Well, that was a surprisingly strong ending. I think I’ve been trained to expect disappointment from shows where a mystery is the driving force, but I feel like they wrapped up most of the lose ends really well.
The show does highlight the problem with having a mystery driven show actually deliver answers placed next to message boards and Reddit. I don’t think you can make a show that resolves a mystery and doesn’t get spoiled by the hivemind. That being said, I much prefer this to the way things were handled in Lost or BSG.
I still think that just about every scene with the techs was preposterous. I was holding out hope that the series of poor decisions to go along with Maeve had a better explanation. Also the actress who played Charlotte seemed unusually wooden.
Overall it was a solid season, and I’m on board for more in…2018…
I think people who treat every show as a who-done-it get very disappointed. It’s about the ride man. The ending was surprising but the pieces were there so it wasn’t out of left-field. Go back to early episode discussions, we were talking about consciousness, freedom, garden of eden, all those things already.
I do have a random question my friend can’t figure out, who was Ford printing when Theresa gets grassed after all?
Oh one final thing. The asshole writer? His name was Lee Sizemore.
Iess iz more. Quite the pun huh? But hey in the last scene he SHUTS OFF THE POWER. He was supposed to help smuggle a bot out but nope. This presumably helps the robot rebellion (the control center is shut out). So… Ford programmed him to do it.
Right, I’m asking questions about what the Wyatt-following hosts believe is going on at that point. In their minds, how are they following someone who (so far as we can tell) isn’t around and doesn’t even know they’re Wyatt? In other words, what’s the fiction of the narrative?
Ford is supposed to be a perfectionist about his narratives; too bad his writers’ aren’t up to their creation’s standards.
I’ll have more to say, but for now I’m content enough to realize I predicted the finale after episode 4 (and that’s after the show convinced me it took a completely different path with the following episodes, turns out it was only a very convoluted path leading to the same place). And it’s an incredibly accurate one too: http://loopingworld.com/2016/10/25/this-is-how-westworld-ends/
And because I knew people would suspect I would tamper the blog, since it’s under my own control, I also posted copies on other networks :)
Unfortunately, Westworld is the latest victim of my inability to maintain interest in a ongoing series for more than a few episodes. I bailed out several weeks back but I’m still interested in finding out what happened in summary form, so thanks for all the impressions. Good reading.
I’m not happy because in the end they deliberately did not show the killing.
And that means they want the MiB to survive (obviously), but they also made Charlotte survive, and I despise that character so much that it actually ruins the show for me. i really hoped we were done with her.
Agreed. The dialog, personality, and acting for that character were SO bad. I just have assumed they did that on purpose for some unknown reason. I can’t figure out why she and that British narrative-writing twat were included in the plot.
I instead like a lot that in the end they underlined a sort of co-dependence between Arnold and Ford, instead of building another petty, out-of-character rivalry and competition between the two.
Arnold was the genius writing the code, but in the end he was helpless and without solutions. He made something and then didn’t know how to handle it. Whereas Ford wasn’t the greatest genius, but he could see the context and understand when to act. Neither prevailed because in the end succeeding required a collaboration. It was a true partnership.
I think the story is over the moment he got up on that stage. I was wondering why he didn’t hang out a bit longer to see how it plays out but then I realized it’s an allegory to children leaving the nest. You prepare them as you best can and at some point let them go.
Yeah, this is never resolved. I speculated before that he might be printing a copy of Elsie to cover up her disappearance, but with the events of the finale, such a cover-up seems useless.
I guess he could have printed a copy of himself, which would give the final scenes a whole new possible meaning, but I really hope that’s not the case.
I doubt Hopkins will be back for another season. We might get him him for a couple of flashback scenes, but him being back as a regular is probably not going to happen.
He’s a) too expensive and b) too old for the grueling TV schedule. The only reason HBO ponied up for him this season was because they wanted to establish an audience.
Too bad because Hopkins being deliciously evil for a couple of scenes was the highlight of the show for me.
There’s the scene where I’m sitting on the veranda with [Sidse Babett Knudsen], the Belgian actress [who played Theresa Cullen] in episode 4. I thought it was really interesting there was a deeper, darker side to Ford. Because he warns her. They want to control me. She looks and me and she knows there’s no way she can beat me. And I played my usual charming self. I say, “Would you like some more wine?” Of course, she knows that I will destroy her. So he’s a destructive man, as well. He wants to create a pure dystopia or utopia, but he begins to realize somewhere in there that he’s lost track of it. I think he’s troubled by his own conscience. I remember the one thing that did catch my attention when I started reading the scripts, was one of my favorite science-fiction movies – I’m not a science-fiction buff, but there’s a movie with Walter Pidgeon called The Forbidden Planet. Where Morbius creates this huge monster to guard his kingdom but he isn’t even aware that he’s created this monster until he realizes, “My god, I did this.” And then he destroys himself.[/quote]
Who’s to say he didn’t? This show is all about hedging its bets, even when it appears to be going all-in. The writers have left themselves a giant back door namely the possibility that the Ford we saw die was just a robot copy. And oh hey, who WAS Ford printing in the basement on the sly when Theresa was killed? The answer is, “Whoever HBO can afford for season 2.” If Sir Anthony is too pricey, well they can always bring back Elsie.
Oh, Hopkins was most definitely channeling Lechter in the scene in his office with Charlotte.
Plus, being able to do 1-season commitments is how you can wrangle major stars. See True Detective Season 1. A lot of actors would kill for something as meaty as prestige TV. Hopkins is in the next Transformers movie, for god’s sake.
With the Nolans’ connections, imagine who they could get?
Elsie is NOT dead. She’s elsewhere waiting for season 2. In fact it’s such an obvious forthcoming revelation that I feel a bit sorry for them.
You see, there’s the other security guy who disappeared last episode. He also went missing. I was sure he was going to play a role this last episode but we don’t see him at all. So that makes TWO characters that just stop appearing even if at least in this second case it’s OBVIOUS the story doesn’t end there.
Both disappear, and this second case is too blatant. That leaves Elsie. But now we also know Ford isn’t “evil”. He did kill Theresa, but that was more directly “required”. So it seems Ford doesn’t simply gratuitously kill.
