Review 561: Westworld - The New World
Set three months after the events of Westworld - The Door, Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) escapes Westworld into 2058, neo-Los Angeles where she develops a relationship with Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul), a human military veteran turned construction worker struggling to make ends meet and comes to learn how artificial beings and lower-class humans are treated in the real world.
Meanwhile Meave Millay (Thandie Newton) finds herself in Warworld, another Delos park
The premiere episode Parce Domine feels as if they shot a new pilot for this series
Westworld is obsessed with different genres and different styles of storytelling and how they affect how we see the world.
Whereas Westworld: The Maze was about robots stuck in loops, Westworld: The New World is very much about humans stuck in loops. Through data technology and algorithms, humanity has handed its freedom away to machines. Even outside Westworld, we can't be sure whose in control and what's real.
Themes that are explored this season are Motherhood, Survival vs Mercy as well as continuing the themes of choice and free will, Control - in this case, data and algorithms controling humanity
Survival vs Mercy: Should the weak die so that the strong can survive? Should the weak humans die so that the hosts can grow and thrive? Throughout the season, we're forced to question wether Dolores is actually helping humanity or is she just making them weaker so that the Hosts can take over.
Motherhood is prominant theme throughout this season, particularly in Ep. 3: The Absence of Field with its focus on Hot Charlotte Hale and how she infiltrates human Charlotte's life. with Charlotte and her son, Nathan; Caleb and his mother, Delores and host Charlotte and all of these relationships are difficult because children aren't just copies of their parents, they have their own influences and conflicts that make them grow into something new. Life survives by never staying the same.
Throughout the season we see how data technology influences politics, economics and our own lives. Which is not to far off from how we live today: Algorithms decide what news and shows and videos we see. Social Media and advertising affect elections and psychology. Location tracking and face recognition are tools of surveillance and the company Incites profiles are very similar to the social credit system in China which restricts employment and travel for people deemed untrustworthy.
Directors Jonathan Nolan, Richard J. Lewis, Amanda Marsalis, Paul Cameron, Anna Foerster, Helen Shaver and Jennifer Getzinger's direction is stylish and the cinematography is gorgeous and captures the beauty and prestine look of the human world, the score by Ramin Djawadi is the production design is fabulous, the locations are stunning, the scenery is breahtaking
If nothing else, at least all the actors are firing on all cylinders; Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson and Ed Harris are all excellent throughout this season.
As far as the series goes, the human Charlotte Hale is dead but a Host Charlotte Hale pretends to be her. She exists in her human counterparts absence, she fills in the gap that she left behind.
She intrudes into the life of the dead person that she's impersonating. She tries her best to be a better mother to her "son" Nathan
At the start of the season we're introduced to a more merciful and just Delores; she no longer desires to hurt people. She has hurt some many people already - humans and hosts who may have been innocent, her brutality cost her, her allies and friends. She no longer fights for revenge, she now fights for justice and liberation, freeing not only hosts but opressed humans
We also find Bernard living off the grid, trying to keep his head down and keep a low profile. He's become a fugitive in light of the masacre at Westworld. He's been controlled, reprogramed and memory wiped so many times he no longer trusts himself. He questions wether he's been influenced by Delores. He's scrambled and trying to figure out who he is.
A lot of people feel that William is tacked on character as he has such a small role this season. I am not one of those people: William's story has always been about self destruction: He destroyed his own family, his relationship with Delores and consumed himself with delusion. William is his own worst enemy.
In addition, Aaron Paul and Vincent Cassel were excellent additions to the series playing Caleb Nichols and Serac.
Caleb is the first average joe that we've met in this show. In comparison, all the park guests were wealthy tourists, corporate types, technologists and sadists. Caleb is nothing more or less than an ordinary guy getting by in 2058 LA. But Caleb feels trapped in a loop. He has a mother whose sick with demential or alzheimers and no longer recognises him and he bearly afford her medical bills.
So he uses to crime app Rico to commit robberies to pay them. He commits the same crimes over and over because the app tells him to. All of that changes, however, when he meets Delores who is probably
Caleb represents humanness, humanity and kindness.
Cassel's Serac is a very shady character, he knows how stay 10 steps ahead of his opponents and how to turn them against each other. Someone whom he and his brother Jean Mi lost his home when it was destroyed in a nuclear incident. Through all the disaster and conflict, Serac and Jean Mi were led to believe that humanity would destroy itself, so they decided to save the world with a series of godlike computers all named after a line of kings in the bible. He's a black hole. Invisible with no information about him anywhere.
In shot, Serac is saving humanity by reducing humanity into a system following code.
Serac is also a very powerful figure. Someone with so much power and influence that world leaders come to him at his convenience. He takes real world technologies to the extreme using data to keep the world stable, peaceful and devoid of free will
Though, to be fare, you can't really go wrong with Cassel as you antagonist.
If any character didn't quite receive the attention they deserved this season, it was easily Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth). While his buddy dynamic with Bernard was fun to watch, Stubbs never really seemed to have much of an overarching character arc this season beyond being Bernard's sidekick and never really came into his own as a result.
Overall, Westworld: The New World had its ups and downs, mixing in elements that worked (Delores and Caleb starting a human revolution, exploration of data technology, parallels to Season 1) and elements that didn't quike gell (
There was a much more prevelant lack of consistency and some episodes overeached their narrative grasp.
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