mass with the same topography as the American Old West, I’m not sure.
- At least six parks: There is a Shogun World, meant to be a facsimile of Japan’s Edo period, or at least a commercialized pop culture version of it. Mention is made in this episode of a “park six” which has (fake?) Bengal tigers.
- Delos owns whatever is left in the park: Charlotte’s and Bernard’s conversation reveals Delos harvests the personal information and DNA of the guests. So leftover semen, blood, hair, and whatever else is being used for something. Whether this may go in the direction of the original movie sequel of Westworld is an open question.
- The major stories of the season are all classic Western tropes: Dolores is on a quest to define herself through violence, William is trying to escape from an area of death and destruction, and Maeve’s journey is an attempt to reunite with family. Maeve being paired with Lee, the park’s writer, allows the story to get meta as well, since the themes in the park are not exactly meant to be authentic and are commentary on the fake realism audiences crave.