HBO
The most recent episode of Westworld is called ‘Well Enough Alone’ and certainly includes many people not leaving well enough alone. The episode starts with a familiar head of hair which I immediately clocked as belonging to the barely seen from last season Clementine (the always underrated Angela Sarafyan). But then Host-William shows up looking for her old ‘boss’ Maeve, and Clem refuses to give anything up — and gets shot for it.
At first I was pretty annoyed by this immediate waste of her character, but thankfully she came back later — it seemed pretty clear that Host-William was mentioning ‘second chances’ in a way that referred to reprogramming Clem to now work for him. This William storyline intersected the Maeve/Caleb one pretty cleanly and in a way that felt pretty clear and understandable.
Host-Charlotte Hale is still working on her plan to take over Earth for the sake of the machines and thus is carefully replacing key figures — Maeve’s interrogation reveals this is 249 people at that moment. But other people are being mind controlled in a horrifying way by some sort of mysterious flies that leave the brain appearing like a black goo. Clementine has been repurposed as an assistant/security person to Host-William, rebuffing a man from the DOJ and creepily murdering the Secret Service detail of the visiting Vice President.
It’s pretty fun to see Clementine as a horror movie villain again, and the interesting dual paths of ‘stopping Hale’ versus ‘Hale taking over’ is a compelling one. Maeve and Caleb have their own fun little fight scene with the hosts of a Senator and his wife, also setting up the next big (if expected twist of the season), which is that they show up in a new park with the same old kind of host help (Lili Simmons).
But this time instead of the Old West remade it’s a sort of Prohibition-era hybrid city world which certainly has a lot of room for intrigue. It’s all introduced by Host-William under the direction of Host-Hale who has been trying to get this park built in the last two episodes — now we see it’s intentionally made as a location for new guests, which also means it’s definitely for a nefarious purposes.
HBO
The Maeve/Caleb rapport is pretty well handled, acerbic confidence versus washed out trauma victim — definitely an interesting one. But you also kind of wonder if there will be more of the Host-Hale with actual William that’s she’s kept alive in containment because there’s a weird sort of honest rapport with them too.
In the other storyline with the mysterious Christina and her world of fiction, she continues to go down the rabbit hole to understand how her fictional storyline affected a real person. Her showing up in an empty facility dedicated to the dead man who only just died is delightfully creepy, and her roommate once again drops some odd bon mots, calling the world insane and to ‘trust yourself’. Still not sure what her deal is, but I can’t imagine the show would be stupid enough to waste Ariana DeBose as the quirky best friend character only.
So far this storyline doesn’t feel too convoluted, dropping enough clues and hints that it’s easy enough to follow the mystery without getting lost, and so far the show has done a good job with these two episodes this season. Hopefully they can keep this momentum going.
New episodes of Westworld air Sundays on HBO and stream on HBO Max.
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