HBO
The season three premiere of Westworld is called ‘Parce Domine’, a reference to a Christian antiphon or ritual chant, but it means essentially ‘Lord, spare your people.’ Seemingly obtuse until Dolores breaks down the theme later. Man has created gods without trying to, not exactly, but these new gods are not exactly merciful. So whether or not to be spared, or whether humanity is worth it in the fictional future of believable control and class disparity.
The episode uses newcomer Caleb (Aaron Paul) to demonstrate this class situation, compared against the various rich people we run into. Caleb is a former soldier of some sort, experienced trauma after the death of his buddy Francis (Kid Cudi), but his ‘treatment’ is an artificial voice on the phone to talk to him like a therapist. It seems ghoulish and totally believable as a hands off approach to ‘help’ people.
Caleb is shown using the amusing crime app Rico, with unclear backing or technology behind it, but not about ‘personals’ which we eventually understand to mean he doesn’t want to hurt anyone directly. This is a way to see how the lower class lives, still with robots and AIs, but in a different, controlled way that the system pushes on them. He ends up mostly coincidentally helping (saving?) Dolores, which is the sort of theme that could go either way.
The ‘I want something real’ is pretty obvious as a little verbal trick, a counter theme to Dolores’ theme of demolishing control. Her first victim is the most relatable, a rich asshole that killed his first wife and demeans his second one. We aren’t even remotely sad when Dolores manipulates his death, but the next dude is Liam (John Gallagher Jr.), the sad son of the founder of the Incite company.
HBO
Incite is clearly a big part of the season so far, a company with a driving algorithm by giant processor ‘Rehoboam’ (another Biblical reference for an ill-fated king of Judea), and Liam seems more a hapless fool than a monster. He’s pushed around by his security chief Martin (Scottish character actor Tommy Flanagan) and threatened by a mysterious woman (Pom Klementieff). It turns out that there’s a big bad named ‘Serar’ behind the algorithm,so that’s a setup too.
Bernard’s little quest was okay, although I’m always happy to see Jeffrey Wright kicking ass. His dual personality switch is intriguing, but there’s not much to it yet — and he’s going back to Westworld for some reason? So that’s another mystery to be solved soon.
The world of the Westworld future is interesting, and the new characters have some intrigue to them. Dolores’ plan is off to a rocky start, but that’s better than it simply being smooth sailing all the way through. Now as for that weird post-credits scene with Maeve versus Naziworld? Yeah, I dunno about that, but it’s not like such a thing hasn’t been done before. I recall that Star Trek: Voyager episode that was all about a Nazi simulation and weird hunter fetishist aliens. Still, it’s always fun to get back to this weird world.
Westworld airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on HBO.
What did you think of the season premiere? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
Share this post
