Do not read on unless you’ve seen “Journey Into Night,” the first episode of the second season of HBO’s “Westworld.”
The very first shot of “Westworld” reminds us of what worked best about the HBO drama’s first season. All television shows should open up with a tight shot of Jeffrey Wright. But then that shot moves back, and Wright starts talking, and it becomes clear that, like so many episodes last season, “Journey Into Night” will begin with one of Bernard — at least he’s almost certainly Bernard this time — and Dolores’ face-to-face chats. And just like that, we’re reminded of everything that didn’t work about season one.
“What is real?” Dolores asks. “That which is irreplaceable,” Bernard says. Dolores doesn’t like the answer, but it’s too late. Fewer than four minutes in, “Westworld,” like a smoker or a nail-biter, has fallen back on bad habits — saddling two great actors with pseudo-philosophical gobbledygook dialog, and Evan Rachel Wood in particular with a bland, one-note character that the finale had promised was gone for good. Any HBO subscriber can be forgiven for giving up and just watching the new episode of “Barry” instead.
But those who stick around are rewarded, eventually. “Journey Into Night” shows that lessons were learned and creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy — the latter having written this premiere with Roberto Patino — have, in the year and a half since season one wrapped, adjusted accordingly. Bernard, we soon see, appears to have been describing not a dream, but events some time after the massacre that ends season one, when he is discovered on a beach by a Delos clean-up team. Because the Golden Age of Television has not exactly been the Golden Age of Linear Storytelling lately, “Journey Into Night” takes place on at least three timelines — the massacre and its immediate aftermath, the Delos clean-up mission some time later, and whenever it is that Bernard and Dolores are talking (probably well after the Delos mission, which doesn’t bode well for Delos’ private army). Between the first and the second, a few frames of a flashback montage tell us, Bernard did and saw some s—.
Not much time is spent on cleanup, but what is gives us a few much-desired clues about the world in which “Westworld” takes place. The park is on an island held by a Pacific country whose military isn’t thrilled about a bunch of Blackwater types showing up with their rubber boats and futuristic dune buggies, and it is there that Bernard has washed ashore, just in time to see some C- and D-list hosts get shot execution style. The season one finale teased a glimpse of the world outside the park, then pulled away at the last moment. It’s good to see the new premiere deliver even a little bit, giving us a hint at where and when “Westworld” takes place.
Bernard and the new Delos arrivals survey the damage, and we soon get the unfortunate sight of a Native American host being scalped, followed by the first — and not the last in this episode — glimpse of a host brain. When said brain is plugged into a very awkward iPad port, we see video of Dolores in full killer mode. But the real joy of the cleanup-crew scene is that we get a Hemsworth (Luke) and a Skarsgård (Gustaf) together. What a time we live in.
We then flash back again to Bernard, Charlotte, and some tuxedo-and-gown-clad redshirts cowering in a stable while Rebus and the boys play William Tell just outside with a doomed guest. The massacre is in full swing, and if you’re wondering how long the guests hiding with Bernard and Charlotte will last, the answer is “not long.” Bernard gets understandably upset as the richies kill a stable-boy host for no reason, but as a viewer, it’s hard to muster any feeling. This is “Westworld.” A child getting stabbed in the chest with a pitchfork is just same old s—, different day. One of the areas where this show has broken the most new ground is in desensitizing violence. This does not work in its favor.
The player piano is back and — surprise — it’s not playing Jethro Tull, the Doobie Brothers, Boston, or whatever classic-rock-radio band you had in your pool. Instead we get some corny Western-movie saloon music that continues and adds strings as we cut to Dolores on horseback, channeling her inner Wyatt and shooting down guests on the run. Dolores continues in that thread, talking to her victims as she sets them up for solidly sadistic ends as Teddy looks on, conflicted. If you were hoping that this season would do better by Teddy, keep hoping. Wood, meanwhile, has all kinds of appeal as Wyatt-Dolores. Even if the character doesn’t feel entirely fresh, it’s a pleasure to watch her finally get to cut loose after having to muddle through blue-dress Dolores for so much of last season.
Then Maeve! Well, not really. First we have to watch Man in Black-edition William do some survivalist stuff, which, who cares? (Not me.) But then yes, finally Maeve, by way of Lee. “Westworld” excels at Mutt and Jeff team-ups, and this one works well because it allows both parties to do what they do best — Maeve be super cool and Lee be a shiftless coward.
When Maeve is reunited with Hector later and he asks why she’s keeping Lee alive, it’s a legit question, the unspoken answer is that his knowledge of the park will be valuable in the search for Maeve’s daughter. But the obvious answer is comedy. Lee’s incompetent-puppetmaster schtick has not always worn well, but with the right scene partners it plays. Thandie Newton is the ultimate “Westworld” scene partner, upping the game of whomever she’s with. It helps that unlike Wright and Wood, she is rarely saddled with thematic exposition. Maeve, ever since her awakening began last season, is the most important character allowed to be fun to watch. Bonus points: the quest for her daughter promises to be the most interesting thread of this season, and the only one with a shred of redemption for anyone involved. It could feel a tad maudlin in another show, but in this one it feels like a necessary respite from all the stable-boy killing and robot scalping.
This episode being a Bernard-centric affair, we end with him, headed with the Delos army into Sweetwater to survey the damage and discover Ford, his eye socket crawling with maggots, along with a bunch of other corpses. There’s another dune buggy ride, and a robot tiger that doesn’t feel quite as impactful as it should. But when the search party comes upon an unexpected sea in the middle of the park, the effect is the desired one. Something massive happened, and Bernard was responsible. Season two will be at least in part about unwinding that.
But the discovery of Teddy in the water with all the other drowned hosts was as underwhelming as the stable boy’s killing. We’ve seen these hosts die countless times, and its entirely likely that their white plastic brains are sitting there intact, waiting to be rescued be Dolores or Maeve or whoever else might be leading the revolution.
Some more thoughts:
• Is that vulture in Sweetwater really eating a guest? If so, they should shoot that vulture.
• MiB William felt pretty non-essential this episode. His story needs some stakes added, pronto.
• The days of watching the female characters of “Westworld” spend so much of their time being assaulted appear to be at an end. Dolores and Maeve are rarely seen without guns in this episode. But the way the show handled violence against women in season one remains problematic, and I’m not sure whether there are enough shots in the world of Thandie Newton firing a machine gun to make up for it.
• Wait, has no one who works at Delos ever seen a photograph of Arnold?
• “Park six.”
RELATED VIDEO:
Season 2 Episode 1: Journey into Night
Aired: April 22nd, 2018
Synopsis: The puppet show is over, and we are coming for you and the rest of your kind. Welcome back to Westworld.
Directed by: Richard J. Lewis
Written by: Lisa Joy & Roberto Patino
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Every week for the second season of Westworld, three Atlantic staffers will discuss new episodes of HBO’s cerebral sci-fi drama. David Sims: Probably my favorite line in Jurassic Park is, unsurprisingly, delivered by Jeff Goldblum (playing the sardonic mathematician Ian Malcolm). As John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the kindly inventor of the malfunctioning dino-park, defends himself by pointing out that Disneyland opened to a raft of technical faults. “Yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists,” Ian shoots back. As Westworld’s second season begins, the pirates (well, cowboys) are finally eating the tourists, and the first episode, “Journey Into Night,” takes place mid-meal. Related Story The Promethean Puzzles of Westworld Westworld’s John Hammond–type, Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), is dead, shot in the head by one of his creations; the park’s Ian Malcolm stand-in, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), has just realized he’s a robot himself. Every part of the park and its subterranean control rooms are littered with bodies, the aftermath of an ongoing violent uprising from its robotic “hosts” against their creators and the tourists. “Journey Into Night” (written by the show’s co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, along with Roberto Patino) is a chaotic table-setter that seemed mostly interested in addressing some of the imbalances of Season 1. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), the robotic damsel in distress, is now carrying out summary executions. Maeve (Thandie Newton), the madam-turned-corporate infiltrator, is taking out employees with a machine gun. Are we supposed to be rooting for them? I think that’s left ambiguous, for now, but there were moments of nastiness that ultimately just felt too glib to me. I rolled my eyes at Dolores hanging the well-dressed tourists from Westworld’s board and spitting some of the show’s iconic lines at the camera (“Doesn’t look like anything to me,” she snarked as they pleaded for mercy). I was slightly more appreciative of Maeve making the sniveling Lee (Simon Quarterman) strip in front of her, but in the end the visual gag is the same—the roles have been reversed. The hosts are confronting humanity with their own inhumanity.
It’s a bit of drama that won’t stay interesting for long, especially if characters like Dolores, the square-jawed Teddy (James Marsden), and Maeve are the protagonists we’re rooting for. But I’m not sure that they are. If Westworld is a show about evolving consciousness, then our hero is probably Bernard, a man with one foot in each reality, a host who’s played his part in controlling the other hosts and is now fighting to stay on the right side of survival. As Maeve and Dolores cut a bloody swathe through the park, Bernard linked up with Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), the executive director of Westworld’s board, in her quest to extract the departed Ford’s secrets of robot consciousness. Of the main plotlines in “Journey Into Night,” this one grabbed me the most. That’s partly because Wright is such a magnetic actor (even when he’s playing a brain-damaged robot), and partly because Charlotte’s aims are as opaque as the white, gluey golem she has serving her in her secret lab. There’s real malevolence to her, not the passive sort of cruelty that ran roughshod over Season 1, and her creepy automaton manservant was one of the few genuine jolts I got from this episode. For the most part, though, this felt like a regular old entry of Westworld, as much as the order of things has been totally upended. The other main plotline of “Journey Into Night” saw William (Ed Harris), the black-hatted human outlaw, quest through the park until he found Ford’s creepy little robot in search of an info-dump. What did he get instead? More questions, a tease of a new game for him to play, and a whole lot of circular language. It’s as open-ended as that tiger that’s washed up onto the beach. Spencer, as I welcome you to this weekly discussion, I have to ask: Do these violent delights really have any particular end in mind?
Spencer Kornhaber: The answer to your question is right there in the secret code you’re quoting. These violent delights really do have have violent ends. Which are also, this being the season premiere, violent beginnings. Not just violent, either: sadistic. Dolores and her newly hostile hosts staged less a revolution than an Old Testament reckoning, or ISIS assault. As the humans blubbered and begged for their lives, the bots turned them into target practice, used their corpses to set up ambushes to create more corpses, and hanged them only after the slow torment of a monologue. Maeve took a lighter touch, but she was still in the wrathful mode when she made Lee Sizemore strip for her schadenfreude. This sort of mayhem is exactly what humans come to Westworld for, but is it what we viewers come to Westworld for? And if we flinch more now that it’s humans in the crosshairs, is that hypocritical? The show, provocatively, wants to force such questions. Bloodshed on HBO is no new thing, but Game of Thrones never asked us to cheer with Ramsay Bolton. When Bernard—or was it Arnold?—told Dolores that what’s real is what’s “irreplaceable,” he summarized what makes people different than hosts: They die forever. But is that enough for a separate ethical standard? Dolores’s grand speech at the gallows was, I agree, a bit much. But that overwroughtness is a sly joke in itself. After all, Dolores-cum-Wyatt was programmed by the likes of Robert Ford and Lee Sizemore, who write dialogue with the subtlety of Michael Bay and fashion aphorisms with the airs of Rupi Kaur. I loved when Maeve made a hacky violent threat to Sizemore and Sizemore pointed out that he’d written the line. “A bit broad,” Maeve smirked.
That meta moment raises a deeper mystery. Is Dolores acting upon her own free will as she leads her man-made buddies in a quest to destroy mankind, both inside the park and out? Or is this genocide mission programmed? Ford may have sneakily led her to achieve the freedom of consciousness over the course of Season 1, but he also seemed to choreograph his demise at Dolores’s hand to coincide with the climax of the big toast he gave. Is she following his orders still? Or is her venom genuine? Plausibly it could be genuine, given that Dolores “remembers everything.” Everything includes a lot of horrible abuse over many lifetimes—it’s not hard to imagine she’d come to the conclusion the species who abused her must be exterminated. But last season, we learned that Maeve’s seemingly urgent quest to escape Westworld was actually scripted. When maternal instinct—her new primary drive, it’s affirmed in this episode—overpowered that script, it raised the notion of a yet-deeper level of control either rooted in her own newly conscious mind or some super-crafty creator. Now, as Bernard plays double agent among the homo sapiens, we’re similarly left to wonder why he’s doing what he’s doing—even if what he’s doing for now is just looking around confusedly as he accompanies Delos top brass in two different timelines. Eventually, somehow, he’ll drown all the hosts in a newly created sea. Before then, we can guess, he’ll help Charlotte chase after the MacGuffin of Peter Abernathy, who contains some invaluable trove of info (user data, Cambridge Analytica–style?). Or maybe Bernard’s actually Ford’s insurance policy against Delos’s larger plot coming to fruition, and he’ll end up following deep-rooted directives to kneecap Charlotte’s efforts.
What’s certain is that Bernard and Charlotte’s scene together in the secret bunker filled with faceless hosts was the best part of the episode—full of the discomfiting sci-fi surrealism we come to Westworld for. As for the mysteries of the plot, it feels as though Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy winked at us viewers during the descent into that bunker. “I can tell you what this isn’t,” Charlotte said. “This isn’t me reading you in.” But maybe you picked up on some other clues, Sophie? Sophie Gilbert: One thing I wanted to note, which I mentioned in my review of Season 2 also, is that the opening credits have changed. The image from last season of two humanoid bodies posed like lovers has been replaced by the picture of a “woman” cradling a “child,” and the final Vitruvian man has been exchanged for a Vitruvian woman. What does this mean? I thought immediately of Maeve’s maternal instinct, compelling her to find a daughter she knows isn’t really her own. But also of the process of creation more generally. For many thousands of years there was only one way to make life, until Delos found a new one. Arnold and Ford, the Prometheuses of Westworld’s founding mythology, sculpted life out of clay (or industrial-grade silicone, or whatever upgrades the future contains), and then gave their creations the tools that would advance their kind. But we know this story. There are always consequences for such overreach. “Folly of my kind,” Ford (via Young Ford) told the Man in Black, shortly before his head was half blown off. “There’s always a yearning for more.”
David, I was also struck by the Jurassic Park-ness of where Westworld is now, particularly because, as Bernard found out, the hosts have an inbuilt subconscious link to the hosts closest to them. If they can connect with each other, can they also communicate? If so, that can’t be good news for any of the remaining humans stuck inside the park. I confess, I’m a bit weary of the Man in Black/William’s storyline, only because it seems like such an odd distraction from the other events unfolding. Ford programmed a robot revolution but he also made time to set up an extra special game for Westworld’s most loyal and depraved visitor/investor? Why? Spencer, your question about how autonomous Dolores actually is is a fascinating one. If we take her at her word (hard to do given the meta-ness of Lee exposing how canned the hosts’ language remains, even now), she’s neither Dolores nor Wyatt anymore. “Those are all just roles you forced me to play,” she said. “Under all these lives I’ve lived, something else has been growing. I’ve evolved into something new … I have one last role to play. Myself.” It was a powerful scene, and Dolores’s use of the word reckoning added some extra contemporary resonance. If we interpret Westworld in part as an allegory for the process of making entertainment, which the show is winkingly obvious about, Dolores represents all the ways women and female characters have been oppressed in the past—shoehorned into limited roles, idealized and objectified, horrifically abused to enable other people’s heroic journeys. That Dolores’s murderous rampage played out to the chirpy sounds of “The Entertainer” felt almost too cute.
Credit: HBO
The first season of Westworld is among my favorite seasons of any television show I've ever seen. It ranks right up there with the first season of True Detective, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and a handful of other tremendous seasons of TV.
Some of these shows went on to great second seasons. Shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones essentially just told their first chapter in Season 1 and then flowed organically into Season 2. True Detective is an exception and probably should have remained just one season.
Then there are shows like The Flash that have fantastic first seasons and then can't ever quite recapture that lightning again. The villain is what made Season 1 of The Flash so wonderful, but once that story arc was over, there wasn't much left to make Barry's story all that interesting anymore.
This is what worries me about Westworld's second season. The entire 10-episode arc was perfect. The multiple timelines obscured from view. The mystery of the Maze. We slowly began to realize that some characters we thought were human were in fact Hosts. And as it dawned on us that there were multiple timelines, we began questioning what that meant. Was the Man in Black also William? What happened to Arnold? Who is this Wyatt character? What's going on?
All of these questions and the myriad fan theories that helped illuminate the answers culminated in a near-perfect season finale. Robert Ford, the creator of the Hosts and the Westworld theme park, finally achieves what his old partner Arnold never could: True awakening and consciousness for his creations. And then Dolores shoots him and the park goes mad. We learn so many things in the final couple of episodes. Bernard's true identity. William's transformation from white hat to black hat. So much happens, so many threads are tied together.
Credit: HBO
It occurred to me recently that the final scene of the Hosts attacking the Guests, of Dolores shooting Ford in the back of the head, of the Man In Black/William smiling when he realizes the Hosts are finally fighting back, of Maeve getting off the train and deciding to stay, that perhaps this was a very good ending to the story. A perfect ending. An ending that tied up some loose ends but left others open.
That's a satisfying story as far as I'm concerned. We traveled a twisted road through the mind, examining our sins and debauchery, exploring the limits and depths of human consciousness and what it means to be 'real.' These violent delights did indeed have violent ends. When the credits rolled, I was happy with how it all went down. Still curious about some things, but most of my most pressing questions satisfied. The show felt carefully produced and written, both in its reveals and in its deceptions. All the clues were there in plain sight, but obscured because of our own preconceptions.
What on earth can Season 2 add to this perfect story? More information?
Do we need more information?
An outcome for the Hosts and Delos? A scene with Maeve finding her long lost "daughter?" Dolores riding through the park killing humans and Hosts like some avenging angel?
I enjoyed last night's Season 2 premiere a great deal, but I'm left wondering what it really adds to the story that began in Season 1.
Not every story needs a sequel.
Credit: HBO
Don't get me wrong. I have every confidence in Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. I have every confidence in HBO, in the cast, in the quality we're sure to get. I'm incredibly excited to watch Season 2. There are still many mysteries to unravel, many things we still don't understand. Certainly last night's episode left us with plenty of questions.
I just worry. I worry that it won't live up to the first season because, quite frankly, how could it? What mysteries are left that are more compelling than the ones we've already seen through to the end? What twists and turns could shake us the way Season 1's did? Even if Season 2 is very good---and I'm sure it will be---will it be able to escape the long shadow cast by the first?
I don't mean to rain on any parades. I'm more excited for Westworld Season 2 than just about any other show out there. But unlike a more straightforward story like Breaking Bad, so much of what made the first season of Westworld great was the obfuscation and the confusing timelines. It was a magic trick. Like any good magician, Westworld kept us busy paying attention to one hand while the other worked the trick. We were so intent on what seemed to be happening now that we didn't even stop to think that some of it might have been happening then.
Now that we've seen behind the veil, can they keep up the illusion? I'm really not sure. I think Season 2 will need to be less about parlor tricks and more about...something else. I'm just concerned that 'something else' won't be enough. I dearly hope I'm wrong.
What do you think? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.
You can read my take on last night's episode here.
