HBO
Previously on Westworld, Maeve ain’t pleased, Charlotte is on fire, and Bernard finds William.
The latest episode of Westworld is called ‘Passed Pawn’, a reference to a chess term that has no other pawns blocking it towards its end goal. Here I think the term refers the matter of our various characters as pawns pushed towards the end, with a strong note on Caleb being the ‘poetic’ force by Dolores to achieve her revolutionary goals but being manipulated every step of the way.
Caleb’s life, as we see in this episode, long suspected was that he was one of the ‘outliers’ and truly responsible for killing his friend Francis. It’s certainly a logical outcome for his character based on everything we’ve seen, but I got a bit tired of the constant flashbacks throughout the episode, like a reminder over and over. The final flashbacks felt decent enough, filling in blanks of what we’ve known before, even if the revelations felt like hammering the same idea home — humans as unwitting hosts, controlled by Serac for the greater good of humanity — the machine Solomon indicates that its plan is to protect as much of humanity as possible.
Solomon the machine had a kind of interesting way of communicating, and I didn’t hate it, but a lot felt incomplete — why was Dolores so easily able to convince Solomon to change paths? I felt like it wasn’t fully explained, and the episode spent a lot of time on things unnecessary.
The William/Stubbs/Bernard storyline was fine, I suppose, but I feel like Bernard doesn’t have enough to do this season. William deciding his purpose is to kill all hosts certainly fits his narcissistic outlook. I’m mainly disappointed that Bernard felt so underused this season, and with only one episode left, what’s there left for him?
HBO
In the realm of fanservice I was into, we saw the return of Hanaryo (the Japanese Artimisce) and Clementine. Clem kicking ass and then doing a hair flip was supremely iconic, and I shall be quite distressed if they’re simply killed off again in the season finale — this wasn’t enough of either of them!
I did like the action scene between Maeve and Dolores, filled with face-to-face action and strategy from a distance that didn’t need to be explained out loud. At this point Dolores still seems pretty villainous, alongside Serac — I really want to see a bit more nuance before the season wraps up.
Overall, a real mixed episode — started with a high, sagged in the middle, and had a decently enjoyable conclusion. I’m hoping the finale wraps things up in a satisfying way and not one where I think they ran out of time.
Westworld airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on HBO.
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