That bothered me the most. One rifle fire team and a mortar crew and they could’ve broken the whole fort without a single casualty. What exactly was in all those crates they were unloading from the ships if not weapons?
The assault on the fort took place in the earlier, two-weeks-ago timeline, before the arrival of the forces from the mainland. I guess these guys were remnants of the onsite security.
As I’ve said previously, I don’t know that it’s accurate to describe most of the hosts as autonomous. They’re not networked anymore, the safeties are off, and nobody is taking them in for rewrites or repairs, etc, but I think almost all of them are still operating on their existing scripts and characters with their previous level of capability to adjust to unexpected deviations.
That’s a good point. Hopefully we’ll see the reinforcements being a little less under-gunned for the task at hand.
These are the two with the most memories I think, minus Bernard who seems to have some serious blocks in place. The rest have had zero or little access to previous lives and are sticking to the script because they don’t know anything else. If they can restore all the hosts memories then I think they would all be as independent.
I’m not convinced that’s the case. Dolores and Maeve were already going off script and behaving independently before things broke down, and in Dolores’ case at least, it seems to have been Arnold’s plan to try to nurture true artificial intelligence in her (and eventually the other hosts, but she seems to be the test case). I think they’ve achieved a level of sapience the others have not. That said, I think it’s probably the case that more of them could and perhaps will be brought to that state as things proceed.
I am not convinced either, I just hope/think that’s the direction they are going.
Didn’t they both start having flashbacks as their past lives bled forward? Wasn’t that the start of it? Serious question, I forgot more than I remember from last year.
That certainly seems to be driving both of them: Maeve living flashbacks to her daughter (who apparently never existed except as a few lines of script–boy is she going to be pissed!) and Dolores reacting to memories of her father (who apparently did exist, as part of the action sequence staged at their farm) along with the rape, etc.
Yeah. But I think memories are part of achieving sapience, not sufficient in and of themselves.
Plus, when Maeve found and revived Bernard (after he’d shot himself at Ford’s sadistic command), Bernard pointed out changes to Maeve’s programming which suggested she’s not as rogue nor as independent as she believes herself to be. Maeve cut him off before he could elaborate. Exactly how much agency Maeve has is deliberately unclear.
I think the exact opposite of this.
It also seems to me that Dolores is playing out a scripted “Robots break free” scenario and Maeve is just… Free.
Man, Tom just pointed out a major flaw in this that kinda sours the show a bit.
I the movie Yul Brenner was an excellent bad guy, the evil gunslinger host gone rogue. Intimidating, cold and calculated. In this series they try and fool you into thinking Ed Harris is Yul Brenner’s character but soon reveal he’s a guest. But he’s still a bad guy, and is a great actor.
Then they set up Thandie Newton’s character, and you think maybe she’s the Yul Brenner character. But she’s not, she’s a way more sympathetic character, almost an anti hero.
Clearly Cyclops is not Yul Brenner, he’s confused and naive and following orders and a good guy.
So who does that leave? Can’t act at all Blonde chick, that’s who. She’s Yul Brenner’s character. And she’s terrible, IMO. They already had a “female host being abused turned rogue” character in Newton. The blonde girl’s character screws up this dynamic and the writers know this. Know how I know this? The scene where Newton and Blondie cross paths was dumb. Nothing happened. They should have had a long conversation about their state and future. Instead those characters more or less ignored each other after some dumb dialog about freedom. It shows me the writers don’t really care about their dynamic because one of them is superfluous. Blondie.
Boo. I knew some dynamic was bothering me. This series doesn’t need Blondie. She’s neither an interesting character nor an interesting actress.
I can’t agree with the Evan Rachel Wood hate. She was terrific in Thirteen, The Wrestler, and Mildred Pierce, not to mention season 1 of this show. If you think going from a 10 hysterical panic to robot calm, and dropping an accent, in the snap of a finger all while naked is an easy acting gig, I think we have different ideas of what makes a good actor.
Her part just sucks this season. There really hasn’t been anything meaty for her so far, plus using her as a badass merciless killer just isn’t working.
Dolores is the focus of the entire show. She’s not remotely superfluous. Whether you think that was a wise decision or not is up to you, of course. But she’s working for me.
Yeah, I thought that this episode was the one that ERW really stepped up the evil. She is now kill all humans, also kill any robots that get in my way, and everyone else is expendable.
Maeve is just like… I want my kid and I am out.
The Dolores role this season is awful.
That’s the opposite of what this past episode demonstrated, IMO. It let us know that Dolores still cares about the people who mattered to her before (however artificial that relationship may have been) and that she doesn’t consider all hosts to be on the same side simply because of their nature. That she still has moral standards. She didn’t hook up with the Confederados because she needed troops for her army, but because they were reprehensible scum she could expend without moral qualm. If all we needed to know was that she’s ruthless now, well…that was already amply shown.
Yep, and this is the second time this has come up (the other was late last season). She’s acting out a narrative.
There’s another big reveal coming.
Nobody is Yul Brenner. That first Westworld was not concerned with the same things as the remake. The first one as the fear of technology run amuck, not a exploration of the nature of consciousness and free will. Dolores is presented as a person, whereas Brenner’s character didn’t even have a name.
The nitpicky thing that bothers me in this and last season is that even though it’s not explicitly mentioned, I get the impression that security’s P90 submachineguns are supposed to be futuristic rifles. This is pretty common in movies and shows despite the firearm being from 1990. The P90 gets used as sci-fi weaponry all the time because non-gun people think it looks exotic. Like the Maverick 3 dune buggies, they were chosen for aesthetic reasons versus any practical nods to what a security force might use in the future against robots gone wild.
Anyway, just an observation.